The Phonology of the Texmelucan Zapotec Verb

Abstract

0. Introduction. Texmelucan Zapotec (hereafter TZ) is spoken by about 3,000 people in the municipality of San Lorenzo Texmelucan, district of Sola de Vega, Oaxaca, Mexico. The closest linguistic neighbors of TZ are Zaniza Zapotec and Elotepec Zapotec (Egland et al. 1978). These dialects have been referred to as Papabuco in the literature (Upson and Longacre 1965, Harvey 1968, Rend6n 1971; 1976). They diverge so considerably from the other Zapotecan languages that Rend6n considers them to be a distinct language included within the same family as Zapotec and Chatino. I disagree with Rend6n for a number of reasons, one of which is that the phonological patterns that occur with the TZ verb are typical of Zapotecan languages and not of Chatino. The present study contributes to the understanding of the Zapotec verb in several ways. First, it should appeal to the linguist interested in comparative or historical study inasmuch as it contains data from a Zapotecan language that diverges considerably from those already described. In order to make the study more useful in this respect, I have included a verb paradigm to illustrate every segmental alternation I have observed in a study of 900 verb paradigms. Second, this study represents the only attempt to describe the phonology of the Zapotec verb from within the framework of generative phonology. Thus I arrive at solutions to some problems, both in the morphology and in the phonology, that are quite different from those proposed in earlier papers. I first discuss verb morphology and suggest that there is morphological patterning in areas unrecognized in previous studies. I then discuss the phonological generalizations that govern the alternations in what I see