TLAHUICA

Sources of the data

Martínez, Aileen. 2012. Clases verbales, transitividad y valencia verbal en pjyekakjó, tlahuica de San Juan Atzingo. Unpublished PhD dissertation. El Colegio de México.

Verbal inflection

Verbs inflect for various TAM values. The grammatical tenses are called ‘Present’ (in reality an aspectual incompletive), ‘Imperfect’ (a composite tense consisting of a past incompletive), ‘Past’ (a completive), ‘Future’ (an irrealis) and ‘Imperative’. For some verbs, there is also a special form for the 1SG progressive.

Verbs realize these TAM values by means of a string of prefixes which commonly also index the person of the subject in a cumulative way.

NOTE: The Imperfect is build on the Present by means of kimi- for the 1st and 2nd persons and mi- for the 3rd person, and the Future carries the marker ki+ for all persons.

NOTE: A suffix marking number (dual or plural) applies when the prefix does not convey a contrast in number by itself, as for example in the 3rd person or in the future.

Additionally, verbs have some negative forms for certain cells in their paradigm. Independently of such negative forms, negation is always encoded syntactically by means of prefixes té[t]- or no-. Of these negation prefixes, té[t]- works as a default, while no- is only used with Future and Imperative forms. The prefixes always occur at the left edge of the inflected form.

The special negative forms for the verb -tsí (tr) ‘eat, drink’ have been highlighted below.

Inflectional class interactions

Like in Matlatzinca, a verb in Tlahuica may be inflected as though it belonged to different inflectional classes, which results in a change in meaning.

For example, the verb -patí, inflected as a Class I verb means ‘heat something’, as a Class III verb, it means ‘for a person to get warm’ (i.e., its middle voice meaning), and as a Class IV verb it means ‘for a thing or a person to be hot’. There are many such pairings, but there are also verbs which do not enter into this type of inflectional class interaction.

When a verb belongs to different inflectional classes, we have indicated this is the following way:

• Verbs have been given a unified lexical gloss: e.g. –ha¹² ‘drop’, –ha¹²ti ‘caress’, –kɨ¹²pi ‘drag’, etc.
• The transitive reading of a verb (i.e. referring to an agentive scenario where a subject performs the action on a different participant as object) is given as ‘action’, e.g. as Class I verbs –ha¹² and –ha¹²ti would then mean something like ‘drop’ and ‘caress’, respectively. Similarly as a Class II verb –kɨ¹²pi would mean ‘drag’.
• When the verb can also be inflected as intransitive, there are different options, besides the obvious ones (motion, state, etc.):
  • ‘autonomously performed’ actions refer to typical reflexive situations involving human beings, where a subject performs the action independently of external causes while holding some control over their actions, e.g. as Class III verbs –ha¹² would mean ‘fall’, –ha¹²ti would mean ‘caress oneself’ and –kɨ¹²pi ‘crawl, or drag onself’.
  • ‘spontaneous’ actions refer to similar situations as ‘autonomously performed’ actions but involving inanimate participants which do not exert control, e.g. as a Class III verb –ha¹² can also mean ‘fall’ for inanimate entities.
  • ‘reciprocal’ actions refer to typical reciprocal actions, e.g. as a Class III verb with a dual or plural subject –ha¹²ti can also mean ‘caress each other’.
  • ‘passive-impersonal’ actions, refer to the result of the action after a given unspecified agent has acted, e.g. as a Class III verb –nu¹²mts’i ‘mix’ would mean ‘for something to be mixed’.

This situation has come about because inflectional class distinctions in Tlahuica are based on old derivational morphology that became unproductive and in most cases phonologically opaque. Classes I and II contain the transitive verbs of the language, while Classes III, IV and V contain the intransitive ones. Classes II and IV appear to have been the basic classes. Class I contains old causative verbs derived by an old morpheme tu-, while Class III contains most middle verbs (reflexives, reciprocals, spontaneous, motion, etc.) which were once derived by the old morpheme te-.