Syntactic valency and verbal morphology in chichimeco Jonaz

Abstract

Chichimeco Jonaz is an otomanguean language in which the correlation between syntax, semantics and morphology is clear. The syntactic valency of verbs and their semantic class are directly associated with the prefixes encoding the subject, as well as the morphological changes of the first consonant of the verbal stem and the variation exhibited in the third person plural’s prefix. The paradigm of the grammatical subject is associated with seven verb classes: transitive, labile, intransitive, movement and affected subject, stative, patient and weather verbs. The consonant mutations generated on the first segment of the verbal stem are basically fortifications, lenitions and prenasalisations. In addition to these processes, suppletion and personal pronoun also appear encoding the third plural person.