Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 49:2 (2025) ► pp.412–455
Central Pame verbal inflection
Morphological classification across layers
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Zurich.
Published online: 19 May 2025
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.24032.her
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.24032.her
Abstract
Central Pame verbal inflection constitutes a system whose organization is strikingly complex, with dozens of
inflection classes distributed syntagmatically across multiple positions in a word: prefix, suffix, stem, and tone. This paper
presents the first thorough description of this understudied system and investigates every layer and subsystem in detail and how
they relate to each other, concluding that, in this distributed-exponence system, syntagmatic predictability relations between
subsystems are fundamental
Keywords: morphology, inflection, PCFP, multiple exponence, Otomanguean
Article outline
- 1.General introduction
- 2.Introduction to Central Pame phonology
- 3.Central Pame verbal inflectional system
- 3.1Prefixal inflection classes
- 3.2Stem alternation classes
- 3.3Tone-stress classes
- 3.4Suffixal morphology
- 3.4.1Morphophonologically triggered opacity
- 3.4.2Suffixal classes
- 3.5Suppletion, heteroclisis and other cross-layer irregularities
- 4.Relationship between inflectional subsystems
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
References
References (46)
Ackerman, Farrell, James P. Blevins & Robert Malouf. 2009. Parts
and wholes: Patterns of relatedness in complex morphological systems and why they
matter. In James P. Blevins and Juliette Blevins (eds.) Analogy
in grammar: Form and
acquisition: 54–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Angulo, Jaime. 1933. The
Chichimeco language (Central Mexico). International Journal of American
Linguistics 7(3/4). 152–194.
Avelino, Heriberto. 2010. Acoustic
and electroglottographic analyses of nonpathological, nonmodal phonation. Journal of
Voice 24(3). 270–280.
Baayen, R. Harald, Yu-Ying Chuang, Elnaz Shafaei-Bajestan & James P. Blevins. 2019. The
discriminative lexicon: A unified computational model for the lexicon and lexical processing in comprehension and production
grounded not in (de)composition but in linear discriminative
learning. Complexity 20191, 1–39.
Baerman, Matthew & Greville G. Corbett. 2012. Stem
alternations and multiple exponence. Word
Structure 5(1). 52–68.
Berthiaume, Scott C. 2003. A phonological grammar of
Northern Pame. Arlington: The University of Texas at Arlington PhD dissertation.
Blevins, James P., Petar Milin & Michael Ramscar. 2017. The
Zipfian paradigm cell filling problem. In Kiefer, Ferenc, Blevins, James P. and Bartos, Huba. (eds.), Perspectives
on morphological organization: Data and
analyses, 139–158. Leiden: Brill.
Booker, Karen M. 1982. Number suppletion in North
American Indian languages. Kansas Working Papers in
Linguistics 71. 15–29.
Brunner, Jennifer. 2016. Zur
Objektmarkierung im Pame Central und darüber
hinaus. Graz: Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz MA thesis.
. 2023. Von
Aktionalität, Temporalität, Aspektualität und Modalität in Zentralpame (šiʔui Pame),
Mexiko. Graz: Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz PhD dissertation.
Campbell, Amy Melissa. 2012. The morphosyntax of
discontinuous exponence. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley PhD dissertation.
Campbell, Eric W. 2019. Layered complexity in Zezontepec
Chatino verbal inflectional
classes. Amerindia 411. 39–74.
Cano, Gregorio Tiburcio. 2017. La flexión verbal del
Me’phaa de Zilacayotitlán. Tlalpan Centro: CIESAS PhD dissertation.
Carroll, Mae. 2016. The
Ngkolmpu language with special reference to distributed
exponence. Canberra: Australia National University PhD dissertation.
Chiquet, Julien, Guillem Rigaill, Martina Sundqvist, Valentin Dervieux & Florent Bersani. 2020. Package
‘aricode’. R package version. Available at [[URL]]
Fedden, Sebastian & Greville G. Corbett. 2017. Gender
and classifiers in concurrent systems: Refining the typology of nominal
classification. Glossa 2(1). 1–47.
Gibson, Lorna F. 1950. Verb paradigms in
Pame. Unpublished manuscript. Available online at [URL] (last access 12 November 2023).
1956. Pame (Otomi) phonemics and
morphophonemics. International Journal of American
Linguistics 22(4). 242–265.
Gibson, Lorna & Doris Bartholomew. 1979. Pame
noun inflection. International Journal of American
Linguistics 45(4). 309–322.
Hammarström, Harald, Robert Forkel, Martin Haspelmath & Sebastian Bank. 2021. Glottolog
4.5. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Available online at [URL]
Haspelmath, Martin. 2010. Comparative
concepts and descriptive categories in crosslinguistic
studies. Language 86(3). 663–687.
Herce, Borja. 2019. Deconstructing
(ir)regularity. Studies in
Language 43(1). 44–91.
. 2022. Possessive
inflection in Chichimec inalienable nouns: The morphological organization of a closed irregular
class. Studies in
Language 46(4). 901–933.
. 2024. VeLePa:
Central Pame verbal inflection in a quantitative
perspective. Morphology 34(3). 281–319.
. Forthcoming. Emergence
and evolution of free variation in Central Pame prefixes: Sound change vs. paradigmatic
structure. Diachronica.
Hopper, Paul J. & Sandra A. Thompson. 1980. Transitivity
in grammar and
discourse. Language 56(2). 251–299.
Kaufman, Terrence. 2006. Oto-Manguean
languages. In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia
of Language &
Linguistics, vol. 91, 118–124. Oxford: Elsevier.
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1994. Middle
Voice, Transitivity and the elaboration of events. In Barbara A. Fox & Paul J. Hopper (eds.) Voice:
Form and
function, 179–230. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kirby, Simon, Monica Tamariz, Hannah Cornish & Kenny Smith. 2015. Compression
and communication in the cultural evolution of linguistic
structure. Cognition 1411. 87–102.
Lieberman, Erez, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Joe Jackson, Tina Tang & Martin A. Nowak. 2007. Quantifying
the evolutionary dynamics of
language. Nature 449(7163). 713–716.
Lizárraga Navarro, Glenda Zoé. 2018. Morfología verbal de persona y
número en Chichimeco jonaz. Ciudad de México: El Colegio de México PhD dissertation.
Manrique Castañeda, Leonardo. 2000. Lingüística
histórica, en Manzanilla, Linda y Leonardo López Lujan (eds.), Historia
antigua de México, Volumen I: El México antiguo, sus áreas culturales, los orígenes y le horizonte
Preclásico, 53–93. México: INAH-UNAM-PORRUA
Olson, Donald. 1955. Mode-Aspect-Person
Inflection in Pame. Unpublished manuscript, online at [URL] (last access 12 November 2023).
Operstein, Natalie. 2015. Verb
inflection and valence in Zapotec. In Natalie Operstein & Aaron Huey Sonnenschein (eds.), Valence
changes in Zapotec: Synchrony, diachrony, typology [Typological Studies in Language
110], 323–343. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Palancar, Enrique L., Jonathan D. Amith & Rey Castillo García. 2016. Verbal
inflection in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec. In Enrique L. Palancar & Jean-Léo Léonard (eds.) Tone
and inflection: New facts and new
perspectives, 295–336. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Palancar, Enrique L. & Heriberto Avelino. 2019. Inflectional
complexity and verb classes in
Chichimec. Amerindia 411. 323–360.
Palancar, Enrique L. & Leonardo Carranza Martínez. 2022. The
Conjugations of Matlatzinca. International Journal of American
Linguistics 88(3). 361–409.
. 2025. Inflection
class interactions and valency changes in Matlatzinca. Studies in
Language 49(1). 1–43.
Pöchtrager, Markus. 2008. Finnish
consonant gradation. In Joaquim Brandão de Carvalho, Tobias Scheer & Philippe Ségéral (eds.) Lenition
and Fortition, 357–386. De Gruyter.
Shaw, Jason A., Sejin Oh, Karthik Durvasula & Alexei Kochetov. 2021. Articulatory
coordination distinguishes complex segments from segment
sequences. Phonology 38(3). 437–477.
Stump, Gregory & Raphael A. Finkel. 2013. Morphological
typology: From word to
paradigm. Vol. 1381. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thornton, Anna M. 2012. Reduction and maintenance of
overabundance. A case study on Italian verb paradigms. Word
Structure 5(2). 183–207.
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Herce, Borja
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
