Chapter 7. Valence-changing operations in Coatecas Altas Zapotec

Valence-increasing devices in Coatecas Altas Zapotec (hereafter CAZ) include derivational causatives, inflectional causatives, lexical and paradigmatic suppletion, syntactic causatives and incorporation. Valence-decreasing devices in CAZ include experiencer/anticausative verbs. These are intransitive or transitive verbs of perception, and whose syntactic subject is semantically a patient. Other valence-decreasing devices in CAZ include stative verbs, and object incorporation. Reflexives and reciprocals are not valence-decreasing devices in CAZ because they retain their transitive argument structure. Of particular significance is that approximately 33% of CAZ verbs take da, the lexically-conditioned first person singular experiencer/anticausative pronoun. Da is phonologically very similar to anticausative verbal prefixes found in other Zapotec variants (du- in Zaniza Zapotec and d- in Texmelucan, Yatzachi and Choapam Zapotec).