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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. In San Andres Yaa Zapotec, adjectives used predicatively are often preceded by a morpheme marked for animacy: bi' for humans (HUM), be' for animals (ANIM), and da' for inanimates (INAN). In this paper, I demonstrate that such animacy markers are bound nominal elements used to nominalize adjectives, demonstratives, and relative clauses, related to similar morphemes in closely-related Zapotec languages (e.g. Yatzachi el Bajo Zapotec (Butler 1988) and Zoogocho Zapotec (Sonnenschein 2005)).
First, I show that in addition to occurring in predicate position, a complex containing an animacy marker plus an adjective can also occur in argument nominal positions, such as subject, direct object, and prepositional object. Subsequently, I show that the animacy markers by themselves have a very similar distribution to nouns, although the former are bound and cannot occur where all nouns can--they are nominalizers.
Lastly, I discuss the words beene' 'person, man' and no'ol 'woman', which form an intermediate category between animacy markers and lexical nouns, since they can either nominalize or stand alone as nouns.
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1. BACKGROUND ON SAN ANDRES YAA ZAPOTEC (SAYZ). San Andres Yaa Zapotec, henceforth SAYZ, is spoken in the Villa Alta district in the Sierra Norte region of Oaxaca, Mexico and belongs to the Xhon variant of Sierra Zapotec (Castellanos 2003), a division within Zapotec, a subfamily of Zapotecan, a family within the Otomanguean stock. (1) The basic word order in SAYZ is VSO, although a semantic subject in SAYZ, if not pronominal, most often appears preverbally, (2) with the syntactic postverbal subject position being filled by a pronominal clitic that shares the same relevant features as the semantic subject: (3)
(1) [Kwaann=a'] p-see= [be'] peloot=a'. Juan=DEM PERF-throw=3INF ball=DEM 'Juan threw the ball.'
2. THE ISSUE: DETERMINATION OF THE MORPHOSYNTACTIC STATUS OF ANIMACY MARKERS (4) IN SAYZ. In San Andres Yaa Zapotec, adjectives used predicatively may occur directly after a subject clitic, as in (2):
(2) Bi'do'= na' n-aak = be' [si'i]. child=DEM NEUT-be=3INF heavy 'The child is heavy.'
However, there is often (5) intervening material in the form of an animacy marker: bi' for humans (6) (HUN), be' for animals (ANIM), and da' for inanimates (INAN), as seen in examples (3)-(5), respectively:
(3) Bi'do'o=na' n-aak=be' (bi')[=toonn]. child=DEN NEUT-be=3INF (HUM)=long 'The child is tall.' (4) Beell=a' n-aak=ba' (be')[=toonn]. snake=DEN NEUT-be=3ANIM (ANIM)=long 'The snake is long.' (5) Yaag=a' n-aak=en (da')[=toonn]. stick=DEN NEUT-be=3INAN (INAN)=long 'The stick is long.'
In this paper, I show that the animacy markers bi', be', and da' in SAYZ are bound nominal morphemes functioning as nominalizers, by exploring both the distribution of the animacy marker plus adjective complex (AM+ADJ) more generally (Section 3) and the distribution of such animacy markers when they do not precede an adjective (Section 4). Since previous syntactic analyses of related morphemes in other Zapotecan languages have been more limited in scope, this work increases our understanding of the typology of nominal morphemes, including their role in nominalization and the formation of relative clauses, both within Zapotecan and in general.
3. DISTRIBUTION OF ANIMACY MARKER PLUS ADJECTIVE (AM+ADJ): The distribution of animacy marker plus adjective (AM+ADJ) is the same as distribution for noun phrases in general. An AM+ADJ can occur as a predicate or an argument, just like phrases that are clearly noun phrases.
3.1 AM+ADJ's AS PREDICATE PHRASES. AM+ADJ's may occur as predicate phrases, whether a copula is also present or not.
We have already seen that AM+ADJ's may occur as predicates when a copula is present in (3)-(5) above. This is also true for clearly nominal expressions in SAYZ, as seen in (6)-(7):
(6) Beene' Yaan n-aak=e' [x:a']. person Mariano NEUT.be=3RESP POSS.father.1s 'Mr. Mariano is my father.' (7) [Mees x:kweel] n-aak=a'. teacher school NEUT-be=1s 'I'm a school teacher.'
We also see AM+ADJ's used predicatively in the presence of a copula in other varieties of Zapotec in the Xhon region. Butler (1988: 211) discusses related morphemes in Yatzachi el Bajo Zapotec that she calls SUSTANTIVOS GENERICOS 'generic nouns' or SUSTANTIVIZADORES 'nominalizers', such as bia for animals and de 'e for inanimate things, which are related to SAYZ be' and da', respectively:
(8) Naqueb bia ban. [cf. SAYZ be'] NEUT.be.ANIM ANIM alive 'Es (un) animal vivo.' / 'It's a live animal.' (7) (9) Naquen de'e cob. [cf. SAYZ da'] NEUT.be. INAN INAN new 'Es (una) cosa nueva.' / 'It's a new thing.'
Similarly, Sonnenschein (2005) discusses related morphemes in San Bartolome Zoogocho Zapotec that he calls classifiers, such as be, used with animals, related to SAYZ be':
(10) N-ak-dx bdxee [be lis] kleka' be'ko' [cf. SAYZ be'] STAY-be=more ant CLAN small COMP dog 'Ants are smaller than dogs.' [Sonnenchein 2005: 162, #132]
It is true that an adjectival phrase may also occur as a post-copular predicate in SAYZ, as can be seen in (11), which is the same as (12), except that there is no animacy marker present:
(11) Kwaann n-aak=be' [waall]. Juan NEUT-be=3INF strong 'Juan is strong.' (12) Kwaann n-aak=be' [bi'=waall]. Juan NEUT-be=3INF HUM=Strong 'Juan is strong.'
Nevertheless, the fact that phrases which are clearly nominal can occur as post-copular...
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