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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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University of North Dakota

Journal

Linguistics; Zapotec; syntax; Mexico

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

A Backwards Binding Construction In Zapotec, Cheryl A. Black Jan 1996

A Backwards Binding Construction In Zapotec, Cheryl A. Black

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

Many of the Zapotecan languages have a unique way of signalling coreference between the subject and the possessor of the object: the subject is null. Such a construction is upsidedown or backwards from commonly described anaphora constructions and its analysis is therefore problematic to current theories. This paper describes the construction and underlines the theoretical problem by arguing against any obvious alternative analyses. An analysis is proposed where it is the tail (rather than the head) of the chain of coreferent elements that is identified, suggesting that this is another place where parameterization is needed.


Zapotec Pronoun Classification, Stephen A. Marlett Jan 1990

Zapotec Pronoun Classification, Stephen A. Marlett

Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session

From the introduction: "Zapotec languages have sometimes been described as having two sets of (nonreflexive) personal pronouns: bound and free (Butler 1976), clitic and free (Jones and Church 1985, Marlett 1987), dependent and independent (Pickett 1960, Bartholomew 1983), inseparable and separable (Butler 1980), suffixes and pronouns (Briggs 1961), particles and pronouns (Pickett et al. 1965). The variety of terminology used indicates that the syntax of Zapotec pronouns requires further study. The goal of this article is to clarify the behavior of these pronouns across the Zapotec language family (using a subset of languages to illustrate), noting where these languages are …