Pronominal diversity in Central Zapotec and the Animal pronoun =me in Colonial Valley Zapotec

One great puzzle of Colonial Valley Zapotec is the divergence between the pronominal systems of modern Valley Zapotec languages and that of the colonial texts.

To the best of my knowledge, all (or nearly all) of the modern Valley Zapotec languages distinguish 3rd person clitic pronouns for humans, animals, and inanimates.  The smallest system seems to have three such distinctions (e.g. Guevea de Humboldt Zapotec).  The largest system seems to be San Lucas Quiaviní.

The following chart summarizes my understanding of the typical range of clitic pronouns available.  I have used color as follows --

B1(front vowel), e.g. bi, be, ëb
B2(back vowel). e.g. bu, ba
ZH (ʒ), e.g. zha, zhi, azh
M(vowel), e.g. ma, mu, me, mi, emm
NI1 (low or non-glottal), e.g. ni, ing, yn
NI2 (high or glottal), e.g. ni', ní, ni'i

San Dionisio Ocotepec

San Lucas Quiavini

Teotitlan

San Juan Guelavia

Santa Ana del Valle

Chichi-capan

Ayoquesco

Zaachila

Coatecas

Mitla

Guevea

Albarradas

Isthmus (Juchitan)

Tehuantepec

my notes

Munro and Lopez

cited in MacLaury

Jones

cited in MacLaury

cited in MacLaury

cited in MacLaury

Briggs

Marks, p,.c. (updated since the publication)

Adam

Gramatica popular

cited in MacLaury

3 respect or honor

ba, ab

azh:

ny

bu

ba

xa'

bá

amán

3 ordinary

bi, eby

ang

bï, b

bi

bi

a'n

bé

ni

me

m

be

3 m --> m

zha

zhï, zh

zhí

zh

3 animal

ma, am

ëmm

m

mï, m

mu

ma

mă

mé

ma

ma'

b

me

me

3 saint or reverential

ni'

ni', iny

ni'i

ni

ní

ni

3 inanimate

ni

ing

ni

ni

(i)n

yn

ní

u

an

ni

ni

3 formal

ëb

3 child

ne'

ni'

3 male

mbe

ve

3 female

zha

ce

3 proximal

ëng

3 distal

ih

3 impersonal

nï

Some generalizations:

B1 and B2 pronouns are always used for humans.
If a lg has both B1 and B2, B2 represents a higher degree of respect.
If a lg has one of the B pronouns and NI1 (low or non-glottal), the B pronoun is almost always higher in honor than NI1.  (Guelavia is not an exception if the ny is a reflex of NI2.)
Nearly all lgs have M(vowel) as the animal pronoun.  
The Albarradas inversion of M and B pronouns is remarkable.  It is the only attested language with this system.
The use of M pronouns for people is unique to Albarradas and Guevea and may indicate an shared innovation.

In contrast to this situation, most Colonial Valley Zapotec uses only one pronoun =ni.

However, in the 1666 text by Cristobal Aguero Miscelanea espiritual, I have discovered two instances of what appears to be the animal pronoun, spelled mee in the text:

This is (I think) the earliest attested use of the animal pronoun in CVZ.

resumptive pronoun after ro' topic in Triqui

In a previous post, I discussed topic marking and mentioned resumptive pronouns.  The following shows another example of a resumptive pronoun after the ro' topic in Copala Triqui.

More examples of the Triqui thinking construction

In this post and  this post, I talked about the strange syntax of the 'thinking construction'  in Copala Triqui, where some long clause [abc] is followed by rá NP, and the effect is to give NP's expectations, thoughts, hopes, desires about the situation described in [abc].

The following example is another strange one, and like a previous example, it might involve condition D violations if we try to interpret rá NP as the superordinate clause:

Here it is very hard to know if the material within the scope of rá includes the 'Herod thought...' part of the sentence.  Maybe not?

I don't think the aspect of the verbs tells us anything, since both completive and potential verbs can be in the scope.

Triqui topic marking

In a previous post, I talked about uses of the Copala Triqui morpheme ro' .  One frequent context is when two phrases are being compared with each other. More searching through the corpus shows that the words ase vaa 'like' often precede and daj or danj 'thus, likewise'  is often between the two phrases.

The following example shows two clauses that are compared: "just as [Christ rose] ro', so [he will descend to the world'":

(We also see here that ro'  doesn't have to be attached to noun phrases.)

The next example compares what he (Cornelius) and his family did:

(We see here also that ro' is not necessarily preverbal.)

One more example of this from our Address to the Triqui People text:

A rather different use of ro' seems to be involved in a structure which is NP-ro' [V pronoun ...], where the pronoun is resumptive to the NP:

Here the element with ro'  "young people" precedes the verb "listen"  and is resumed with the pronoun nij so'.

(This example is also rather neat with its initial cleft structure; the pre-cleft element is the object of 'listen (to)', which is embedded under 'have the obligation'.)

But the following two adjacent sentences show that a phrase with ro'  does not necessarily require a resumptive pronoun after the verb.  It is hard for me to say why one of these sentences has a resumptive and the other does not -- a speculation is that most of the phrases with ro'  are definite and 'each one' is not very definite.  So the daa 'o 'o determiner doesn't usually show up on phrases with ro' + resumptive.  However 'each one of the authorities together with all of their councils' is considerably more definite.  So perhaps definiteness accounts for the difference between sentences (23) and (24) below?