More on the aspectual /wa-/

Colonial Valley Zapotec has two aspectual prefixes, /na-/  and ­/wa-/ (usually spelled ) which introduce verbs denoting states, as in the following passages:

       

‎‎Notice that in these examples, /wa-/ is the only prefix on the root.  It's used in place of another aspectual prefix, so I call this 'aspectual /wa-/'.  More examples in the following:

Contrast the aspectual /wa-/ with the form seen in (3) where /wa-/ precedes another aspect prefix:

I wrote the following in a recent abstract:

As can be seen in these examples, /wa-/ may be the only aspect marker on a predicate (which I label 'aspectual /wa-/') or it may precede another aspectual marker (as in example 3).  The second type of /wa-/ I label 'pre-aspectual /wa-/'. These examples illustrate three generalizations about the distribution of /na-/ and aspectual /wa-/ a.)    /wa-/ asserts an extended state; b.) /na-/ is the neutral form of the affix; it is used when an extended state is not asserted; c.) /na-/ is always found when topical or focal phrases appear in preverbal position.

In example (1), the dirtiness and stickness of tallow are inherent, extended states, and thus these predicates use the /wa-/ prefix.  Similarly in (2), God's existence is an extended state, and the predicate 'exist' uses the /wa-/ prefix. According to the text in (2), the wick is clean and white, but the wick may be polluted by contact with the tallow.  Cleanliness and whiteness are not necessarily extended states (since the clean may become dirty) and the predicates 'white' and 'clean' are marked with /na-/. 

Thus these examples illustrate generalizations (a) and (b).  Generalization (c) is illustrated in example (1) in passages like  'it is dirty'. /wa-/ is used on the first predicate to indicate an extended state, but /na-/ appears on the verb  /-aca/ 'be' because of the focussed position of oa-chaba.  The focussed/non-focussed contrast can also be seen in the non-focussed (2) oa-tij Dios  'God exists' vs focussed (3) tobi-ci D(ios) na-tij  'only one God exists'.

            Pre-aspectual /wa-/ is considerably less frequent, but the following generalizations about its use are possible:

a.)    /wa-/ may appear before the /t-/ 'imperfective', and /na-/ 'stative' aspects, b.) /wa-/ before the imperfective is limited to verbs of speech and cognition such as 'believe', 'want', and 'confess' and appears to indicate an extended cognitive state or a speech act preceded by an extended cognitive state, c.) /wa-/ before stative /na-/ is the least frequent combination, limited to the verbs /-aca/ 'be' and /-aan/ 'know', where it seems to show extended states.         



An interesting addition that I only recently noticed -- the distribution of aspectual and pre-aspectual /wa-/ seems to vary according to the date of the publication.   Levanto (1732) seems to show no clear examples of aspectual /wa-/  (outside the fixed word hualiica 'truly'), but it has about 80 instances of pre-aspectual /wa-/.

Of these cases of pre-aspectual, about 20 are with the verb 'believe',   where hua-ri-ieliilachi-a ' I believe'  is a standard way to express religious belief.
          

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[1] Some statives (of positional verbs) also appear with no prefix (Lillehaugen and Foreman 2013).

Uses of hua- in Levanto's catechism (1732)

I have been trying to understand the prefix hua- in Colonial Valley Zapotec.

Here are some examples from Levanto 1732 showing differences in the syntactic distribution of verbs with the stative n- or imperfective r(i/o)- and the same thing preceded by the pre-aspectual hua-.  In both main clause question and response we see hua- here:

Levanto 1732, f18

But notice in this pair, the question is n-aca while the response is hua-n-aca:

And both are n-aca here:

And both are rapa 'has' in this example:

In the following, hua- is in the main clause while the same verb is without hua- in the relative clause:

Here we have hua-rapa in the affirmative but rapa in the negative:

Tentative hypothesis: Naca is the neutral copula;  hua-naca emphasizes the duration.  (In some cases it might be translated 'is and continues to be').  Similarly rapa is neutral 'have' but huarapa  emphasizes duration.

Early examples of unreal ni- in Colonial Valley Zapotec

The following passage from Feria (1567) shows several probable instances of early uses of the unreal aspect prefix marker ni- in negative and hypothetical situations.

Feria f22v

Progressive aspect as an innovation in Central Zapotec

An updated version of my paper about the evolution of progressive aspect in Central Zapotec languages has just been posted on my page at Academic.edu.

My essential argument is that progressive aspect marking with ca- is innovation in Central Zapotec, and you can still see the early stages of this in Colonial Valley Zapotec.  In the 16th century texts, ca- isn't yet an obligatory marker of progressive (as it is in modern languages in this group).

The Central Zapotec languages include the ones shown in this tree (some branches omitted for visibility), using the classification of Thom Smith Stark (2007):

More "perfect" plus habitual in Colonial Zapotec

The following passage from Feria shows another instance of the so-called "perfect" hua~oa- before the habitual aspect marker <t>.

The semantic function in this case seems to be what the aspect theorists call the 'universal perfect' (See a nice explanation of the different kinds of perfect in this paper by Paul Kiparsky).

'Because very numerous are the sins the devil always teaches us; the are uncountable; the wants to make us sin in the face, the hear, the ear, the mouth...'

The notable thing is the occurence of oa-ti- before the verb 'desire'. Since the devil's desires are eternal, it is presumably appropriate to use the universal perfect here. 

New instances of progressive aspect in Colonial Valley Zapotec

I was very pleased to find some more instances of the progressive aspect marker in Colonial Valley Zapotec texts this morning, since it is not generally known that this morpheme was present in the language at this stage.  Smith Stark (2008), for example, doesn't include any mention of it in an otherwise comprehensive overview of the Colonial Valley Zapotec aspect morphology.

These new examples involve the verb 'do' and 'be sitting'.  It's interesting that with the first verb, the form in the text is

ca-g-oni

where the /g/ looks like a reflex of the potential aspect.  Thom Smith Stark argued in a (2004) paper that the progressive evolved from a construction that involved a verb of position followed by a verb in the potential.

A verb of position as a diachronic source for continuous aspect in Zapotec?

This morning I was reading a bit of


Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins, and William Pagliuca (1994). The Evolution of Grammar. Tense,
Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World, Chicago: The University of Chicago.

where she discusses the evolution of progressive aspect in languages around the world.  In many languages, it originates in some construction that involves a locative expression, either with a verb of position or something like 'be in X'.

This got me to wondering about the Continuous aspect in modern Valley Zapotec languages.   This is not a well-attested aspect in Colonial Valley Zapotec, but I find some examples of incipient grammaticalization, all in the construction 'I say', where the verb nni is used with a preceding ca- prefix that looks very much like the continuous aspect ca- found in modern Valley Zapotec.

A possible connection to a verb of position is the word cáá 'hang, be located (in a high place)'.  The lexical entry for this word in San Dionisio Ocotepec Zapotec in the current draft of my own dictionary looks like the following:

In the Colonial Valley Zapotec examples that I have, only 'I speak' is used with a preceding ca:

It is probably also significant that both of these examples are accompanied by the adverb anna 'now', as would be appropriate for a continous aspect marker.   

But I do want to emphasize that continous aspect marking is incipient in Colonial Valley Zapotec, and I haven't identified any other examples in the texts.  In modern Valley Zapotec languages, you can use continous for a wide range of verbs; in CVZ only the verb 'say' is attested so far.