The historical dialectology of stative morphology in Zapotecan

Abstract

Abstract This paper updates the reconstruction of the stative aspect prefix in Proto-Zapotecan as *n- and tracks innovations in stative marking. An early change is proposed to have deleted preconsonantal nasals, rendering segmentally unmarked stative forms of consonant-initial verbs in varieties of Zapotec then spoken in and around the city of Monte Albán. Contact with Chatino may be a factor in the retention of preconsonantal *n in Zapotec varieties spoken to the south. A fuller stative prefix, usually *na-, arose later from a grammaticalized form of the stative-marked copula (Munro 2007; Uchihara 2021). *na- is more productive than *n- and provides the basis for a new proposed “Eastern Zapotec” genetic grouping. However, the isogloss for *na- crosscuts the earlier isogloss for preconsonantal nasal deletion, showing that any model of Zapotecan linguistic history needs to address not only divergence but also convergence. Ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence provide a social context to the linguistic changes discussed.