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Part of
The Perfect Volume: Papers on the perfect
Edited by Kristin Melum Eide and Marc Fryd
[Studies in Language Companion Series 217] 2021
► pp. 163–178

Chapter 7
The diachrony of the perfect in Zapotec

| University of Florida

Colonial Valley Zapotec (CVZ) is the form of Zapotec spoken in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Spanish colonial period (ca 1550–1810 C.E.). CVZ is known to us from written documents only. CVZ had a distinct perfect morpheme, which has largely disappeared in modern Zapotec languages. This chapter surveys descriptions of the perfect in colonial grammars, as well as corpus evidence to describe the range of uses of perfect morphology. It contrasts the colonial system with the aspectual system of modern Zapotec to trace the diachronic development of aspectual morphology in these languages.

Keywords: Zapotec, historical, overlap, evaluative, progressive
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Modern Zapotec languages and Colonial Valley Zapotec
    • 1.2Zapotec verb morphology
    • 1.3Aspect systems in modern Central Zapotec
      • 1.3.1Guevea de Humboldt Zapotec
    • 1.4The aspect system of Isthmus Zapotec
  • 2.The aspectual system of Colonial Valley Zapotec
  • 3.The wa- morpheme in Colonial Valley Zapotec
    • 3.1Two colonial grammars: Cordova (1578) and Levanto (1732)
    • 3.2Cordova’s description
    • 3.3Perfects in Levanto (1732)
    • 3.4Textual evidence
      • 3.4.1Evaluative or evidential
      • 3.4.2Durative
      • 3.4.3Perfect senses
  • 4.Historical development and semantic shift of wa–
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 9 July 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.217.07bro
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