Omission of proclitic tense-aspect-mood and person in Mazahua

• Main Author: Armando Mora-Bustos
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidad del Valle 2018-07-01
• Series: Lenguaje
• Subjects: morphology; tense-aspect-mood; person; zero morpheme; grammatical contexts; morphosyntactic structure; information structure; Mazahua
• Online Access: http://revistas.univalle.edu.co/index.php/lenguaje/article/view/6580/9635

In Mazahua, a language from the Otomanguean language family of Mexico, the proclitic encoding tense-aspect-modd (TAM) and person becomes a zero morpheme. This zero Morpheme appears indexed in the verb word of different grammatical sentences. The grammatical contexts where the proclitic TAM and person is performed as a zero morpheme are: third person, perfect time-aspect; this aspectual sense is emphasized by punctual clitic aspects. Likewise, the zero morpheme appears with verbs where the first segment of the verbal radical is nasalized or palatalized. From a pragmatic perspective, the references to the grammatical subject and TAM features are recovered in the discursive context. The subject, a grammatical relation, is encoded in different linguisticresources such as nominal phrases and clitics (pronominal, demonstrative and plural). The meaning of zero grammatical morphemes is related to the structure of the information. The reference encoded by a proclitic corresponds to the topical information status.