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Belmar (1902) contains a word list of Teojomulco Chatino forms which is the only extant data from this language. I show that Teojomulco Chatino is the most divergent Chatino language, a sister to the most recent reconstructions of Proto-Chatino (Campbell 2013), and that it has traits not found elsewhere in Chatino, including Zapotec-like stem-initial prominence, nasalization of penultimate vowels, and a unique analogue of the Proto-Zapotecan *kwe= proclitic. Lexical evidence suggests that Teojomulco Chatino has undergone significant contact with Zapotec languages. Based on this data, I propose a revised picture of the historical development of the Chatino branch of the Zapotecan languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applicative and registration constructions (Norman 1978, Aissen 1990, and Zavala 2000) have very similar forms and discourse functions. Registration constructions index- or cross-reference- an extra-thematic (i.e., non-core, non-term, peripheral) participant on the verb under certain discourse conditions, namely, extraction, focalization, or discourse continuity of said extra-thematic participant. They sometimes change the semantic role of the extra-thematic participant in the clause. Unlike applicatives, registration constructions do not promote the indexed participant, as it does not acquire Object morphosyntactic properties. Promotion is a core property of applicative constructions. Therefore, registration constructions have been neglected in typological accounts of applicatives, as they fail to promote the phrases they refer to. Closer inspection of the discourse functions of registration, like the one presented in this paper with data from Otomi (Otomanguean, Otopamean), suggests the existence of a larger family of constructions containing both applicative constructions and registration constructions. This would allow a wider, more comprehensive view of both phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic account of the tone system of Peñoles Mixtec (PM). While /H/ and /L/ tones are unambiguously needed in underlying representations, we argue that the third tone is not /M/ but must rather be underspecified as /Ø/. Perhaps the most interesting of the several arguments presented is that strings of /Ø/ tone-bearing units are invisible to a process which deletes the second /L/ of a /L-Ø*-L/ sequence. We propose that all /L/ tones are underlying floating and that /L/ rather than /H/ is the marked tone in this three-value system. The surface mid and low-falling pitches in outputs are shown to derive by a small number of realizational rules, which also are responsible for producing successively upstepped H tones. The PM tone system is unusually interesting both from a general tonological perspective as well as for its relation to Dürr's (1987) Proto-Mixtec tones which have the inverted values in PM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes middle voice expressions in Pima Bajo, a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in northwest Mexico. The analysis shows that the reflexives and middies differ in that in the latter there is no coreferential relation among the participants. It also shows that middles differ from reflexives in the semantic role of the subject participant: agent in reflexives and executor or patient in middles. Pragmatic factors condition the semantic role of executor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]