Tag: inflectional clases

Zoochina Zapotec (Zapotecan, Oto-Manguean) has two independent but crisscrossing systems of verbal classification. One is an affixal system and it involves the selection of different sets of prefixal inflections for the incompletive, completive and irrealis. This allomorphy results into four inflectional classes. The other system involves two stem alternation patterns for the irrealis. Affixal classes I and II interact with the stem classes in interesting ways, resulting into four mixed classes. The inflectional system I describe for Zoochina Zapotec is very innovative with regard to other Zapotec languages.