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Purepecha

Language
Purepecha

Family
Tarascan

Ethnologue

ISO

glottolog_id

Verbs table

gloss layer 1 sg 2 sg 3 sg 1 pl 2 pl 3 pl 1 sg sbjv 2 sg sbjv 3 sg sbjv 1 pl sbjv 2 pl sbjv 3 pl sbjv 1 sg interr 2 sg interr 3 sg interr 1 pl interr 2 pl interr 3 pl interr
sing suffix ka ka ti ka ka ti ki ki ki ki ki ki ka ka ka ka ka ka
sing enclitic ni ri zero kxï ts’ï kxï ni ri zero kxï ts’ï kxï ni ri zero kxï ts’ï kxï
sing lexeme pirikani pirikari piriti pirikakxï pirikats’ï piritikxï pirikini pirikiri piriki pirikikxï pirikits’ï pirikikxï pirikani pirikari pirika pirikakxï pirikats’ï pirikakxï

Purepecha notes

  • The forms shown here are in the unmarked tense. There is a large TAM paradigm that involves affixes intervening between the stem and the subject marking suffixes.
  • The subject-marking enclitic may be attached to the verb (as illustrated here, following Chamoreau's presentation), but may occur in other postions as well. Originally they were 2nd position enclitics, but they are increasingly appearing attached to the predicate, whatever its position in the sentence (Chamoreau 2014: 133), so in a sense they might be seen as incipiant verb suffixes.
  • Object marking enclitics are composed largely of the same elements as the subject marker, but with the values shifted

    subject suffix object enclitic
    1sg ni rini
    2sg ri kini
    3sg Ø Ø
    1pl kxï ts’ïni
    2pl ts’ï kxïni
    3pl kxï kxïni

    Note that in the case of the object enclitics, plurality is assessed over both subject and object; e.g. '1pl' is either a 1st person plural object, or a 1st person singular object with a plural subject.

Orthographic note

  • x represents a fricative /š/.

References

Chamoreau, Claudine. 2014. Enclitics in Purepecha: Variation and split localization. In Jean Léo Leonard & Alain Kihm (eds)Patterns in Mesoamerican morphology, pp. 119-43. Paris: Michel Houdiard.

Chamoreau, Claudine. 2000. Grammaire du Purépecha. (LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics, 34.) München: Lincom.