Structure of Chatino

The Chatino languages (Otomanguean; Oaxaca, Mexico) are notable for having extremely rich tonal systems with productive sandhi and diverse floating tone phenomena. These VSO languages are fusional and feature much non-concatenative inflectional morphology.

Topics to be covered in this course include: the diversity of tonal systems within the family, including the dynamic behavior of the tones of the languages, the inflection of its verbs through two largely independent layers of morphology, the use of possessed emotional centers to express psychological predicates, and problems in the classification of very closely related but very distinct language varieties. Course materials will include readings and online resources such as the GORILLA corpus of San Juan Quiahije Chatino.