Derivational resources in P’urhepecha: Morphological complexity and verb formation

Abstract

This article explores the derivational morphology of P’urhepecha, especially with regard to verbal forms. P’urhepecha, or Tarascan, is an isolated Mesoamerican Ianguage of Central-Western Mexico, with about 200,000 speakers. An agglutinative type of language where suffixes are attached to the stem in a fairly regular fashion, P’urhepecha also has an extensive inflectional morphology with a system of cases, including genitive, locative, and residential. The present work presents an overall picture of the linguistic complexity of this intriguing language and its rich morphological resources through a review of some of the most common and productive types of derivational morphemes that occur as part of the verbal complex in P’urhepecha, including body-part suffixes, causatives, deictic suffixes, and other adverbial suffixes.