Inflectional class shifts in the Mazatec diasystem: Innovation, contact and metatypes

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims at broadening the interdisciplinary field of linguistic typology and dialectology, through diasystemic ecology, from the standpoint of inflectional morphology. Mazatec inflectional classes and intricate patterns of paradigm diversification are scrutinized through a survey of dialect taxonomies and an overall model describing main parameters, such as subconflation, inflectional class shifts and metatypes. This approach provides as efficient a grid to observe dialect divergence and convergence as traditional isoglosses, especially considering the high degree of regularity and systematicity of inflectional class processes in the Mazatec dialect network.