<OM> Defective paradigms

[Scott Berthiaume]

 Dear List members
 
I was wondering if any of you could enlighten me on the subject of
defective paradigms in Otomanguean languages (I'm a complete dilettante).
 
Jamieson (1982: 166)reports that the negative incompletive of the Mazatec
verb 'carry' has only a 1sg form, while the positive incompletive, as well
as other aspects, inflect normally for person-number. (Though Jamieson's
1996 dictionary doesn't mention it.) Pike (1948: 105) describes a set of 20
or so nouns in Huautla de Jiminez Mazatec that take personal suffixes (same
as subject markers on verbs). Two of these ('plaza' and 'outdoors') are
defective, and have only 3rd person and 1st inclusive forms. What's
especially interesting about these examples is that the gaps in the
paradigm don't seem to have any phonological explanation, nor do they
correspond to any morphological alternation found elsewhere in the system.
 
Has anyone out there done any work on the topic of such gaps in Mazatec or
any other Otomanguean language? Or at least observed such gaps? I'd be
grateful for any leads.
 
best
Matthew (of the Surrey Morphology Group, University of Surrey, UK)
 
 
References
Jamieson, Carole Ann. 1982. Conflated Subsystems Marking Person and Aspect
in Chiquihuitlán Mazatec Verbs. International Journal of American
Linguistics 48-2. 139-167.
 
Pike, Kenneth. 1948. Tone Languages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
 
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