Diegueño (Yuman)

The vowel alternation between singular and plural verb forms displays polarity.

1 Background

Verbs display an alternation of singular and plural stems, employing a number of morphological means (affixation and ablaut). Langdon (1970) distinguishes eight verb classes, with the following characteristics:

	plural formation
0	suppletive
I	invariant
II	p- prefix
III	n- prefix
IV	-p suffix
V	-u:- infix + suffix -p
VI	(no lexically specified affix)
VII	-c- infix (occurs with other types as well)

In addition, there are three other plural-forming devices whose distribution cross cuts that of verb classes II, IV-VII:

The suffix -c is regular after forms ending in a vowel, and common for those ending in a voiced consonant.
Quantitative ablaut of root vowel (lengthening or shortening) is widely found.
Qualitative ablaut of root vowel (alternation of aw ~ uw) is widely found.

It is the two types of ablaut that are of interest.

2 Deponency in Diegueño

Diegueño displays polarity in its ablaut system: quantitative and qualitative ablaut can work in either direction.

Quantitative ablaut:

	lengthening			shortening
	singular	plural		singular	plural
II	-man	pǝ-ma:n	'fly'	xǝma:	pǝ-xǝma-c	'sleep'
IV	u:say	u:sa:y-p	'laugh'	-wi:	-wi-p	'do'
V	acǝpay	ac<u:>pa:y‑p	'believe'	xǝcu:ṛ	x<u:>cuṛ-p	'be cold'
VI	-cac	-ca:c	'spread out'	wa:w	waw-c	'holler'
	-yix	-yi:x	'carry on one’s back'	-si:	-si-c	'drink'
	-xuy	-xu:y-c	'smoke out'
VII	-cap	-cə<c>a:p	'get through eating or drinking'	cək^wa:	cə<cə>k^wa:c	'put down a bunch of long things'

(Langdon 1970: 113-120)

Qualitative ablaut (combined with quantitative ablaut in some instances):

	aw → uw			uw → aw
	singular	plural		singular	plural
VI	-sa:w	-suw	'eat'	-nuw	-na:w	'run'

(Langdon 1970: 118)

All singular ~ plural vowel alternations are of this type, i.e. there is no uniquely singular or plural pattern.

Miller (2001: 105) notes that for the closely related language Jamul Tiipay, quantitative ablaut occurs in 136 of the verb stems in her sample (72% of the total) . Of these, only seven stems show shortening. (Qualitative ablaut does not occur.)

References

Langdon, Margaret. 1970. A grammar of Diegueño: the Mesa Grande dialect. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Miller, Amy. 2001. A grammar of Jamul Tiipay. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.