Morphosyntax of activation in discourse in Hñöhñö (Tolimán Otomi)

Abstract

This paper explores the association between some noun phrase modifiers and the activation level, which is associated to givenness. This is done by applying statistical tests (χ² and correspondence analyses) to a corpus of 26 texts written in the Hñöhñö language (Tolimán Otomi). The noun phrases in the corpus have been previously labeled according to the determiners they contain and the activation level of their referent in the discourse context. This type of statistical tests has not been applied in similar research either on activation, or on definiteness, in previous works in Otomi languages. While some modifiers do not correlate with activation (e.g., grammatical number markers), other modifiers tend to occur in contexts of particular activation levels. Only the modifier nu (analyzed as a definite marker by some authors) shows a direct association with given referents.