Inflectional complexity and verb classes in Chichimec

International audienceIn this paper, we show that the verbal inflection of Chichimec displays an interesting degree ofcomplexity. Such complexity is created by the intersection of three different inflectionalsubsystems. One of such systems is the one formed by the inflectional classes of prefixesencoding person of subject and tense/aspect/mood. A second and partially independentsubsystem involves a rich array of stem alternation patterns while a third one involves theinflectional use of tone, which is, for the most part, lexically specified