| Summary: | This paper describes the system of adpositions of úza̠ʼ or Chichimeco (Otopame, Otomangue) made up of a single element, the bound morpheme βa. It is shown that, according to its morphophonological properties, the morpheme βa can be realized as an affix or a clitic. Considering its syntactic properties, a functional overlap with applicativization is identified, since this morpheme is also used to promote peripheral participants to central participants. Semantically, the morpheme βa is related to the notions of instrument, location, change of route, quantification and referentiality. As for the development of the adpositional functions of this morpheme, the study argues that the grammatical nature of this adposition is directly related to the system of locative adverbs, relational nouns as well as locative, dispositional and motion verbs.
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