SDZ is an Otomanguean language spoken in San Dionicio Ocotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico 1 by 2,000 - 3,000 people. Thanks to Pamela Munro and members of the audience at Lexical- Functional Grammar 2003 for comments on this paper. Special thanks to Luisa Martínez, who provided all the SDZ data. An earlier version of this paper was presented at Lexical-Functional Grammar 2003. The orthography for SDZ is adapted from the practical orthographies for other Zapotec languages spoken in the Valley of Oaxaca. In the SDZ orthography symbols have their usual phonetic values, with the following exceptions. <x> = /š/ before a vowel and /ž/ before a consonant, <xh> = /š/, <dx> = /dž/, <ch> = /tš/, <c> = /k/ before back vowels, <qu> = /k/ before front vowels, <rr> = trilled /r/, and <eh> = /e/. Doubled vowels are long. SDZ is a language with four contrastive phonation types: breathy <Vj>, creaky <V’V>, checked <V’>, and plain <V>. Glosses use the following abbreviations: a=animal, aff = affirmative, cer = certainty, com = completive aspect, con = continuative aspect, cs = causative, def = definite future aspect, dem = demonstrative, foc = focus, hab = habitual aspect, neg = negative, p = possessed, plur = plural, pot = potential aspect, q = question, r=respect, ref=reflexive, rel = relative, stat= stative aspect, top=topic. 1 Complex predication and parallel structures in optimality-theoretic syntax George Aaron Broadwell University at Albany, State University of New York 1 Introduction 1 In a number of languages, complex predicates show evidence for two or more distinct constituent structures. For example, McKay’s (1985) treatment of German and Goodall’s (1987) treatment of French and Spanish argue that the behavior of causatives in these languages is best treated by positing two phrase structure representations – one monoclausal and one biclausal. Similarly, Butt’s (1995) treatment of the Urdu instructive and permissive posits two syntactic structures – one in which the permissive/instructive matrix verb and verbal noun form a c- structure V’ constituent, and one in which the verbal noun heads a distinct phrase. This paper will pursue a more general account of parallel syntactic structures and complex predicates. Using Optimality-Theoretic Lexical-Functional Grammar (Bresnan 2000), I will argue that these cases involve predicates where two constituent structures emerge as equally optimal under the relevant constraint evaluation. These structures exist in parallel to each other, recalling Goodall’s (1987) more general approach to parallel structures in syntax. The argument is based on the behavior of auxiliary verbs in San Dionicio Ocotepec Zapotec (SDZ), an Otomanguean language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico. I will show that auxiliary verbs behave under constituency tests as if they are associated with two constituent structures – one monoclausal and one biclausal. 2 Background