Abstract
The tonal paradigm of verbs in Tlatepuzco Chinantec counts as one of the most complex and opaque ever described, with five tone values distributed over twelve cells (distinguishing person/number and aspect) to yield c. 70 distinct paradigm types, with no consistent mapping between morphological form and morphosyntactic function. We suggest that useful generalizations will emerge only when we consider units of analysis larger than the individual inflected form, which we dub inflectional series. For Tlatepuzco Chinantec this means concatenating the three aspectual forms for each person/number value. The resulting units allow us to see structural relationships between the elements of the paradigm which were previously inaccessible.