This lesson is all about possession. Section §14.1 introduces possessed noun phrases, and presents one way to express possessors. Body parts and kinship terms are usually essentially possessed, as explained in section §14.2, and other nouns can also be e-possessed (section §14.3). Possessed nouns can be used as possessors (section §14.4). Section §14.5 explains more about e-possession, and sections §14.6 and §14.7 describe how to refer to an object whose possessor is the subject of the sentence.

Xiëru Zalo Ra Dizh

1. Almost all the new vocabulary words here are e-possessed (essentially possessed forms, abbreviated “e-poss.” — they must be used with a following possessor, as explained in the lesson).

2. Most Zapotec speakers consider zhan “rear end; butt” a fairly crude or vulgar word in most contexts. Cader [cadeer] “hip; bottom, rear end” is a more polite word to use. Until you’re sure how people will react, it’s best to avoid using zhan to refer to a part of the human body. You’ll learn more about how to use words for parts of the body in sentences later in this lesson, and more about using zhan in other ways in Lecsyony Tseinyabchon.

3. Zhiny and mniny are both translated “child”, but they mean different things. Zhiny is an essentially possessed noun (as explained in section §14.2) which expresses an offspring relationship; mniny names a young human being. Just as buny “person” and mniny “child (young human)” are often used to refer to males (“man” and “boy”), zhiny sometimes is used to mean “son”. However, zhinygan is more precise and that is the way we will say “son” in this book.

4. Bied and Tiu are used not only to mean (literally) “aunt” and “uncle”, but as titles before the name of respected elders, and as terms of address to respected people or those one does not know (as discussed in sections S-2 and S-14): Bied Lia Zhuan “Aunt Juana, Señora Juana”, Tiu Pamyël “Uncle Panfilo, Señor Panfilo”.

5. Lo nya and lo zhia “field” (related words; see Lecsyony Tseinyabchon) both include lo, a form of the word “face” which is part of many nouns naming locations.

6. You’ve now learned four Zapotec words spelled bel — the words for “snake”, “fish”, “meat”, and “woman’s sister” — which can be difficult for language learners to tell apart! Because “fish” has a B vowel, it’s probably the easiest to distinguish, but in rapid conversation even that clue is not always easy to pick up. Ask your teacher to say these words and listen to you repeat them as often as you need to make sure you can hear and produce the difference.

7. Cweteix and teix both can be used to refer to the side of the body, but teix has a broader meaning, since it can also be used to refer to the trunk or chest. Some speakers also use cwe [cwe’eh] to refer to the side of the body, but we will not use this word this way in this book. (You’ll learn another meaning for cwe in Lecsyony Tseinyabchon.)

8. The new verb rgap “slaps” works just like rgub “smokes; sucks” (Lecsyony Tsëbteby). The object of this verb is always a part of someone’s body (often the face) — don’t use this verb to say “slaps (someone)”.

§14.1. Possessed nouns and possessors

When you use an English phrase like my head, Gloria’s sister, the man’s bull, your chair, or Pedro’s book, you express POSSESSION, either ownership or a more inherent relationship. In these expressions, or POSSESSED NOUN PHRASES, sister, head, bull, chair, and book are POSSESSED NOUNS, and I, Elena, the man, you, and Pedro are POSSESSORS.

In English, we know that a noun or pronoun is a possessor by a change in its form: I changes to my, you changes to your, and ‘s is added to the end of possessors like Gloria and the man. In Zapotec, there are several ways to indicate the relationship between a noun and its possessor, but the possessor never changes its form. The possessed noun always comes at the beginning of a Zapotec possessed noun phrase, and the possessor always comes at the end. The simplest way to express OPTIONAL POSSESSION is to put the word xten [x:tèe’n] between the possessed noun and the possessor:

Optional possession is used to show that someone owns an item or animal that you might think of as possessed or you might not. If you see a bull or a book, it’s probably the case that someone owns it, but not necessarily: we can mention the owner, or not, as we choose. In this optional possession pattern, xten comes after the possessed noun, before the possessor. If the possessor is a pronoun, you use the same bound pronouns that you use for subjects. (Because xten has a KC vowel pattern, its pronunciation does not change when bound pronouns are added.) When these pronouns are used as possessors, their English translation changes: -a means “my”, not “I”, in the possessed noun phrase camyuny xtena, and so on.

There is another optional possession pattern, using xte [x:tèe’] instead of xten. This pattern is only used when the possessor is a noun phrase (a noun, with or without a modifier, or a name, but not a pronoun).

There is no difference in meaning between these two patterns. Xte and xten can only be used with optionally possessed items, however, never with members of the family, parts of the body, or certain other items that Zapotec speakers always think of as essentially possessed.

You’ve learned the words xte and xten as “of” in earlier lessons, and this is often a good translation of these words. As you can see, however, xten and xte are used in many phrases where “of” could not be used in English (we wouldn’t say <the chair of me> for example!).

Possessed noun phrases can be used anywhere in a sentence that you could use an ordinary noun phrase, either as subjects or objects.

§14.2. Essential possession

In Zapotec, it really doesn’t make sense to think of a concept like “sister” or “head” without remembering that a sister or a head must be possessed by someone. Although possession is optional with nouns like “bull” or “book”, with possessed nouns like “sister” and “head”, we have ESSENTIAL POSSESSION. Most nouns that are essentially possessed are kinship terms like “sister” (they express a family relationship with the possessor) or body parts like “head” (they name a part of the possessor, which you can also think of as showing a relationship). Below are some essentially possessed Zapotec nouns. First, some kinship terms:

And next, some body part words:

(There are also some other essentially possessed nouns, like zudy [zu’ùu’dy] “corte (traditional Zapotec woman’s wrap-around skirt)”, which are not kinship terms or body parts. You’ll learn a few more of these later in this lesson. As noted earlier in the lesson, zhan is a word that you need to know the meaning of, but which you probably shouldn’t use in conversation till you’re a fluent speaker.)

When you use one of these nouns in a sentence, you must mention its possessor, because these nouns are essentially possessed (we call them E-POSSESSED NOUNS, with e-possessed abbreviated as “e-poss.”). Xte and xten are never used with e-possessed nouns. Here’s the pattern used for essential possession:

E-possessed nouns have to be used with a possessor. In a possessed noun phrase with an e-possessed noun, the possessor comes right after the e-possessed noun, as shown above. Possessors may be noun phrases, like Lia Glory or buny, or bound pronouns, like –a. (If the e-possessed noun is a phrase consisting of two words, the possessor goes after the second word.)

Zapotec speakers often do not even like to say e-possessed nouns without mentioning a possessor. If you ask a speaker how to say an e-possessed word like “stomach”, he or she may say lany buny “a person’s stomach”, to avoid saying the word by itself. Thus, if you use a word like lany without a possessor, you probably won’t be speaking good Zapotec.

E-possessed nouns often change their pronunciation with following bound pronouns beginning with vowels, in just the same ways that verbs do. Always use the combination form of a word before a following bound pronoun (except for a formal pronoun), just as you learned in Lecsyony Tseiny (13). Some words have other changes, just like those that verbs do. For example, guecya “my head” is pronounced [gue’ecya’].

The first three e-possessed nouns in the list above are the Zapotec words for brothers and sisters. As you can see, there is one term, bzyan, which is used for opposite-sex siblings (brothers of females or sisters of males), as in the following examples:

When referring to a sibling of the same sex as the possessor, use bel for the sister of a female and bets for the brother of a male: thus, bela is how a woman says “my sister” and betsa is how a man says “my brother”. Bel is not used with male possessors, and bets is not used with female possessors.

Here are some more examples:

Now, here are some e-possessed nouns that end with vowels:

This list includes some nouns, like la and rse, which are neither body parts nor kin terms. Names and voices (or their echoes) are things that are normally associated with possessors, however, so they are e-possessed too.

When you use a pronoun beginning with a vowel after a vowel-final e-possessed noun, the same changes occur that happen with vowel-final verb stems (as described in Lecsyony Tseiny (13)). Ni, rse, ru, and zhi are CB stems, so bound pronouns beginning with vowels are added in a separate syllable. With pronouns consisting of a single vowel, you write an extra vowel at the end of the vowel-final stem, even when that would mean two of the same vowel in a row. As “the echo of my voice” shows, the e at the end of rse becomes an i before the pronoun –a.

Bzilo, la, lo, and na are not CB stems, so their pronunciation with an added bound pronoun beginning with a vowel changes in the same sorts of ways that non-CB verb stems does, as these examples show:

Make sure you can pronounce the difference between “your name” and “your face”, which are spelled the same but pronounced differently! These words show that both final a and o result in final oo when informal –u is added to them. Remember, too, that when –a is added to a stem that ends in o, that o will turn into u, as happens in bzilua. As “his hand” illustrates, when the bound pronouns –ëng, -ëb, -ëm, -ën, and –ad follow a vowel-final stem, they form a separate syllable. However, these separate pronoun syllables are sometimes hard to hear, so words like naëng may sound more like <nang> to you.

Naa [nnaàa’] “my hand” is pronounced with a PKC vowel pattern, just like almost all other “I”/”my” forms of non-CB stems. The ordinary word for “hand”, na [nnaàa’], is pronounced the same way, but spelled differently, because it does not include the bound pronoun -a. Listen to your teacher compare the following underlined words. Do they sound the same?

The e-possessed nouns in this section always have a possessor. In the Ra Dizh they are listed as “e-poss. only”, meaning that they cannot be used without mentioning their possessor.

You’ve probably noticed that the g’s at the beginning of guan and guet are replaced by c and qu in the e-possessed forms xcuan and xquet, the b at the beginning of bai is replaced by p in the e-possessed form xpai, and the d at the beginning of dibuj is replaced by t in the e-possessed form xtibuj. This is a regular process. Normally, g becomes c (or qu before i, e, or ë), b becomes p, and d becomes t after the x- prefix. (Once in a while these changes do not occur. The entries in the Rata Ra Dizh at the end of this book will let you know. If you don’t see any special information about possessed forms in the Rata Ra Dizh, then you’ll know that a formation is regular.)

The e-possessed forms of nouns like rrady, rrelo, and rrued are listed in the Rata Ra Dizh.