_{Fot Teiby xte Lecsyony Tseinyabchon. Tyop buny cagwi lo ra budy.}

Xiëru Zalo Ra Dizh

1. There are several pairs of words on the list of Ra Dizh that are spelled the same. The two ru’s are pronounced the same, but one is a verb and one isn’t, as you’ll learn later in the lesson (these two words are probably related, and connected with the noun ru “mouth”). A more confusing pair of verbs is rzub [rzùub] and rzub [rzùu’b], and the related locational verbs zub [zùub] “is sitting” and zub [zu’ùu’b] “has been placed”. Make sure you can hear the difference in pronunciation betweeen zub [zùub] and zub [zu’ùu’b]. The use of these verbs is described in sections §18.1.1 and §18.1.3. (And consider the comparative note at the end of this lesson, as well.)

2. The words zha [zh:àa’] and zhan [zh:ààa’n] both mean both “under” (as discussed in the lesson) and “buttocks” or “rear end”. In this sense these may be considered to be impolite words by many speakers, as discussed in Lecsyony Tsëda.

3. The perfective of ru, gu, uses the same special spelling rule as rgu “puts down” (Lecsyony Tseiny (15)). You need to add a hyphen before endings beginning with i or ë, as with gu-i “he (dist.) was inside”, gu-ëng “he (prox.) was inside”, and so on.

§18.1. Locational verbs

§18.1.1. Talking about the location of people and animals. Here are some examples of some sentences using locational verbs to talk about where people and animals are located:

Locational sentences have three parts: a locational verb, a subject, and a LOCATION PHRASE.

A location question like Cali natga becw? begins with cali “where” followed by a locational verb — in this question, cali is like a location phrase. (Cuan “where is” is not used with locational verbs.)

Below is a list of locational verbs. You’ll learn more about these verbs later in the lesson.

Locational verbs are used to tell the location of something and, very often, to tell its position or orientation. Almost all of them can be translated simply as “is” or “is located” — thus, if someone announced where he was by saying Zugwaa re “I am here”, the fact that he was standing might be apparent to everyone, and you might not consider it to be an important part of the message communicated. (Zua re could be used similarly. Zugwa and zu have very similar meanings, and speakers have trouble explaining any difference between them.) As with habitual and progressive verbs, locational verbs don’t have to refer to the present, but can be used in some cases to refer to other times (though we will generally use present translations for them in this book).

Ricy, re [rèe’] “here”, and re [rèe] “there” are examples of location phrases — these express the location of a subject (or, as you’ll see later, of an action). You’ll learn more about these and other types of location phrases later in this lesson.

Although you would probably expect the “you (sg.)” form of zugwa to be <zugwoo>, the correct form is actually zugoo [zugòo’-òo’]. The w disappears when the final vowel a turns to o (following the regular rule you learned in Lecsyony Tseiny (13)).

§18.1.2. Talking about the location of inanimate items with zu and natga. You may wonder which locational verb when talking about inanimate (non-living) items like boxes or books. While it is clear whether a man or a dog is lying down or standing, how do you know when a book is lying or standing?

If the inanimate item is tall and thin, like an upright bottle, then you should think of it as “standing” and use the verb zu to give its location. Talking about the bottles on the table in Fot Tyop below, you could say

Just as with people and animals, you don’t always have to express the reference to an item’s position in your English translation. Although the locational verb zu means “are standing” and the sentence could be translated “The bottles are standing there”, it’s fine to think of zu as the equivalent of English “are” in this sentence.

_{Fot Tyop xte Lecsyony Tseinyabchon. A restaurant at the Zocalo in Oaxaca City.**}

If the inanimate item is long and thin (like a stick on the ground) or flat (like a blanket), then you should think of it as “lying” and use the verb natga to give its location. You should also think of inanimate items that are compact and round (like a ball) or squarish (like a box) as “lying”, and use natga with them too. For example, we can use natga to talk about the limes in Fot Chon:

_{Fot Chon xte Lecsyony Tseinyabchon. Limes for sale at the market in Tlacolula.}

In English we’re not always too specific about specifying position, but this is usually more important in Zapotec. Here are two ways to say “The book is here”:

_{Fot Tap cuan Fot Gai xte Lecsyony Tseinyabchon. A book in two positions.}

The first sentence could be used to refer to Fot Tap above, where the book is standing upright. The second could be used to refer to Fot Gai in which the book is lying flat.

Listen to Zapotec speakers, and pay attention to what locational verbs they use! When you do this, you’ll learn some surprising things about how to express location. For one thing, the “sitting” verbs zub [zùub] and zubga are only used to talk about the position of people and animals, never to talk about the position of inanimate items (other than, perhaps, dolls or stuffed animals!). (The locational verb zub [zu’ùu’b] “is placed” can be used with inanimate subjects, as described in section §18.1.3.)

There are two ways, then, to ask about the location of something. You can use the special “where is” question word cuan, or you can use cali with a locational verb:

There is not a great difference between the two — but if you use cali, you have to make sure the locational verb you choose is appropriate. (See what your teacher thinks!)

The locational verb beb is used to refer to the location of an inanimate item on a raised, flat surface (such as a table, for example). Beb is only used with inanimate subjects that are not permanently in position (for example, it’s not used about houses) and that don’t have obvious ways of moving (like feet or wheels).

(Consider Fot Gai above. Can you think of another way to describe where the book is, now? Speakers may prefer to use beb over a locational verb referring to a specific position if both are possible.)

There are two different verbs written as zub, although these are pronounced differently. The first one is zub [zùub] “is sitting”, which, as we’ve seen, is only used about people and animals. The second, zub [zu’ùu’b] “is (placed on a flat, elevated surface)” can only be used about inanimate items. As you can see, only one of these two verbs (at most) could be appropriate in any given situation. (Make sure you can pronounce the difference between these two verbs!)

The difference between zub “is placed” and beb is that with zub “is placed” you know that the item has been put in its position by somebody. (With this in mind, can you think of a third way to describe Fot Gai?)

§18.1.4. Choosing a locational verb: a summary. Talking about where things are located in Zapotec is very different from in English! The chart below will help you choose the appropriate verb for doing Tarea Chon below.

There are many other things you’ll learn about the use of locational verbs as you listen to speakers using Zapotec. In particular, listen to how speakers use the verb nu. You’ll probably find that speakers can use this verb in additional cases!

§18.2. Forms of locational verbs

Locational verbs are examples of a special type of Zapotec verb stem called the neutral (they are not the only neutral verbs — you already know the neutral verbs ca “has, is holding” and na “said”, and you’ll learn others in later lessons). Neutral verbs usually express a state of being, such as the fact that something is in a certain position in a location. (Na is an exception here, since it expresses an act of saying.)

Here are the habitual stems that correspond to the new locational verbs:

Like other habitual stems, these verbs are used to describe events that happen habitually or customarily. They are used much less often than the corresponding neutral stems.

As you can see, the neutral verbs natga and nu are formed by dropping the r of the habitual stems ratga and ru and adding an n prefix — but the other verbs are formed by dropping the r- habitual prefix. (As you can see, many location verb bases start with z.)

Vowel-initial bases and a few others have an n- neutral prefix, but many neutral stems have no prefix. This means that for many verbs the neutral form is the same as the base of the verb, but sometimes there is a change in the vowel pattern (compare the difference between the KC vowel pattern of rzub “gets placed” with the CKC pattern of zub “is placed”, or the B pattern of rzu and the PP pattern of zu, for example). Make sure you can pronounce all of the new verbs in both the neutral and the habitual forms, and that you can identify these when your teacher says them.

The perfective stem of ru is gu [gu’uh], and the perfective stem of ratga is guatga [gùa’tga’ah]. The perfective stem of rbeb is wbeb [wbèe’b], following the regular rule for verbs whose bases start with b. The perfective stems of the new verbs whose bases (and neutral forms) start with z use the regular perfective prefix b.

The irrealis stem of ru is chu [chu’uh], the irrealis stem of ratga is gatga [gàa’tga’ah], and the irrealis stem of rbeb is cweb [cwèe’b].

The irrealis stems of the locational verbs that start with z are formed by changing the z at the beginning of these verbs to s:

Most locational verbs do not have progressive stems. Here are two that do:

Usually, however, progressive ideas are expressed with neutral forms of locational verbs.

You may have noticed that the new verb rbeb is the same as the verb you learned earlier meaning “rides”. In this meaning, rbeb is not a locational verb. The progressive stem for rbeb refers only to the “riding” meaning:

§18.3. Prepositions

Look at the pairs of sentences below. The second sentence in each pair contains an added phrase that adds information to the first sentence.

These added phrases begin with PREPOSITIONS. You’ve known the preposition cuan for some time, of course, though we have not used that label for this word up to now. Prepositions like cuan, par [pahr] and trasde [tráhsdeh] help us to understand how noun phrases and names like Bed, xnan Lia Glory, and gyag re are related to the event that the sentence is talking about. These noun phrases are neither the subject nor the object of the sentences that include them. Rather, they and the preposition tell us something more about the event — who else was involved, who something was done for, or where something took place, for example. (English has prepositions too, including with, for, behind, and many others, including some longer phrases such as on top of or in back of.)

Noun phrases or names form prepositional phrases with the prepositions that they follow:

A prepositional phrase consists of a preposition plus a following noun phrase, which is called the PREPOSITIONAL OBJECT or the object of the preposition — thus, for example, Bed is a prepositional object in cuan Bed, and we could say that Bed was the object of cuan.

Zapotec has two types of prepositions. Most SPANISH PREPOSITIONS, including cuan, par, trasde, and a number of others, were borrowed from Spanish. Objects of Spanish prepositions can be expressed with free pronouns:

Here’s the pattern that these phrases use:

§18.4. Location phrases with prepositions

Native prepositions. Trasde gyag re is a location phrase in the sentence

Trasde gyag re uses the Spanish preposition trasde. But most Zapotec location phrases use NATIVE PREPOSITIONS, not Spanish prepositions. Native prepositions are almost all original Zapotec words, not words borrowed from Spanish. One native preposition that you already know is xten. Most native prepositions are used in expressing location, as in the following examples:

These sentences use the native prepositions dets [dehts] “behind”, lo [loh] “on” and “in front of”, ni [ni’ih] “under”, ru [ru’uh] “on the edge of”, guecy [gue’ehcy] “above”, and lany [làa’any] “in”. (There are thus two words for “behind” or “in back of”, trasde and dets. Because dets is the native preposition, many people may consider it more correct. But most speakers use both of these words!)

Most of these words are familiar to you already. These native prepositions can also be used as nouns naming parts of the body: dets “back”, lo “face”, ni “foot”, ru “mouth”, guecy “head”, and lany “stomach”. Valley Zapotec speakers instinctively know whether one of these words is used to name a body part or as a preposition telling how the following prepositional object is related to the rest of the sentence. Probably it will also be very clear to you whether one of these words is used as a preposition or an e-possessed noun in any given sentence.

There are a few other native prepositions that you need to learn. Cwe [cwe’eh] means “beside” or “next to”. (This word is related to a word for “side” (of a body or something else) that some but not all speakers feel is correct; we will not use cwe to mean “side” in this book.) Two other words for “under” are zha [zh:àa’] and zhan [zh:ààa’n], both of which also mean “buttocks” or “rear end” (and, as noted in the Ra Dizh, are considered to be rather impolite words in this sense by many speakers).

The native prepositions often may be translated with several different English prepositions; for example, guecy may often mean “on” or “at the very top of” rather than “above”, ni can mean “at the foot (or base) of”, and lo means both “on” and “in front of”. Speakers also vary in how they use the prepositions: for example, some speakers use lany to mean “under” in certain situations, though in this book we will use only ni, zha, or zhan to mean “under”. Sometimes the preposition a Zapotec speaker chooses may make sense, though it might not be the one you would use in English, as in

In English, we say “on” here, but in fact, if you think about it, “in” makes more sense! (There is no preposition before San Diegw. You can use a place name destination with a form of ria “goes” without a word meaning “to”. You’ll learn more about using place names without prepositions sentences in Lecsyony Galy.)

Here are some examples with focused location phrases:

The most common position for location phrases is before the verb, especially when answering a “where?” question. This pattern doesn’t involve as much emphasis as an English sentence like Pedro is sitting behind the girl, so the prepositional phrase is not underlined in the translations. Notice that when you focus a location phrase you must include the preposition, and put the whole location phrase (for example, dets zhyap or lany muly) at the beginning of the sentence. (In English we can say things like The basket is what the money is in, with the preposition at the end of the sentence. This is not possible in Valley Zapotec. There is always a prepositional object next to a Valley Zapotec preposition, and a Valley Zapotec sentence can’t end with a preposition without something following it.)

Now, here’s another type of location sentence you may hear:

Putting a before a focused subject of a locational sentence can express two meanings. Often this type of sentence corresponds to ordinary focus, and might be used to answer a “where?” question. Sometimes, though, these a sentences are more like English “there” sentences. Listen to how Zapotec speakers use a in location sentences, and you’ll learn more about this.

(Ria mach lo is used with a subject who’s a young man and an object who’s a young woman.)

With the other new verb phrases, you can add whatever extra object makes sense in the sentence:

Try making up a new sentence illustrating the use of rnab lo!

Once again, lo plus the following object forms a prepositional phrase. So if you want to focus that item, you need to focus the whole prepositional phrase, including lo, as in the last example above.