This lesson presents the verb runy “does”, which has a vowel-initial base (section §12.1). Section §12.2 presents more “this” and “that” pairs spelled the same but pronounced differently. Sections §12.3 and §12.4 review the use of bound pronouns on consonant-final stems and introduce vowel-final stems. Sections §12.5–12.7 cover the use of complex verbs, some of which use runy, and many of which include borrowed Spanish verbs. Compound verbs are discussed in section §12.8.

_{Fot Teiby xte Lecsyony Tsëbtyop. Buny Dizhsa cacwa guet.}

Xiëru Zalo Ra Dizh

1. This lesson introduces two very important Zapotec verbs that are used in many ways you might not expect, runy “does” and rcwa “writes” or “throws”.

2. Verb stems that end in vowels are called VOWEL-FINAL stems. There are two of these stems in the Ra Dizh, runybe and rcwa. You’ll learn more about using these stems with pronoun endings in Lecsyony Tseiny (13). For now, use them only with formal, name, or noun phrase subjects, or in imperatives (section §12.4).

3. Runybe is a special verb that includes runy “does” in its stem – its perfective, irrealis, and progressive stems should remind you of runy (section §12.1).

4. The liebr that accompanies this book contains recordings of nde “this one”, nde “that one”, nden “this one”, nden “than one”, re “here”, re “there”, ren “that; there”, and ren “this; here” (section §12.2). You should listen to these pairs carefully until you can learn to easily tell – and say! – the difference.

5. Chicy and chiru are similar words with similar definitions. Chicy is more often used to locate something you’re talking about in time (“at that time”), while chiru may more commonly be used to tell about one event happening after another in a sequence (“and then”). Different speakers may use these words differently!

§12.1. The verb runy “does”: a vowel-initial verb base

Runy [ruhny] means “does”. It can also express “performs” or “builds (something).”

Listen as your teacher goes over the pronunciation of runy with pronoun endings. Rienyën “we do” [rie’nyëhnn] has an unexpected change in both spelling and pronunciation, and the pronunciation of runya “I do” [ru’unya’], runyu “you do” [rùu’nyùu’], and runyad “you guys do” [ru’unyahd] must be learned.

Runy is the first Zapotec verb you’ve learned whose base — uny — starts with a vowel (we’ll call these VOWEL-INITIAL bases). These bases work differently from the verb bases you’ve learned up till now, all of which have started with consonants.

The progressive stem cayuny [cayuhny] begins with cay-, not ca-. Cay– is the usual progressive prefix for vowel-initial bases. Here are the forms of this verb that change their pronunciation with pronoun endings: cayunya [cayu’unya’] “I am doing”, cayunyu [cayùu’nyùu’] “you are doing”, cayienyën [cayie’nyëhnn] “we are doing”, cayunyad [cayu’unyad] “you guys are doing”.

The irrealis stem guny [guuny] begins with g-, not y-. G– and gy– are the usual irrealis prefixes for vowel-initial bases. The forms of this verb that change their pronunciation with pronoun endings are gunya [gu’unya’] “I will do”, gunyu [gùu’nyùu’] “you will do”, gunyëng [gùu’nyëng] “he will do”, gyienyën [cayie’nyëhnn] “we will do”, gunyad [gu’unyad] “you guys will do”.

Perfective stems of vowel-initial bases usually start either with b or with gw or gu. The perfective stem of runy is beiny [bèèi’ny] has a change of its vowel from u to ei. Beiny uses its combination form [bèi’ny] before most endings, but “we did” is bienyën [bie’nyëhnn].

You’ll learn more about other vowel-initial bases in Lecsyony Tseinyabteby.

§12.2. More “this” and “that” pairs

In Lecsyony Gai, you learned about re [rèe’] “this”  and re [rèe] “that”, which are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Valley Zapotec has several other pairs of “this” and “that” words that are similar.

Ren [re’nn] and ren [rèenn] are another pair of words that mean “this” and “that” that are used just the same as re and re. Like the re words you learned in Lecsyony Gai, these can be used following a noun to form a noun phrase used in an emphatic or contrastive way.

Listen to your teacher and try pronouncing the two new words. Does ren [rèenn] “that” (with a KP sound pattern) sound longer to you than ren [re’nn] “this” (with a C one)? This may help you remember that ren “that” identifies a noun that is a longer distance away from you than a noun identified with ren “this” (similarly to re [rèe] “that” and re [rèe’] “this”).

Like re phrases, ren phrases are usually focused when they occur in simple sentences:

These two ren words, as well as the re “this” and re “that” words you learned earlier, can also be used to refer to location. Thus, the two words that mean “this” (re [rèe’] and ren [re’nn]) can mean “here”, and the two words that mean “that” (re [rèe] and ren [rèenn]) can mean “there”, in sentences like

Like “this” and “that”, “here” and “there” words are also usually focused.

One place where re and ren phrases may occur after the verb is when another phrase in the sentence is focused. For example, noun phrases containing numbers are usually focused, so when one of them is in the sentence, a “this” or “that” phrase may come after the verb:

(Only one noun phrase can be focused in a sentence.)

Another new pair of “this” and “that” words is nde “this one” [ndèe’] and nde “that one” [ndèe]. If it’s helpful to you, you can use the same trick to tell the difference between these words, since nde [ndèe] “that one” may sound longer to you than nde [ndèe’] “this one”, and “that one” is a longer distance from you than “this one”.

These words work differently from the re and ren words. Unlike the re and ren words, they are not used following a noun. Instead, they can take the place of a name or noun, in sentences like

These words can be used all by themselves as subjects or objects, and, like the re and ren phrases, they are almost always focused.

Both nde words can be preceded by ra to mean “these” or “those”, again without following a noun:

A final pair of “this” and “that” words is nden [nde’nn] “this one” and nden [ndèenn] “that one”. These words work just like the nde words — they are used by themselves, not following a noun, they are almost always focused, and they can be preceded by ra to mean “these” or “those”.

Speakers often feel that using any of these new words (nde [ndèe’] “this one”, nde [ndèe] “that one”, nden [nde’nn] “this one”, nden [ndèenn] “that one”, or their plural forms) to refer to people who can understand what you’re saying is rude. However, if speakers say something like

this may simply indicate that they feel no connection with the person referred to, rather than intentional rudeness. As a learner, you should avoid using these new words to refer to people unless you want to sound rude.

Each of these new pairs of words, like the re and ren pairs you learned earlier, include one word whose e vowel has a shorter-sounding vowel pattern ending with a C vowel, either a KC pattern [èe’] or a C pattern [e’], used to refer to items very close by (a shorter distance away), and one word whose e vowel has a longer-sounding KP pattern [èe], used to refer to items farther away or out of sight (a longer distance away). If you practice saying sentences and phrases including the different words, you’ll have no trouble associating the vowel patterns of these words with the right meanings.

§12.3. Adding pronouns to verb bases ending in consonants: A review

Any time a verb base has something added to it, it will be pronounced in the combination form. In addition, as you know, there are sometimes other changes when certain pronouns are added.

Although there are more Valley Zapotec pronouns to learn, you’ve now learned all the pronouns that cause changes in the pronunciation of preceding verb bases that end in consonants.

When you learn a new verb whose base ends in a consonant, the forms that may change unexpectedly (and thus the ones you should take care to learn) are those with the added bound pronouns –a “I”, -u “you” familiar singular, -ëng singular proximate, -ën “we”, and –ad “you guys” familiar plural.

The other bound pronouns that you have learned (and additional ones you will learn later) do not cause changes in the pronunciation of consonant-final verb bases. These include –i distal, -ëm animal, other “he” and “she” pronouns, all “they” plural pronouns, and both formal “you” pronouns.

§12.4. Vowel-final stems: An introduction

Vowel-final stems. Verb stems that end in a vowel are called VOWEL-FINAL stems. Vowel-final stem verbs like runybe [ruhnybèe’] “knows” and rcwa [rcwààa’ah] “writes; throws” can be used like any other verb in imperatives or with noun phrase subjects:

The first example sentence here contains the English word email. By using it in a Zapotec sentence, you’ve borrowed it! Of course, you could change the spelling to be more like Zapotec, but most speakers who already were familiar would this word would write and spell it just as in English (and say it that way too!), so that is what we will do here. (In this book, we will write such borrowed words in italics, just to remind you that they do not follow Zapotec spelling rules.)

Formal pronouns can be added to any stem, whether it ends in a consonant or a vowel, with no change in the pronunciation of either the stem or the pronoun:

The vowel-final verb ca “has”. Here is another useful verb with a vowel-final stem: ca [caa’ah] “has”:

Ca is unusual, because its meaning seems similar to that of a habitual, but it doesn’t start with r-. Ca is a NEUTRAL verb; you’ll learn more about this type of verb in Lecsyony Tseinyabchon. The translations given above are present, but you’ll probably find that this verb can also be used to refer to the past, although we will not use past translations here. Ca refers specifically to having something in one’s hands or holding it; you’ll learn ways to express a more general “have” later.

Using bound pronoun endings other than the formal ones on a vowel-final stems can be tricky. Here are the forms of ca with all the bound pronouns you know:

(The proximate, distal, respectful, and animal pronouns above are translated alternately with “she” and “he”, but either of these (or  “it”, for proximate, distal, or animal) might be appropriate, depending on context.) As you can see, various changes happen when bound pronouns are added to this verb! Listen as your teacher pronounces these words, and make sure you can say them too. You haven’t seen hyphens (-) in pronunciation guides before. These show that bound pronoun endings beginning with vowels are pronounced as separate syllables following a preceding vowel-final verb stem, rather than combining into a diphthong (as usually happens when two vowels come together).

You’ll learn more about all this in Lecsyony Tseiny (13), but for now, don’t try to put any endings except formal ones onto vowel-final stems.

For the remainder of this lesson, we’re going to start giving some tarea directions in Zapotec as well as English, using forms of rcwa and the phrase ni ca ni guet “the following; what follows; what appears below” — thus, Bcwa ni ca ni guet cuan Dizhsa [Bcwààa’ nih càa ni’ih gue’et cuahnn Dìi’zhsah] means “Write what follows in Zapotec” or “Translate what follows into Zapotec”. (In Unida Gai, some tarea will have directions only in Zapotec.) This starts with Tarea Tap below!

§12.5. Using borrowed Spanish verbs

As you’ve learned, Valley Zapotec speakers have borrowed many Spanish words over the centuries. You’ve already seen many of these, such as bag “cow” (from Spanish baca), bistied “dress” (from Spanish vestido), grabador “tape recorder” (from Spanish grabadora), lapy “pencil” (from Spanish lápiz), mes “table” (from Spanish mesa), mes “teacher” (from Spanish maestro), rran “frog” (from Spanish rana), xman “week” (from Spanish semana), and so on, as well as almost all the personal names you’ve learned.

Zapotec speakers also borrow Spanish verbs, but they do not use these the same way that they use Zapotec verbs. Spanish verbs are borrowed in the INFINITIVE form (the form of a Spanish verb that is listed in dictionaries, ending in –ar, -er, or –ir and normally translated into English with “to”) and used in Zapotec sentences along with a form of another Zapotec verb, most often runy. Here are some examples:

Like all borrowed words, these borrowed Spanish verbs usually change their pronunciation when they are used in Zapotec sentences. Often the only change is pronouncing the last syllable of the verb as a PP key syllable. Remember too that some spellings will change when you write a verb in Zapotec (for example, Spanish r at the beginning of a word corresponds to Zapotec rr, and the Spanish infinitive ending –ir is usually pronounced ier [iier] in Zapotec).

The combination of runy plus the borrowed verb is a COMPLEX VERB, a verb that includes more than one word, whose subject goes after the first word (very often runy) in the pattern below.

The sentence begins with a form of runy and the subject of the sentence. The borrowed infinitive comes next, followed by the rest of the sentence. Many sentences of this type have objects; these objects follow the borrowed infinitive, in the “rest of sentence” part of the pattern.

Either the subject or the object of a borrowed verb sentence may be focused, changing the basic order of the borrowed verb sentence pattern given above.

Runy tomar fot “takes a picture, takes a picture of” consists of runy, the borrowed Spanish infinitive tomar, plus the word fot “picture, photograph”. In the first sentence below, fot “picture” is the object. In the second sentence, there are two objects, fot and Lia Petr.

Since both fot and Lia Petr are objects, either of them may be focused!

If you know Spanish, you can borrow many verbs into this sentence pattern; even if you don’t, you’ll often be able to find verbs you need in a Spanish dictionary if you don’t know the Zapotec verb. You should be aware, however, that some speakers believe that expressions like this are not appropriate Zapotec, so it’s good to avoid using them too much!

§12.6. More complex verbs with runy

A number of other complex verbs (verbs that include more than one word) use runy. Like the complex verbs with borrowed verbs that you saw in §12.5, complex verbs fall into two groups, depending on whether they can be used with an object or not (some may be used both ways). We’ll consider verbs that are used without added objects first.

Runy contest is used to say “responds” or “gives an answer”, not to refer to answering a specific person.

These complex verbs do not include Spanish infinitives, but otherwise they work the same way as the borrowed verbs in section §12.5. (If you know Spanish, you will recognize some of the words following runy in these expressions as borrowings; many of them, however, are not.) The second word in each these complex verbs is a noun (but some of these nouns are only used in these complex verbs). As with the normal borrowed word pattern, the basic pattern with these verbs is

The complex verbs above are used without added objects, in sentences like the following. The subject of these verbs always comes before the second part of the complex verb.

The fourth sentence shows that the “form of runy” may be a negative with queity and ‑di.

These sentences fit into the pattern above as follows:

(Chicy and queity don’t count as separate parts of the pattern.) Ual gunyla contest! is a plural command, so it follows a different pattern (it has ual before the verb and, like an imperative, it does not have a subject after the verb).

Of course, it’s also possible to focus the subject:

Verbs in the second group are used with objects. When putting together a sentence with one of these verbs, you need to use both a subject and an object. The object is the first part of the “rest of sentence” in the basic sentence pattern.

The object (along with any other sentence part, such as the question marker e) comes at the end of the sentence, following the second part of the complex verb, in examples like

Any verb whose definition includes “(someone)” needs an added object in order to make sense; similarly, for example, “pay attention to” is incomplete without the speaker telling who the subject paid attention to. These verbs fit into the pattern above like this:

You can also focus either the subject or object in cases like these:

Normally, though, it is not possible to focus the second word of any complex verb (though you may hear cases where speakers do this).

§12.7. Complex verbs in the vocabulary

Here again are some of the complex verbs introduced in section §12.6:

These verbs are presented just as they are in the Rata Ra Dizh. It’s important to understand the information they present about how to use these new verbs in sentences.

Let’s consider sentences without anything focused first. Subjects (both bound pronouns and nouns or names) always go after the first word of the vocabulary entry for a complex verb:

Objects always follow the verb and the subject in a sentence. When a verb entry in the vocabulary has two words, the object follows the second word of the verb entry:

Of course, noun phrases are focused. A subject can be focused, as in the following examples (some types of subjects are almost always focused).

Objects can be focused as well.

Another important thing to note about these vocabulary entries is the “> runy” at the end. This means that the runy these entries contain is the same runy “does, makes, performs, builds” verb that has its own entry, and that the forms of runy given in the main entry should also be used in the complex verb.

§12.8 Compound verbs with runy

You’ve already learned the verb runybe, which begins with runy but includes another part. There are many other verbs that start with runy and include another word or syllable in the same word. Here are some examples:

These verbs are COMPOUNDS – they are formed from runy plus a second item, but they act like a single word, as you can see in examples like

As you can see, the front of these verbs use the same stems of runy that you’ve learned.

In some cases, compounds look similar to complex verbs. Note the difference between pairs of sentences like the following:

The meanings of these two sentences are related (referring to the lack of something), but they are not the same, and their structure is different. The first sentence includes a compound runy verb – its verb, runyfald, works just like every other verb you’ve learned before this lesson. Its subject goes right after the whole compound verb. The second sentence includes a complex verb, like those you’ve learned to use earlier in this lesson. Its subject goes between the form of runy and the second part of the complex verb, as you’ve seen.

You’ll learn other pairs of similar compound-complex verbs later. Some of them have the same meaning, regardless of which type of verb is used. Others, like runyaxten “takes possession of” / runy xten “works as”, may have quite different meanings. (One thing you’ll notice is that when a word that starts with two consonants, like xten, is compounded with runy, an extra a is before the second word added to make pronunciation easier.)