This lesson begins with discussion of verb definitions (section §11.1) and question word questions (section §11.2). Irregular perfective and irrealis stems of base-changing verbs are covered in sections §11.3 and §11.4. Section §11.5 presents animal pronouns, which are also used to refer to children and young people. Section §11.6 explains several types of sentences with rcaz “wants”. Sentences with cuan subject phrases are covered in section §11.7, and section §11.8 reviews how verbs are listed in the Rata Ra Dizh.

Xiëru Zalo Ra Dizh

1. In sentences like

there is no teiby, even though the English sentence has a singular indefinite object. Rgub guez “smokes cigarettes; smokes a cigarette” is an expression that doesn’t need to be marked as having an indefinite object.

2. Bistied and fald are used primarily to refer to modern city-style clothing; there are other words for traditional Zapotec women’s clothing, as you’ll learn later. Bistied is also used for the typical style of dresses worn by younger village women.

§ 11.1. Understanding verb definitions

The definitions of the verbs in the Ra Dizh section at the beginning of this lesson tell you a lot about how these new verbs are used in sentences.

As you already know, just as in English and other languages, many Zapotec verbs have two or more different meanings or can be used in two or more different sentence patterns. When these meanings or uses are quite different, each one has a separate number within the definition of the verb in the vocabulary.

The information in definitions like the following can help you to understand what subjects and objects can be used with that verb.

Within the definition of a verb, an item in parentheses after the verb of the definition lets you know what are potential objects for that verb. For example, the object of rguix is something “long” (relative to its width), such as a stick, a pencil, or even a person:

An item following “of” in parentheses within the definition of a verb shows what the subject of the verb may be. The definition of rgub above contains both object and subject information, telling you that this verb can be used in sentences like

Reading a definition carefully will help you see how many objects it can be used with. For example, the following definitions tell that rguizh can be used with either one object (which could be either human or non-human) or with two objects:

The following sentences illustrate all these possibilities:

In addition, the definition shows that rguizh can be used to mean “repay” or “pay back” as well as “pay”.

A verb’s definition also explains cultural aspects of the verb’s use. Consider the following additional definition of rguizh or one definition of rguiny:

Most Zapotecs are Roman Catholics, but many villages have no regular parish priest, so the priest from another town must be paid to come and say mass for a wedding, baptism, or other celebration. Many old customs are still followed, even in larger pueblos like Tlacolula. Traditionally, a young man’s parents pay a formal visit to the parents of the girl he would like to marry in order to ask for her hand.

Here’s another important thing about interpreting definitions. A definition like the following —

— tells you that the subject carries something in his (or her) arms. When you use a verb like rguez with a different subject, the translation changes, because you need to refer to the arms of that subject:

_{Fot Teiby xte Lecsyony Tsëbteby. The church in Tlacolula de Matamoros. Many people from San Lucas go to Tlacolula during the week, especially on Sunday, when there is an outdoor market that draws salespeople, customers, and tourists from all over the Valley. People from San Lucas who want to attend mass usually go to this church during their Sunday visit.}

§11.2. More about question word questions

As you know, question word questions begin with a question word like tu “who”, xi “what”, and guc “when”. Unlike a-yac questions that can be answered by a “yes” or yac “no”, question word questions do not include the final question marker e.

Here are some additional Valley Zapotec question words:

Bal “how many” is used before a noun, as in

Bal plus the following noun form a phrase (comparable to tyop guet “two tortillas” or tap bxuaz “four priests”). You can’t use bal by itself without a following noun.

Blac means “how much money” — you don’t need to use the word muly with this question word:

As the second translation of this question shows, “money” may not always be used in the translation of a blac question.

Speakers use both xa and xa mod to mean “how”:

As with all question words, xa, xa mod, or a bal phrase must come at the beginning of the sentence. In English, we sometimes use questions like He crossed how? or Cristina gave the dog how many tortillas?, with the question word somewhere else in the sentence, but question word questions of this type are not possible in Valley Zapotec.

Na “now” is often used at the end of question word questions. You can translate it as “now”, but this translation will not mean too much in English. Use this word to make your questions sound more natural, as in

This na doesn’t refer directly to the present time (rather, it probably refers to the speaker’s present interest in the answer to the question). Thus, you can use it even when the event referred to in the question took place a long time ago.

_{Fot Tyop xte Lecsyony Tsëbteby. The church in San Lucas Quiaviní. San Lucas has no regular parish priest, and services are held here only on certain special occasions.}

Since the question word always comes at the beginning of the sentence, a tu or xi question with a reversible verb can sometimes be translated in two ways, just like some sentences with focused noun phrases:

If the noun following the verb in a question like this makes sense as either the subject or the object, then the question word can be interpreted as either the subject or the object too. This reversibility only works if the word after the verb is a noun, however, not if it is a pronoun — can you figure out why? If not, looking at the following questions may help you:

These questions are not reversible!

If the question word question is negative, queity comes after the question word:

§11.3. Verbs with irregular perfective stems

Here are some sentences using the new verbs from Ra Dizh in the perfective:

Each of the new vocabulary verbs has a base beginning with g (or gu, the spelling of g before the vowels e, ë, or i). The progressive stems of these verbs, as you’d expect, begin with cag or cagu. The perfective stems of these verbs are surprising, however. They begin with the regular perfective prefix b-, but there is no g after this prefix. Instead, these verbs have perfective stems begin with bd. Compare the following habitual-perfective patterns:

In each case, the g or gu before the vowel or diphthong of the habitual stem is replaced by d in the perfective stem. The new bd perfective verbs work just like other verbs you have learned in terms of their pronunciation. The vowel patterns of the new perfective verbs are just like those of the habitual verbs.

Normally, in Zapotec, the perfective of a verb whose base begins with a consonant is formed by replacing the r on the habitual stem with a b, with the base staying the same, as in the following examples (and for all the verbs you have learned up to this point):

The verbs you’ve just learned, however, are irregular, and do not follow this pattern. While they use r– in the habitual and b– in the perfective, their base begins with g (or gu) in the habitual (and the progressive) but with d in the perfective. This does not follow the normal Zapotec pattern, so we can identify these rg / bd verbs as one group of irregular Zapotec verbs. Here’s a diagram of how these BASE-CHANGING verbs work:

In fact, though, some types of irregularity are more common than others. The rg / bd pattern is very common: probably the majority of Zapotec verbs whose habitual stem starts with rg or rgu have perfectives beginning with bd. (We can compare this to some facts about English. The regular pattern for past tense marking in English is to add –ed to the end of a verb. Other changes, such as that from ring to rang or sing to sang, are irregular. However, for verbs ending with ing, like these two, the change to ang in the past tense is actually more common than adding –ed!)

§11.4. Verbs with irregular irrealis stems

The verbs with irregular bd perfectives that you’ve just learned also have unexpected irrealis forms, as you can see in the following sentences:

These irrealis verbs are irregular, too. Most verbs whose bases begin with g (though not all) do not use the regular irrealis prefix y-, but have irrealis stems that begin with c or qu. (As you know, these letters represent the same Zapotec sound — the sound of English k.)

If the base of a verb like this (after the habitual prefix r-) starts with gue, gui, or guë, the irrealis stem will start with que, qui, or quë. If the base of a verb like this starts with gu plus a consonant, ga, or go, the irrealis stem will start with cu, ca, or co. This follows the regular rule you learned for using c and qu, g and gu in Lecsyony Tyop: before the vowels a, o, and u, we write c (for the sound of English k) and g (for the sound of English g); before the vowels i, e, and ë, we write qu and gu.

Irrealis verbs beginning with c and qu sometimes have vowel changes, just as we have seen with ordinary irrealis verbs beginning with y-: thus, for example, the irrealis of “pay”, quizh, is pronounced with a PP vowel pattern [quiizh], even though the habitual rguizh has a CB pattern [rgui’ihzh].

As you can see, these base-changing verbs don’t work the same in the irrealis as they do in the perfective, because what happens is that a form of the irrealis prefix combines with the habitual base of the verb to produce an irrealis stem in which you can’t easily separate a prefix from the base.

§11.5. Animal pronouns

Valley Zapotec has special pronouns used to refer to animals. Here are some examples:

The “it” and “them” in these sentences refer to animals, so we call the pronouns in these sentences ANIMAL PRONOUNS (abbreviated as an.). The bound animal pronouns are singular –ëm [ëhmm] and plural –rëm [rëhmm], and the independent animal pronouns are singular laëm [làa’-ëhmm] and plural larëm [làa’rëhmm]. The bound pronouns are used for subjects, and the independent pronouns are used for objects and for focused subjects. Like the proximate, distal, and respectful pronouns you learned earlier, these new pronouns are gender neutral.

Valley Zapotec animal pronouns are most commonly used to refer to young, small, or cute animals. Speakers are less likely to use them to refer to large, mature animals — for these animals, speakers would be more likely to use proximate or distal pronouns. As you learned in Lecsyony Gaz and Lecsyony Ga, the proximate and distal pronouns are used mainly to refer to adults (people who are social equals of the speaker or who the speaker doesn’t care about) and inanimate objects, but they can also be used to refer to larger animals, or to any animal whose location relative to the speaker seems important.

Valley Zapotec animal pronouns are also used to refer to children.

In these sentences, the speaker is using the animal pronouns –ëm, -rëm, laëm, and larëm to refer to children. While proximate and distal pronouns are sometimes used to refer to children, it is most common to refer to children using animal pronouns. (See how your teacher feels about who can be referred to with an animal pronoun, and listen to conversations to observe how speakers use these pronouns. Some speakers use animal pronouns to refer to people as old as teenagers — or even older people — but many people will probably feel this sounds somewhat insulting.)

If you listen to the word mnabëm, you’ll hear the normal change from independent [mnààa’b] to combination [mnàa’b]. Most verb stems do not change their pronunciation (other than the change to the combination form) before the animal pronoun. However, a regular spelling change occurs when you add –ëm to a verb stem that ends in c when the respectful pronoun. Because the pronoun –ëm begins with ë, a c at the end of a preceding verb stem is written as qu before this pronoun:

§11.6. Sentences with rcaz “wants”

As you know, the verb rcaz “wants” can be used with an object:

Rcaz can also be used in a sentence with another verb:

The second verb in such sentences is always irrealis.

The three sentences above show the “want (someone) to” pattern. This pattern is used to talk about one person wanting another to do something, when the second (irrealis) verb has a different subject from “want”. Use this pattern:

The same pattern can be used in a “wants to” sentence, when the subject of the irrealis verb is the same as the subject of “want”, as in sentences like

The pattern here is just the same as in the “want (someone) to” pattern:

What may seem a little unexpected about sentences using this “wants to” pattern is that in English we say Juan wants to crush the can without mentioning Juan’s name twice, and we say Do you want to sneeze? without two yous. But in Zapotec the pattern for “wants to” sentences is just the same as the “want (someone) to” pattern.

When the subject of a “wants to” sentence is a noun phrase, you can use a second “wants to” pattern that will remind you more of English. Here are some examples:

Here is a diagram of the second “wants to” pattern:

In this pattern, there is no subject following the irrealis verb. This pattern can be used only with noun phrase subjects. It is never used with pronoun subjects: when the subject of “wants” is a pronoun, you must always repeat that pronoun after the irrealis verb, as in “wants to” sentence pattern 1.

The subject of rcaz can be focused:

§11.7. Cuan subject phrases with pronouns

Here are some sentences with plural subjects that include pronouns and cuan “and”:

Each of these sentences has a subject referring to more than one individual (a plural subject, in other words) expressed with a phrase that includes cuan between two linked items, one of which is a pronoun. For example, the subject of the first sentence is naa cuan Lia Len “me and Elena”. (In English, you may have been taught that it’s more polite to start with the other person, and say Elena and I or Elena and me. This is not necessarily the case in Zapotec — either order is fine.)

Now, look at the forms of the verbs in the sentences. The first sentence includes the bound pronoun –ën “we”, and the next two include –ad and –yuad pronouns. If you think about it, “Elena and I” corresponds to “we”, “you and the boy” corresponds to “you guys”, and so on. All this is summarized in the following table:

Finally, notice the position of the “and” subjects in the examples at the beginning of this section. The “and” subject is at the beginning of the sentence. Unlike the usual case, where a subject before the verb has an emphatic (focused) meaning, an “and” subject almost always comes before the verb, especially when it contains a pronoun, like those in this section. It’s probably a good idea to put “and” subjects like these before the verb in the focus position in most sentences.

§11.8. Verbs in the Rata Ra Dizh

You have probably already used the vocabulary at the end of this book (the Rata Ra Dizh), so you may have noticed that the vocabulary contains a lot of information about verbs. Here are the entries for the verbs you have learned in this lesson:

The main entries for verbs in the end vocabulary (those that contain definitions and other information) are habitual stems. Main entries contain a listing of all irregular forms of these verbs, along with other information. Each of these irregular forms is also listed separately, with a CROSS-REFERENCE to the main entry. Pronunciation is shown for every entry, and for any of the irregular forms that have a different vowel pattern from the main entry. The cross-reference entries usually do not include translations, although if there are two words in the Rata Ra Dizh that are spelled the same, their entries will always include translations. Remember that there is a list of abbreviations at the end of this book.

Prefixes and Endings

-ëm [ëhmm] he, she, it (animal bound pronoun)

-rëm [rëhmm] they (animal bound pronoun)

Abbreviations

an. animal

Par gac buny dibertier! Find the following words in Zapotec in the Gal Rguily Dizh.