CHAPTER 11 LANGUAGE AND LANGUAGES OF MESOAMERICA 415Table 11.1 Verbs with Affixes in Three Mesoamerican Languages
San Dionicio Ocotepec Zapotec:
Rr-tèh’éh=gá=rám=nì
HABITUAL-pick:up=while=they (animal)=it
“While the animals were picking it up”
Classical Nahuatl:
O ̄-ti-c-a ̄ ltih-ca-h
PAST-we-him-bathe-PLUPERFECT-PLURAL
“We had bathed him.”
Tzotzil:
Stakch-a-j-kolta.
can INCOMPLETIVE-you-I-help
“I can help you.”
Note: The= symbol in the Zapotec example precedesclitics, words which are more loosely
joined to the preceding word than other morphemes.
ences between two kinds of first person plural pronoun (we).The inclusive first per-
son plural means “we (including you),” and the exclusive first person plural means
“we (not including you).” Sometimes third person pronouns distinguish between
humans and nonhumans, as in several Oto-Manguean languages. However, third
person pronouns are rarely distinguished by sex; that is, “he” and “she” (and often
“it”) are all indicated by the same pronominal affix or pronoun. Differences among
pronouns based on respect are also found in many languages.
In some Oto-Manguean languages—most notably Zapotec and Mixtec—third-
person pronouns are differentiated according to a variety of social categories. For ex-
ample, San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec has different third person pronouns for (1) holy
persons and things (e.g. God, the saints, statues in the church, the sun, and the
moon); (2) respected humans (e.g., mature community members); (3) formal hu-
mans (e.g., parents, priests, and teachers); (4) animals and young people; (5) humans
or things that are near or visible; and (6) humans or things that are far off or not vis-
ible. Although San Lucas Quiaviní Zapotec distinguishes six categories here, its pro-
nouns do not distinguish gender, so there is no difference between “he” and “she”
in this language.
Notice that some of these distinctions require speakers to make explicit com-
mitments to their judgments about the social standing of people they refer to; in this
way, the grammatical structure of the language is unavoidably an active element in the
construction of group relationships. Other grammatical distinctions relate to the cul-
tural outlook or cognitive orientation of speakers. For example, when speakers of Yu-
catec Mayan refer to an event, they mark their statement with evidentials,grammatical
elements that indicate whether their report of the event is based on having person-
ally witnessed it (through any of the senses), having been told about it, or its being part
of the shared cultural understandings (“common knowledge”) of a community. This
grammatical trait requires speakers to constantly and subconsciously monitor the
sources of their knowledge and beliefs.