1

Bcuaa quiang I stepped HEAD orange peel! The acquisition of Zapotec bodypart locatives

Kristine J ensen de Lpez
University of Aalborg, Denmark
Kristine@hum.auc.dk

1. Introduction
i

Observations of childrens early language across different language groups have
suggested that nouns are the very first word class children comprehend and produce (Gentner,
1982). The primary function of nouns is often taken to be that of referring to a specific
concrete object. However, in many languages (African, Mayan, Otomanguean languages and
Thai) a subset of nouns is employed to refer to the designation of static spatial relations
ii

between two objects. In such languages this subset of nouns serves a purpose similar to that
served by prepositions in English. Thus nouns are used to indicate where one object is in
relation to the location of a second object. Thus, languages differ concerning whether they
rely on prepositions for locating things and people or whether they rely on nouns for locating
things and people.
Children acquiring languages, which rely on prepositions for designating static
spatial relationships produce in, on, up, down among their first 50 words, while between, back
and front appear later. However, children do not always use such early words to refer to a
static spatial relationship only (Brown, 1973, J ohnston and Slobin, 1979, Tomasello, 1987,
Sinha et. al. 1994, Rohfling, 2002). During the one-word stage of their language acquisition
children may use the set of prepositions or locative words as verb particles, which then
gradually become employed in the way adults use prepositions, namely to refer to spatial
relationships (Tomasello, 1987). Tomasello (1992) points out that words, which by adults are
used to name places (prepositions in English), actually function as action requests for young
children, and hence he suggests that such location words function as sentence-structuring
verbs for children in their early language acquisition. In a dairy study of his English-acquiring
daughter, Tomasello found that at the age of 16:26 months she produced down as a request
to be put down from her parents arms, at 17:25 months she produced up-here as a request
for help to get up into her high chair. At the age of 18:13 months, the utterance shoes-on
was used in a locative situation while she was putting on someones shoes, and also in, was
uttered as put-it-in for location while commenting on a spoon in a cup. Finally at 19:16
months the child produced the locative utterance under chair, while she was putting a chair
under the table, suggesting a locative use of a preposition. In J ohnston and Slobins cross-
linguistic study they explain the variation in the order of acquisition of spatial concepts to
result from the linguistic complexity of the means available in the particular languages
(J ohnston and Slobin, 1978). They point out that if a word is morphologically complex or if is
homonymous, it may be acquired later than if this is not the case.
Bowerman and Chois comparison of English- and Korean-acquiring childrens
early language used for referring to dynamic spatial relationships showed two interesting
differences across the two languages. First, due to the different language typologies English
acquiring children employed prepositions, while Korean acquiring children employed verbs to
identical spatial relationships, and second the two groups of children seemed to categorize the
elicted set of dynamic relationships in different ways (Bowerman and Choi, 2001). Hence the
two language groups seem to have conceptualized the spatial relationships differently in
accordance with the linguistic partitioning available in the particular language.
The case of San Marcos Zapotec
iii
bodypart nouns employed to designate static
spatial relationships presents yet another set of grammatical items with a different set of
underlying conceptualisations, which varys from how a language that employs prepositions
2
partitions the spatial array. This presents the Zapotec-acquiring children with a different type
of task in acquiring their native language than is the case for children acquiring languages
with prepositions. The comparison of childrens acquisition of locative items across
typological different languages provides rich information concerning exactly which
prelinguistic concepts children rely on for acquiring language, and rich information on the
variety of pathways children have access to in learning their native language. Both are
important questions raised by researchers investigating childrens acquisition of their first
language.
The present paper first describes the language task involved for children
acquiring Zapotec, an Otomaguean language spoken in the south Mexican state of Oaxaca,
and secondly presents a longitudinal case study of spontaneous production of Zapotec
bodypart locatives. First I present the grammatical structure of the Zapotec bodypart system,
which is the only lexem available for designating static spatial relationships - the language
does not have prepositions. In continuation I describe the semantic system underlying locative
bodyparts in Zapotec, and finally I present longitudinal data from one monolingual Zapotec
acquiring boys spontaneous use of bodypart locative nouns.

2. Background information on Zapotec
Zapotec forms part of the Otomanguean language family, which is spoken in the
Southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Zapotecan languages are primarily spoken in the central
valleys near Oaxaca City, south from there to the Pacific coast, southeast to the isthmus of
Tehuantepec, and northeast into the Sierra de J uarez. It has been estimated that there may
exist as many as forty mutually unintelligible variants of Zapotec. It is not clear whether
these varieties are "just" dialectic varieties or whether, in some cases, they should more
appropriately be described as different languages. Four groups of languages in the eastern
Valley region have been identified by the Summer Institute of Linguistics; Eastern Tlacolula
Zapotec (San Pedro Quiatoni Zapotec), San Pedro Gil Zapotec, San J uan Guelava Zapotec
and Mitla Zapotec (Grimes et. al., 1996). The specific Zapotec language, which has been
analysed in this study is spoken by about 2,000 inhabitants living in a rural agricultural
community located in the central valley, about 60 kilometres from Oaxaca City. The basic
word order of San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec is VSO, although SVO is also acceptable.

2.1 Bodypart locative nouns in Zapotec
Zapotec languages differ from Indo-European languages in the grammatical
forms they employ in referring to static spatial configurations. English, for example, employs
prepositions whereas Zapotec relies, to a great extent, on bodypart nouns to designate a static
spatial relationship. The same subset of nouns is also used to refer to human bodyparts.
Zapotec bodypart locative nouns, hence, consist of nouns or noun-derived items, which are
identical to the nouns used for reference to human body parts. This case of homonymous
usage, which also involves polysemous usage, might posses a problem for the child in
learning the distinction between the meaning of a bodypart noun used to refer to the location
of an object as opposed to the case when a bodypart noun is used to refer to a specific part of
the human body
iv
. There are however, some syntactic clues distinguishing these two types
of references, and which might be hints to the child in acquiring Zapotec. One difference lies
in the fact that only the set of literal body parts become suffixed by a possessive pronominal
enclitic; such as illustrated in the following three examples;

(a) dets-a
back-1SG
my back
3

(b) lo-o
face-2SG
your face


(c) nii-b
foot-3SG
his foot


However, in some cases both possessed and non-possessed locative body-part constructions
can take on a definite clitic, in which case the utterance becomes ambiguous, as seen in
example (1).

(1) nuu dets-a-ng.
exist back.region-1SG=clitic.
it's on my back / it's behind me.

When referring to a static location of one object in relation to another object the
employment of bodypart nouns is obligatory (similarly to prepositions in English). Zapotec
linguists (see e.g. Butler, (1988) Pickett and Black (1995) and Munro and Lopez (1999))
classify bodypart nouns, when used with a locative meaning as prepositions or body-part
prepositions. Cognitive linguists, on the other hand, have described the way bodypart nouns,
when employed as locatives, are motivated by the metaphorical extension of the human body
in its upright position, and argue that they are very different than prepositions (MacLaury,
1989, Brugman, up.m., Lakoff, 1987). Brugman and Lakoff refer to Mixtec (a different
Otomanguean language), which, in addition, relies on animal bodypart nouns for locating
objects and people.
Locative bodypart nouns occur as the first of two contiguous nouns in a noun +
noun construction, as illustrated in example (2).

(2) quia yuu.
head house.
on top of the house.

Butler, (1988), Pickett and Black, (1995), Munro and Lpez, (1999) propose the existence of
two classes of prepositions in Zapotec languages; those expressed with bodypart words and
those expressed with loan words derived from Spanish prepositions. One clear difference
between these two classes of words is present in the syntactic properties followed by the
prepositional phrase of either. Prepositional phrases constructed with bodypart nouns may
express the prepositional object with either a possessive pronominal agreement clitic or with
an overt noun following the preposition. This is also similar to the syntax followed by verbs
in Zapotec. Prepositional phrases expressed with non-body-part spatial words (often Spanish
loan words) on the other hand, express their object with a pronoun or an overt nominal.
Hence, only bodypart derived spatial words take clitics suggesting that bodypart nouns used
as locatives may form a different grammatical category than Zapotec nouns in that they
syntactically resemble verb phrases.

4
In addition to the above mentioned distinction, some types of spatial relationship
in Zapotec are not expressed by use of prepositiona/bodypart phrases, but are intergrated as
part of the verb, eg the applicative verbal suffix -ne, for expressing comitative "with".

2.2 The core group of locative bodypart nouns
San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec relies on a core group of seven bodypart nouns,
which are used for locative reference (J ensen de Lpez, 1998, J ensen de Lpez, 2002). These
are illustrated in table 1.

Table 1: core group of BODYPART locative grams

Zapotec bodypart

Bodypart gloss

Locative gloss
Quia Head on, upper.region
Lo Face on, at, in front of.region
Ruu Mouth on.region, in.region
Lani stomach (internal organ) in,region, under.region,
through
Dets Back behind.region
Llaan Butt beside.region
under.region, on top
of.region
Nii Foot under.region, lower.region

The fact that only a small core group of bodypart nouns are employed as
locatives suggests that this group may form a closed class word group. This notion is
consistent with descriptions of other Zapotec languages, however the specific inventory of
bodypart nouns forming part of the subclass, as well as the semantics underlying each specific
bodypart noun, may vary across languages. A glance at the semantic variation listed for each
item under the colon titled locative gloss illutrates the degree of polysemous underlying the
meanings of each locative item.

2.3 Word order and the bodypart locative phrase
Bodypart locative phrases resemble prepositional phrase structures as illustrated
in the examples (3) to (10). Similar to what Zlatev (2003) describes as region nouns in his
description of Thai, Zapotec bodypart locative nouns may be regarded as region nouns. This
categorization is based on the notin that region nouns can be regarded as the heads of the
noun phases they appear in (ibid: 16). The noun-like character of region nouns suggests that
their meanings can be based on different values of regions. Examples (3) to (10) illustrate
static spatial relationships in Zapotec.

(3) b-zu canast lo yiu.
CPL-stand basket face.region soil.
Put the basket on the ground.

(4) b-seu ruu yuu.
CPL-close mouth.region house.
Close the door.

(5) b-diat ra=y dets dxii.
CPL-descend PL-PRO=clitic back.region then.
5
take them out off / down from the back region then (from the back of a toy
animal).

(6) b-zuub bidy quia yuu.
CPL-sit chicken head.region house.
put the chicken on the house.

(7) b-teed avio-ng quia yuu.
CPL-pass airplane=clitic head.region house.
pass the airplane over / across the house.


(8) gu-lu bidy lni.iu.
CPL-put/in chicken stomach.region.house.
put the chicken inside the house.

(9) b-zuub bidy dets yallily.
CPL-sit chicken back.region chair.
put the chicken behind the chair.

(10) b-zuub bidy nii puant.
CPL-sit chicken foot.region bridge.
put the chicken under the bridge.

When referring to a static spatial relationship, bodypart nouns occur as the first
of two contiguous nouns in a noun +noun construction. Hence, in this particular Zapotec
language bodypart locatives do not take any overt genitive marking, although for other
languages, for example in Ayoquesco Zapotec, it is suggested that the second noun bears a
genitive relationship to the first (MacLaury, 1989: 120). Specification of a region with respect
to the landmark object may be expressed by reduplication of the bodypart noun, for example
the upper region above a tree as in example (11).

(11) quia quia yag.
head head tree.
above the tree.

As mentioned earlier, Tlapazola locative bodypart nouns can be inflected with a
pronominal clitic referring to an implicit landmark object. This class of pronominal clitics are
similarly employed with verbs.
Bodypart nouns when used for locative reference are derivationally nominals,
and they also largely obey the grammatical rules employed for nouns. However to some
extent, they also comply with the grammatical rules applying to verbs. Thus, similarly to what
Zlatev (op.cite) reports for Thai and what Lucy (1992) reports for Yucatan Mayan, in these
languages the categories of noun and verb appear to be modulus rather than selective. Thus
there seems to be an interaction between closed-class (grammatical) and open-class (lexical)
expression regarding spatial semantics (Zlatev ibid.). A preliminary analysis of the semantic
range of San Marcos Tlapazola bodypart nouns is reported in the following section.

3. Semantics of Zapotec bodypart locatives
6
Cognitive linguists suggest that the usage of a linguistic system such as that of
Zapotec involves the speaker using a conceptual system that is conventionally organised in a
different way than is the case for speakers of an Indo-European language (Lakoff, 1987). In
other words, the semantics of the Zapotec spatial bodypart terms do not coincide with the
underlying semantics of the English spatial system. This is illustrated by the fact that the
bodypart locative lani (stomach) refers to the spatial configurations expressed by the English
prepositions in, under and through. One principle difference between the English preposition
in and the bodypart locative lani is that in involves containment and constraint of the object,
often combined with the support of the object against gravity. The Zapotec locative bodypart
noun lani, on the other hand, despite the possibility of expressing the notion of containment
and constraint of the object, it does not involve the notion of support from gravity. For
example an object located under a table or chair is referred to using lani as also is the case
for an object placed inside a container object.

3.1 Bodypart nouns as a dative and a temporal marker
Some bodypart nouns (especially lo) are used to refer to more abstract
references. For example the term lo (face) is may be emplyed in the sense of a dative marker.
For example in the expression "speak to her" gunii lo laab. The following examples (12)
illustrate the usage of lo (face) in reference to directed motion and to time.

(12a) ze-dli- lo bniin.
FUT-go-2SG face.region child.
go look to the child.

(12b) cuaa beecu lo Lipy.
-receive dog face.region Phillip.
take the dog away from Phillip.

(12c) r.gia biny lo beecu.
HAB-look person face.region dog.
the person is looking at the dog.

(12d) cha-ib lo niaa.
PROG-go-3SG face.region field.
he is going to the fields.

The bodypart noun used with a temporal meaning is illustrated in example 13.

(13) lo iz 1906 biab guia.llub.
face.region year 1906 CPL-fall rock.corn.grain.
In the year of 1906 it hailed.

San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec bodypart locatives employ an intrinsic as well as
an extrinsic frame of reference (Lewinson, 1996). Zapotec of Ayoquesco, as reported by
MacLaury on the other hand, relies only on an extrinsic frame of reference, maintaining a
vertical framework e.g. the bodypart quia (head) always referring to the highest part of the
object, nii (foot) referring to the lowest part, and dets (back) to the posterior region, etc.
(MacLaury, 1989, p. 120). Thus Zapotec spoken in Tlapaloza, although similar in many ways
to Ayoqesco Zapotec, also differs in interesting ways. One difference is that the highest part
of an object is far from always referred to using the bodypart noun quia, as is the case for
7
Ayoquesco Zapotec. In Tlapazola Zapotec the location of an object lying on the surface of a
table is always referred to as lo mes "face.region table", despite the surface of the table being
the highest part of the table, when standing in its canonical orientation. In addition, one may
refer to the shorter side of an extended table as quia mes "the head of the table". The location
of a hot clay pot recently removed from the fire and placed on an inverted chair is referred to
as being quia yallily head.region of chair, which suggest the employment of an extrinsic
frame of reference.
Now, what factors might motivate these semantic partitionings often violating
the default hypotheses for describing the semantics of Zapotec bodypart nouns as suggested
by MacLaury? One plausible explanation has been suggested by Brugman (op.cit.) in
describing Mixtec, an Otomangeaun language which similarly relies on the metaphorical
extension of body-part nouns as locatives. Brugman introduced the notion of associated space,
in order to explain why, for example, the surface region of a table is referred to by violating
the principle of quia used for reference to the highest region of an object. According to
Brugmans notion of associated space, do to the fact that tables are mostly associated with
humans interacting with them in a face-to-face relationship, they are referred to as
metaphorically possessing similar properties as human faces. This implicit, and cultural
specific notion may be the core motivational factor explaining why Zapotec speakers prefer
lo face, as opposed to head quia in reference to particular spatial relationships involving
support from gravity, when the landmark object canonically is oriented facing a human.
Cultural and social motivated schematizations appear to influence the semantic
system of locative reference in San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec. For example, the human in a
horizontal orientation may account for the conceptualisation underlying the specific location
of non-spherical objects, as in quia (head) referring to the top region of the extended mat that
villagers sleep on. Similar a non-spherical object, such as a round table, does not have a
region referred to as quia (head), while lo (face) is obligatorily employed to refer to the
surface region of the table. Ends or protrusions of fruits are referred to as regions of quia
(head) or llaan (butt) in accordance with the orientation in which they grow (although
speakers do not always totally agree on this). The end of a banana which is attached to the
banana palm is designated the llaan (butt) region of the banana. In summary, the employment
of a specific frame of reference with a specific locative body part term depends mutually on
pragmatics, the canonical functionality of the object of designation, geometry, schematisation,
as well as on the social situatedness of the particular speaker employing and extending the
system.
The semantic and pragmatic structure present in the employment of bodypart
locative nouns in Zapotec of Ayequesco suggests that the true structure of the Zapotec
bodypart system can not be adequately accounted for in terms of a formal abstract system
identical to the system underlying prepositions, such as in, on, over. Instead they claim that
the system is based on a metaphorical extension of the human body in a canonical orientation.
However, it is important to note that the system is not imposed in a rigid or formalized
fashion, but involves less directly predictable extensions based on the social and interactional
practices within the culture, thus reflecting the shared knowledge of the metaphors and
cultural practices contextualizing the linguistic usage.

3.2 Associated space
The parameter of associated space illustrates the notion of extended metaphor
usage of bodypart nouns (Brugman, op.cit.). This usage is employed in contexts similar to
those where speakers of Indo-European languages would employ adpositions or dative
constructions. Here the semantic role of the bodypart noun is to identify a particular location
of the subject in relation to the landmark object named by the nominal compound. One main
8
difference between adpositions and bodypart nominals is that adpositions express the abstract
locative relationship per se, whereas the bodypart nominals often rely crucially on the
surrounding discourse context for a correct interpretation. For example in the bodypart
reading illustrated in example (14), the interpretation is ambiguous because the nominal
compound lo mes can be interpreted as either; "on the table" or "in front of the table",
depending on the information surrounding sentence and discourse.

(14) taz lo mes.
cup face.region table.
the cup is on / in front of the table.

3.3 The case of quia (head) and lo (face)
The bodypart locative nouns quia and lo, although they share common semantic
features conflating the notion of support from gravity, also reflect interesting semantic
distinctions regarding their reference to spatial relational configurations. The similarities
between the terms quia and lo, are thus best illustrated when compared to the English
preposition on, where the notion of support involving surface attachment is expressed. The
semantic differences between the two Zapotec bodypart nouns, however, lie in the fact that lo
often refers to horizontally extended surface objects (e.g. an extended mat), whereas quia, on
the other hand, conflates the notion of the uppermost region of a three dimensional landmark
object. Following this reasoning, a book on a bookcase is referred to as quia while located on
the very top shelf of the bookcase, but referred to as lo.region while located on any of the
lower shelves with the exception of the very bottom shelf, which thus is referred to as the nii-
region (foot) of the shelf. The usage of quia to refer to three-dimensional landmark objects is
suggested to be the least extended usage of this particular bodypart term, such as in the
reference of "a chicken on the roof". However, the metaphorical extension of lo used to
express locations, which in English are referred to as in front of a surface" and which is the
default of canonical social interactions, can out-rule a less extended metaphorical usage of a
bodypart word. Thus despite the fact that a table consists of a three-dimensional object and
hence the trajectory object located on the table by default would be expected to be referred to
as located quia.region of the table, Tlapazola Zapotec-speaker do not accept such usage.
Instead the bodypart word lo is used to specify the location of an object on a table, which
suggests that this particular metaphiorical extension is in violation of the rule posed by
MacLaury).
In conclusion, lo is frequently used for reference to locative relations, which are
based on functional, social and interactional properties. This is a property it does not
necessarily share with quia. Brugman (ibid) suggests that this specific role played by the
bodypart term for face has to do with the fact that in society faces are construed as important
not because of their shape or relative location on the human body, but because they are salient
identifying properties of people, since social interactions take place in face-to-face situations.
The notion of social interaction, which is conflated in the locative meaning of lo makes it
difficult to categorize lo in terms of basic abstract or geometrical properties that account for
all uses of the noun. Examples 15a and 15b illustrate some of the polysemous usages of lo. In
example (15a), lo expresses the surface of horizontally oriented flat objects, while in example
(15b) lo is employed as a directive and determiner of social interaction.

(15a) beecu lo daa daa.
dog face.region mat.
the dog is on the mat.

9
(15b) ch-a lo Nita.
POT-go-1SG face.region Anita.
I am going to visit / see Anita.

The usage of lo as goal of transfer or directedness of energy is expressed in
predicates similar to the notions expressed in English by: "lie to", "look at" or "visit". In
general, lo seems to be preferred over quia in reference to relations involving support of an
object on a vertically extended surface.

3.4 The case of lani (stomach), nii (foot) and dets (back)
The semantics of the bodypart term lani may involve the notion of canonical containment,
however, similar to lo, lani may also conflate the source of activity path as example (16).

(16) b-teed chiv lani coral.
CPL-pass goat stomach.region corral.
Pass the goat through the corral.

The configuration expressed in English as "under the table", is expressed in
Zapotec by either employing the bodypart noun lani (stomach) or the bodypart noun nii
(foot). If the configuration specifically involves the upper region of the identified space as in
"a string hanging from under the table", this is always expressed as a lani configuration,
whereas an object lying on the low ground area of the table (e.g. under the table") is
expressed as a nii configuration. Again the distinction in interpreting the two uses can
sometimes be made clear through the verb or the discourse context. Finally, the noun dets
"back" is used for reference to objects, which are displayed partly or fully out of sight.

3.5 Zapotec static spatial relations and the implications for language acquisition
Although much more could be analysed and said regarding convergences
between the semantics of basic spatial reference, the above analysis will be sufficient in order
for the reader to follow the longitudinal case study of the acquisition of bodypart locative
nouns presented in continuation. In the above sections I have illustrated the differences in the
syntax and in the semantics of the basic lexical system of Zapotec static spatial reference
compared to languages, which rely on prepositions for referring to static spatial relationships.
In summary; Zapotec employs bodypart nouns, which do not encode the path of the trajector
object, but only the specific region in relation to the landmark object. Bodypart region nouns
are motivated by a metaphorical extension of human body parts onto the landmark object.
These cross-linguistic differences suggest several competing and inconsistent hypotheses for
children learning to refer to static spatial relations by use of bodypart region nouns. The
embodiment hypothesis (e.g. J ohnson (1987) or Lakoff (1987) might suggest that the child
initially acquires the specific meanings of locative bodypart nouns, as derived from bodily
experiences. Given that Zapotec-speaking children presumably know the names of their own
body-parts, as is seen among young children acquiring prepositional languages, in the case
that locative bodypart nouns should be acquired as separate lexical terms, this acquisition task
may come into conflict with the childs acquisition of nouns for human body parts. Thus one
might hypotheses that Zapotec acquiring children, in the process of acquiring both the literal
and the locative meaning of bodypart nouns, will start out by first using bodypart nouns for
reference to their literal meanings, perhaps in reference to the childs own body, and only later
transfer this knowledge on the metaphorical extended meaning employed for referring to
static spatial relationships. Consequently this conflict at the lexical level may delay the childs
usage of bodypart terms as locative region nouns, at least until the metaphorical structure of
10
these grams is fully in place. Oppositely, a dual-system approach would suggest that the child
acquire both systems in parallel to each other, and only gradually acquire the full subsystem
of bodypart region nouns.
The more general question concerning language acquisition is how young children go about
acquiring such a complex, but at the same time semantically transparent system, and whether
they follow a different development process involving different cognitive strategies than those
of children acquiring prepositional languages, and hence in accordance with Slobins (and
consistent with the view of Bowerman, ibid) notion of language acquisition in terms of
typological bootstrapping (1996).

4. A longitudinal study of the early acquisition of Zapotec bodypart region nouns
Until now it has not been analysed in detail when children acquiring bodypart
nouns begin to produce these linguistic concepts in spontaneous speech. The data analysed
consist in the present study consists of spontaneous speech from one monolingual Zapotec-
acquiring boy age 15-33 months recorded during free interaction at his home in San Marcos
Tlapazola. A total of 15 data points of each 90 minutes of video recording and/or audio-
recordings were analyzed. On few occasions the child was video or audio-recorded by an
older sister without my presence, although on most occasions I carried out the recording. All
transcriptions were carried out in close collaboration with the childs teenage sister who
worked with me on a regular basis (see J ensen de Lpez, 2002). The final transcriptions were
checked against context using the video-data
v
. The data were analyzed for the age at which
bodypart region nouns (that is static spatial relational reference) were initially produced
spontaneously by the child. The child's first use of bodypart region nouns appeared when he
was well into the two-word stage and perhaps consequently these early bodypart nouns, in
some way, seemed to resemble predicate constructions. This may be viewed as an early
emergence of bodypart locatives, when evaluated in relation to the fact that Tzeltal-acquiring
children do not acquire bodypart locatives until a much later age (Brown, personal
communication). Prior to producing bodypart locative nouns the child had been producing
verb predicates involving motion activity, hence bodypart nouns did not seem to play the role
of sentence structuring verbs, as Tomsallo suggests is the case for English children acquiring
prepositions. A total of four bodypart nouns were employed as spatial locatives during the
data period. These consisted of lani at the age of 24;12 months, quia at the age of 24;12
months, lo at the age of 27;23 months and dets at the age of 30 months. Interestingly, the very
first bodypart region nouns identified in the speech of this child were constructions with
clitics. This type of construction accounted for the childs initial production across a whole of
three of the produced bodypart nouns, namely lani, quia and lo. Hence, this suggests that the
child did not hold clear grammatical categories concerning word classes, as clitics both appear
with nouns as well as with verbs.

4.1 The child's initial conceptualization of the meanings underlying bodypart region nouns
The underlying conceptualizations motivating the child to employ bodypart locatives were
assessed through detailed analysis of which referents were involved when the child employed
a bodypart region noun as a locative. Each bodypart locative utterance was thus analyzed for
its referent. In order to identify the exact referent I relied closely on the contextual situation as
present in the video recording and in very few cases on the contextual cues in notes taken
after the audio recordings. All the child's spatial relational utterances held clearly identifiable
trajectory and landmark
vi
objects with only few exceptions in the audio-recordings. The usage
of lani (and det although dets appeared less frequently
vii
) was the bodypart region noun,
which seemed employed in the most consistent way by the children. Lani and dets appeared
overall less frequent in the data compared to the bodypart region nouns quia and lo.
11

Lani
The child's initial use of lani referred to containment relationships, which
involved nonvisible trajectory objects. These utterances were in the context of the two
situations; one in reference to a piece of bread in bowl of soup (24;12) and a second one in
reference to a toy pistol which had fallen in between a pile of iron rods stacked on the ground
(27;23). Thus both uses referred to the notion of a trajectory object being constrained by the
region of a landmark object, but also to objects, which had become nonvisible to the speaker.
At a later age the child produced lani in utterances, which sometimes referred to the partly
visibility of the trajectory object or still at other times referred to a total enclosure of the
trajectory object. These contexts existed of; a small toy inside a container object, a puppy
lying in a pile of corn ears and air inside a balloon. Again at a later stage lani was also used
in reference to the notion of what perhaps was an "imaginative" constraint of the trajectory
object. The context of this particular usage consisted in the child playing with a non-cultural
and novel object, namely my own sons Fisher Price garage, which he had placed some toy
bulls on the middle open-sided platform. The landmark object (the garage) did not resemble a
container in anyway, since all four sides of the platform were open-sided. It did however
involve the notion of constraint, in that if the bull moved beyond the boundaries of the
platform it would fall to the ground. The fact that the platform was the middle section of three
platforms suggests that the child might have employed the metaphor extension of a human in
an up-right position to the landmark object (the garage) explaining his usage of lani to refer
to the spatial relationship
viii
. Interestingly, the child's initial uses of lani all involved the
notion of constraint, although not all uses also conflated the notion of containment, as is the
main properties underlying the preposition in in English. Cognitive Scientists take the notion
of containment to be the most central and basic property of the preposition in. However,
Zapotec bodypart region noun conveys the meaning of an inner.region of an object,
independent of its orientation, rather than conflating the notion of containment or inside in
relation to gravity, and this notion may explain why the Zapotec child mainly employed lani
to mean constraint, rather than containment
ix
.

Dets
The child's initial production of the bodypart locative dets was unclear in regard
to whether he took the noun dets to refer to a static spatial relationship, to a literal bodypart or
perhaps to convey both meanings at once. In any case the child's initial usage of dets appeared
within a full predicate construction referring to location, see examples (17a) and (17b). Note
once more, that the locative bodypart appears with a clitic suffix, suggesting the meaning of
its (the bottles) back.region.

(17a) Uttered while looking at a label stuck on a soda bottle age 28;11

a xi c ra bny dets-ng.
EXPR. that stuck PL person back.region=clitic.
Look, what someone has stuck on this.

(17b) Uttered while standing behind his mother (who was squatting), and just about to kick a
ball directly into her back age 28;11

cua-a dets ma.
put-1SG back.region mama.
I am going to throw the ball at mommys back.
12

Although these two constructions appeared in the exact same recording session
they suggest that the child relied on diverging conceptualizations concerning the meaning of
dets. In example (17a) the child was playing with an empty soda bottle, when he suddenly
expressed surprise seeing that a label was stuck on to it. The child's locative production of
dets suggested that he had not rely on an ego-centric conceptualization of the meaning of dets,
but had projected the literal meaning of a body part noun onto the bottle, perhaps relying on
an intrinsic frame of reference given the fact that the label was facing towards the child.
In example (17b), however the child produced dets in a sense, which seemed to
conflate the literal meaning of the noun "back" with a locative meaning. In fact in this
example it is totally ambiguous whether the child was referring to the mother's back
independent of the designation of the ball. However, since in example (17b) the child
produced dets as a signal lexeme and not with a clitic pronominal, one might argue that the
child might have been relying on this grammatical distinction to separate the literal meaning
of dets from the spatial relational meaning of dets. This remains speculative until more data
can be integrated for testing this hypothesis.
Again at a later age dets was produced in reference to the location of a puppy
behind a non-featured large straw basket, and did not involve a clitic pronominal. This
utterance also reflected the childs ability to impose a non-egocentric perspective in referring
to the location of the puppy. At this age the child additionally demonstrated comprehension of
the bodypart region noun dets directed to it by its mother.

Lo and Quia
The child used the bodypart locatives lo and quia with a relatively high degree
of polysemy, but at the same time these uses seemed associated with different underlying
conceptual systems.

Quia
The child's initial usage of quia was not restricted to one single meaning based
on a particular superimposed metaphorical extension. Although, some of the child's
utterances, which involved the bodypart region noun quia often referred to the placement of a
trajectory object on the top region of a three-dimensional landmark object, they also often
involved other types of profiling of static spatial relationships. The initial uses of quia, which
were produced by the child are presented in the examples (18) and (19).

(18) Uttered as the child is about to crawl up on top of a large object, presumable an inverted
container object - 24:12

na-a na-a ch-epi-a quia=y.
PRO-1SG PRO-1SG POT-ascend-1SG head.region=clitic.
I, I am going to climb up on top of that.

(19) Uttered as the child had just stepped on an orange peel lying on the ground 24;12

b-cua-a quia=ng.
CPL-put-1SG head.region=clitic.
I stepped on it.

13
At a later age the child used quia in reference to a source-path-goal activity
profiling a location at the highest region of the landmark object, as illustrated in examples
(20a) and (20b).

(20a) Uttered as a small toy doll had just fallen down from the roof of the driver's cabinet of
toy pick-up truck age 28;11

B-ix mon ndee quia car.
CPL-flip.over doll PRO head.region truck.
The man flipped over / down from this.

(20b) Uttered while the child stepped on a small toy sheep (he erroneously called it a goat
age 28;11

G-deed.c-a quia chiv.
CPL-pass.exactly-1SG head.region goat.
I stepped on top of the goat.

The child also used the bodypart region noun quia to express the path of an
activity involving the notion of "over". This was in relation to a trajectory object passing over
the top region of a landmark object, which was in the context of a small toy car driving over a
toy animal. Hence, the child used of the region noun quia to express the path of the trajectory
object rather than to express the abstract notion of support from gravity as is expressed by the
English preposition "on". Hence, the child seemed to be relying on a somewhat different
conceptual system involving associations, which often conflated the notion of the uppermost
region of a well-defined object with other associated space parameters such as the path of
activity.

Lo
Overall the childs initial usage of the bodypart region noun lo was to conflate
the perspective of social interaction combined with the notion of transfer of energy, similar to
what is expressed by datives in English. From the childs initial productions of this locative, it
seemed differentiated from the more conservative meaning the child employed when
producing the bodypart region noun quia. However, concerning the child underlying
conceptualization of lo, he seemed to have developed two categories for which lo could be
employed. On the one hand lo functioned to refer to abstract and socially interactive
face.to.face interactions, which in a certain sense was similar to dative usage of prepositions
in English. These were in contexts expressing the notion of a) a person lying to another
person, b) a person looking at another person and c) a person taking something from another
person. Examples (21a) to (21c) illustrate these particular employments of lo.

(21a) Uttered while joking with his older sister 24;12

g-uaaci-a lo naa.
CPL-lie-1SG face.region PRO.1SG.
I am saying that I am lying to you.

(21b) Uttered while looking at his sister 28;11

rian lu-a Nita.
14
put face-1SG Nita.
I am looking at Nita'.

(21c) Uttered while commenting on his own ongoing activity 28;11

xi rian lu-a beecu dxindx.
that put face-1SG dog small.
And I am looking at a dog.

(21d) Uttered as the child was just about to throw a ball at his sister 28;11

ey i-cu-a=ng lo.
EPR POT-put-1SG=CLITIC face.
Yes, I am going to throw it at you.

The second category of conceptualizations underlying the child's employment of
the bodypart noun lo expressed the notion of support of a trajectory object in relation to a
close-to-ground or a lower region landmark object. Examples of this particular kind of
meaning are illustrated in example (22).

(22) Uttered as the child was looking into the back region of a toy pick-up truck age 28;11

chu lo=g?
be face.region=clitic?
Whats inside it?

The main contexts in which the child used the bodypart region noun lo in
reference to a spatial relationship between two objects were as follows; for trajectory objects
lying on a straw mat spread on the ground, for the child lying on a mat, for a bag placed on a
self, for a container object placed on top of the driver's cabinet of a toy truck and for a sliver
stuck into the childs hand. Although many of these uses conflate the notion of support from
gravity, most uses were for close-to-ground relationships or for relationships, which were at
eye level of the speaker. The child's use of lo also conflated the notion of source-path-goal,
and again in relation to a lower region activity. Examples of these are illustrated in examples
(23a) and (23b).

(23a) Uttered as the child was about to step on some toys age 28;11

ni-a=ng lo nde.
IRR-1SG=CLITIC face.region PRO.
I was going to pass over / across of this.

(23b) Uttered as the child requested the mother to take a doll out from the back of a toy pick-
up truck age 28;11

gu-le=g lo car=ig.
CPL-take.out =clitic face.region truck=clitic.
Take it out of this truck.

15
Overall the child produced bodypart nouns as datives as well as regional
locatives at an early age and these often conflated several features within the specific
meaning. In conclusion specifically the bodypart nouns quia and lo were used with different
syntactic constructions and with polysemous meanings by the child. These two types of
bodypart nouns were also the most frequently produced bodypart nouns throughout the data
sample. These also seem to be the most frequent bodypart locative nouns in naturalistic
speech.

4.2.
In order to test the hypothesis regarding whether the childs acquisition of abstract locative
meanings of bodypart nouns was influenced by the his acquisition of the literal meanings of
bodypart nouns, I investigated the correlation between the childs spontaneous production of
each locative bodypart noun and his spontaneous production of each literal bodypart noun.
The results are reported in the following section. First I present data regarding the childs
spontaneous usage of literal body parts throughout the data sample.

The child's reference to literal body parts
During the specific period of data collection the child used a total of four body part terms in
reference to real body parts; namely the terms nii "foot", lo "face", naa "hand" and dets
"back". The child used nii productively in suffixed constructions when referring to his own
foot, to the foot of his sister and also to the leg of a table. The child also expressed
comprehension of the literal meaning of lo, which was used in reference to his face. Dets and
naa were both used in reference to his mothers back and hand. Table 2 illustrates the
correlation and the no-correlation between the childs usage of bodypart terms in reference to
real body parts and spatial relations. A marks positive cases of correlation between a
regional and a literal use of a bodypart, while X marks negative cases, that is when the
particular bodypart noun was used with one type of meaning, but not with the other type of
meaning. The notion of own versus other refers to whether the utterance was in reference to
child or to someone else.

Table 2: Correlations between the childs production of literal referring and locative region
referring bodypart nouns

BODYPART word

Lani Lo Quia Dets Nii

Regional meaning
X

Literal meaning
X (own) X (other) (own)

As illustrated in the table above, during the child's initial acquisition of body
part nouns there was not an overall one-to-one correlation between the childs use of the
literal body part nouns with the source domain meanings and the childs use of bodypart
region nouns in reference to spatial relationships. Only three out of the total of four produced
bodypart nouns appeared in both types of meanings (lo, dets and nii) while quia and lani,
despite being among the high frequent bodypart locative nouns produced by the child were
not produced with both meanings. This has implications for the embodiment hypothesis, in
that spontaneous production of bodypart locative nouns can develop independent of the
childs production of bodypart nouns with literal meanings
x


16
5. Discussion
The bodypart nouns quia (head) and lo (face) where the most frequently
appearing bodypart locatives at this early age. At first glance the meaning of these may seem
to share a great deal of resemblance with the English preposition on in for example the notion
of support from gravity. However, Zapotec bodypart locatives seem to involve a semantic
distinction, which prepositions do not rely on. In Zapotec one must distinguish between
whether a support relationship appears at a high level region of a landmark object, and for
which quia is most often employed, as opposed to whether a support relationship appears at a
close-to-ground level region of the landmark object, and for which lo is employed. Moreover,
the use of lo often conflates the notion of support from gravity with the notion of
interpersonal interaction at eye-level. The results from the analysis suggest that at a very early
age this Zapotec acquiring boy was aware of these language-specific semantic distinctions in
relation to referring to spatial relationships between two objects.

The meanings underlying the child's earliest uses of bodypart nouns seemed
related to social interaction and transfer of activity rather than to the mapping of the source
domain meanings of literal body parts in a one-to-one fashion. None of the child's uses of the
bodypart locatives were identified as erroneous by native adult Zapotec speakers, and thus
seemed to mirror adult usage of the bodypart system.
A final observation from the above analysis was that despite the fact that Zapotec bodypart
locatives appear in a sentential position (or in a preposition phrase), which is similar to the
structure for many Indo-European languages, the child's early bodypart locatives did not
occur in holophrastic constructions as is the well-known case for children acquiring
prepositions in Indo-European languages. Bodypart locatives, on the other hand, initially
appeared in clitic constructions. Additionally, the concept of behind dets was acquired earlier
than reported for children acquiring behind in English, and furthermore the appearance of dets
matched the age regarding the production of the notion of support and constraint. This
challenges a pure cognitive approach to the acquisition of spatial language where cognitive
complexity is the key prediction for acquisition rather than linguistic complexity. A cognitive
prediction might view this difference in the lexical "overlap" as a problem, which needs to be
worked out by the child in a one-to-one fashion before he is able to deal with both lexicons in
parallel. However this study does not find support for such prediction.
Overall the acquisition of San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec bodypart locative
terms, as appearing in the early spontaneous production of this particular child, suggests an
organization and conceptualization, which differs in structure from what has been attested for
children acquiring a prepositional language. Although Zapotec bodypart locative nouns
emerge at least just as early as prepositions do they initially follow a different acquisition
process in the speech of the child. The fact that bodypart locatives initially appear as
predicates makes their appearance more sudden than the process observed from children
acquiring verb particles/prepositions, and for which it has been suggested use prepositions as
sentence-structuring verbs (Tomasello, 1987). It may be the case that, while children
acquiring prepositions proceed from verb particles to predicates, children acquiring locative
nouns, such as is the case for Zapotec use bodypart locative nouns as full predicates from the
very beginning. This suggests two different routes accounting for childrens acquisition of
language used to refer to spatial relations, and may be explained in terms of Slobin's notion of
typological bootstrapping. The notion implies that cross-linguistic differences in childrens
language acquisition may be due to linguistic complexity rather than a cognitive complexity
(Slobin, 1997). A view compatible with that of Bowerman and Choi, 2001).


17
6. Conclusion
This preliminary study suggests that the process and emerging order for
childrens acquisition of spatial relational terms is dependent on the linguistic complexity
within the language being acquired. Whereas prepositions appear early in the one word
utterances of children, and frequently involve the childs own body as either the trajectory or
the landmark object, bodypart terms do not emerge until well into the multi-word stage of
language acquisition, and are not initially used in reference to the childs own body.
Semantically, prepositions/particles incorporate both path and region information and they are
both portmanteau items. San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec bodypart nouns are less relational (in
part because they do not encode path) than prepositions/particles, but are also the only means
of locating a specific region in the spatial relational array. Hence, bodypart locative nouns do
not serve as sentence-structuring verbs as they might for children acquiring English.
At the language-specific conceptual level these differences are reflected in the childrens
varied conceptualizations of the notion of support. At the level of reference, Danish and
English children are more likely to use their own bodies as trajectory or landmark objects than
this Zapotec child did. However, it is unlikely that these differences are only due to the
difference language structures as the particular way a language is used within culture practices
also plays a crucial role. In terms of embodiment and metaphor theory it does not seem to be
the case that the embodied semantics of Zapotec bodypart terms plays a facilitating role in
early acquisition (Sinha and J ensen de Lpez, 2000). There is some indication, though, that
the Zapotec child progresses faster towards constructing these terms into a system than
children acquiring prepositions do. Whether this is due to the transparent and embodied
semantics or it is due to the landmark-focused, non-portmanteau semantics of Zapotec
bodypart terms, is a topic for future research. Further support for the notion that acquiring
Zapotec bodypart nouns may provide Zapotec children with a conceptual system, which
differs from the habitual system developed by children acquiring different languages
structures is attested in my cross-cultural investigation of language comprehension and action
imitation of spatial relational concepts. The study showed that Zapotec and Danish children
perform in a systematic different way in their early spatial comprehension and cognition
(J ensen de Lpez, 2002a, J ensen de Lpez, 2002b, J ensen de Lpez, to appear).
Further research on the acquisition of Zapotec bodypart locative nouns would benefit from
analyzing data from Zapotec child-directed speech in order to compare the effect of input with
the analysis presented and in order to permit a more detailed appreciation of what influences
childrens acquisition of bodypart locative nouns.

i
I use the following abbreviations in this paper: 1, first person; 2, second person; 3, third person; SG, singular, PL, plural; PRO, pronoun;
CPL, completive aspect; FUT, future aspect HAB, habitual aspect; POT, potential aspect; PROG, progressive aspect; EXPR, expressive.
ii
An example of a spatial relationship is of the kind the cat is on the mat, where the preposition on is the locative word expressing where
the cat is in relation to the mat.
iii
I refer to this specific dialect of Zapotec using the general termZapotec rather than San Marcos Zapotec.
iv
To my knowledge, this is the first study investigating the acquisition of bodypart nouns at a very early age, however studies of children
acquiring Mayan languages which also make use of bodypart locative nouns show that children are above 5-years of age before they show
mastery within this category of words (Penny Brown, personal communication).
v
Data collection was carried out during an extended period of fieldwork starting in August 1995. My rutine visits several days aweek to the
childs home created a natural relaxing atmosphere for video-recording the spontaneous daily interactions of the child.
vi
The concept of Trajector refers to the entity whose location is of relevance and is similar, while the concept of Landmark refers to the
entity in relation to which the location of the Trajector is determined (Langacker, 1987). For the example in i, the cat is the trajector and the
mat landmark.
vii
As dets only occurred once and furthermore this was late into the period, the notion of consistent usage is only preliminary.
viii
Note that the notion of support fromgravity was not the central concern of the child in his conceptualization of this particulat spatial
relationship with novel objects. Elicitation of novel objects may be seen as the most precise way to tap into the underlying conceptualization
of spatial objects, as it demands the speaker to generate the spatial itemwithout relying on previous reference to the specific trajectory-
landmark relationship.
ix
The distinction between containment involving the physical properties of constraint merged with the properties of containment, as opposed
to constrainment involving the inner (stomach).region of a particular landmark object causes a problemfor semantic theories. It also
18

challenges the claimmade by mainstreamcognitive developmentalists, who argue that lexical concepts emerge as mappings froma set of
universal prelinguistic concepts, and lies at the heart of the Mandler-Bowerman debate.


References

Bowerman, Melissa and Choi, Soonja 2001 Shaping meanings for language: universal and language-specific in the
acquisition of spatial language categories. In Bowerman, Melissa and Levinson, Stephen C. (eds.), Language acquisition and conceptual
development, 475-511. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Brown, Roger 1973 A first language. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Brugman, Claudia (unpublished manuscript) Metaphor in the Elaboration of grammatical categories in Mixtec.

Bulter, Inez 1988 Gramatica Zapoteca de Yatzachi el Bajo. Serie gramtica de lengua indigena de Mxico. Summer
Institute of Linguistics.

Clark, Eve 1973 Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition 2:161-182.

Gentner, Dedre 1982 Why Nouns are Learned Before Verbs: Linguistic Relativity versus Natural Partitioning. In: Stan. A.
Kuczaj (ed.), Language development: vol. 2, Language, thought, and culture, 301-334. Hillsdale, NJ : Erlbaum.

J ensen de Lpez, Kristine to appear Culture, language and canonicality: Differences in the use of containers between
Zapotec (Mexican indigenous) and Danish children. In: Alan Costall and Dreier, Ole (eds.), Doing things with things. London: Ashgate.

J ensen de Lpez, Kristine 2002a Baskets and body-parts: a cross-cultural and cross-linguistic investigation of
childrens development of spatial cognition and language. Danish and Zapotec childrens spatial cognition and language. Institute of
Psychology, University of Aarhus. Ph.D. Dissertation.

J ensen de Lpez, Kristine 2002b Language-specific patterns in Danish and Zapotec childrens compehension of
spatial grams. The 31st Stanford Child Language Forum, ed. By Eve Clark: 50-59. Stanford University Press.
http://cspublications.stanford.edu/CLRF/2002/CLRF-2002-titel.html.

J ensen de Lpez, Kristine 1998 Learning to organize space by use of prepositions, body parts, verbs of motion
and disposition. Paper presented to the Conceptual, Discourse and Language Conference, Atlanta, USA, October 10-12.

J ohnson, Mark 1987 The body in the Mind: the bodily Basis of Meaning. University of Chicago Press.

J ohnston, J udith, R. and Slobin, Dan, I. 1979 The development of locative expressions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and
Turkish. Journal of Child Language 6: 529-545.

Lakoff, George 1987 Women, Fire, and Dangerous things: what categories reveal about the Mind. The University of
Chicago Press.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987 Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1: theoretical prerequisites. Standford,
California: Standford University Press.

Levinson, Stephen, C. 1996 Relativity in spatial conception and description. In: J ohn J . Gumperz and
Stephen, C. Levinson (eds.), Rethinking linguistic relativity, 177-202. Cambridge University Press.

Lucy, J ohn, A. 1992 Grammatical categories and cognition; a case study of the linguistic relativity hypothesis.
Cambridge University Press.

MacLaury, Robert, E. 1989 Zapotec Body-Part Locatives: Prototypes and Metaphoric Extensions. American
Linguistics 55/2: 119-153.

Munro, Pamela and Lopez, Fellipe, H. 1999 San Lucas Quiavin Zapotec Dictionary. Vol. 1. UCLA Chicano Studies
Research Center Publications.

Pickett, Velma and Black, Cheryl 1995 Gramtica Popular del Zapotec del Istmo, versin preliminar. Summer Institute
of Linguistics.

Rohlfing, Kathrine, J . 2002 UNDERstanding; How infants acquire the meaning of UNDER and other
spatial relational terms. Bielefeld University. Ph.D. Dissertation.

Sinha, Chris, G., Thorseng Lis .A., Hayashi, Mariko and Plunkett, Kim 1994 Comparative spatial semantics and
language acquisition: evidence fromDanish, English and J apanese. Journal of Semantics 11: 253-287.

Sinha, Chris, G. and J ensen de Lpez, Kristine 2000 Language, culture and the embodiment of spatial cognition.
Cognitive Linguistics 11 - 1/2: 17-41.

Slobin, Dan, I. 1997 The Universal, the Typology, and the Particular in Acquisition. In Dan Slobin (ed.), The
crosslinguistic study of language acquisition, vol 5: expanding the contexts, 1-39. Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, Publishers.

19

Tomasello, Michael 1987 Learning to use prepositions: a case study. Journal of Child Language 12: 79-98.

Tomasello, Michael 1992 First Verbs: A case study of early grammatical development. Cambridge University Press.

Zlatev, J ordan 2003 Holistic spatial semantics of Thai. In: Gary, B. Palmer and Eugene, H. Casad (eds.), Cognitive
Linguistics and Non-IndoEuropean Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Cognitive Linguistics 18.