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Bcuaa quiang – I stepped HEAD orange peel! The acquisition of Zapotec bodypart locatives Kristine Jensen de López University of Aalborg, Denmark Kristine@hum.auc.dk 1. Introductioni

Observations of children’s 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 relationsii 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, Johnston 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 parent’s 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 someone’s 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 Johnston and Slobin’s 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 (Johnston 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 Choi’s comparison of English- and Korean-acquiring children’s 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 Zapoteciii 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

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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 children’s 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 children’s 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 boy’s 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 Juarez. 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 Güilá Zapotec, San Juan Guelavía 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 bodyiv. 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

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(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 López, (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.

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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 (Jensen de López, 1998, Jensen de López, 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 Láani 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.

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‘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-lúu bidy láni.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

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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 láani (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 láani 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 láani, 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 láani 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-ú lo bniin.

FUT-go-2SG face.region child. ‘go look to the child’.

(12b) cuaa beecu lo Lipy.

Ø-receive dog face.region Phillip. ‘take the dog away from Phillip’.

(12c) r.güia 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

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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 Brugman’s 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

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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’.

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(15b) ch-áa 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 láani (stomach), nii (foot) and dets (back) The semantics of the bodypart term láani may involve the notion of canonical containment, however, similar to lo, láani may also conflate the source of activity path as example (16). (16) b-teed chiv láani 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 láani (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 láani 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. Johnson (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 child’s 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 child’s 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 child’s usage of bodypart terms as locative region nouns, at least until the metaphorical structure of

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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 Slobin’s (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 child’s teenage sister who worked with me on a regular basis (see Jensen de López, 2002). The final transcriptions were checked against context using the video-datav. 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 láani 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 child’s initial production across a whole of three of the produced bodypart nouns, namely láani, 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 landmarkvi objects with only few exceptions in the audio-recordings. The usage of láani (and det although dets appeared less frequentlyvii) was the bodypart region noun, which seemed employed in the most consistent way by the children. Láani and dets appeared overall less frequent in the data compared to the bodypart region nouns quia and lo.

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Láani

The child's initial use of láani 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 láani 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 láani 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 son’s 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 láani to refer to the spatial relationshipviii. Interestingly, the child's initial uses of láani 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 láani to mean constraint, rather than containmentix. 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 bottle’s) back.region. (17a) Uttered while looking at a label stuck on a soda bottle – age 28;11

a xi cá ra bïny dets-ïng. 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 mommy’s back’.

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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 child’s 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’.

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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 child’s 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 child’s 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.

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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

chúu lo=g? be face.region=clitic? ‘What’s 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 child’s 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’.

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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 child’s 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 child’s 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 child’s 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 mother’s back and hand. Table 2 illustrates the correlation and the no-correlation between the child’s 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 child’s production of literal referring and locative region referring bodypart nouns

BODYPART word

Láani 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 child’s use of the literal body part nouns with the source domain meanings and the child’s 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 láani, 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 child’s production of bodypart nouns with literal meaningsx

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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 children’s 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 children’s 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).

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6. Conclusion This preliminary study suggests that the process and emerging order for

children’s 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 child’s 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 child’s 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 children’s 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 Jensen de López, 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 (Jensen de López, 2002a, Jensen de López, 2002b, Jensen de López, 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 children’s 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 term Zapotec 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 a week to the child’s 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 from gravity 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 item without 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 problem for semantic theories. It also

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challenges the claim made by mainstream cognitive developmentalists, who argue that lexical concepts emerge as mappings from a 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 gramática de lengua indigena de México. Summer Institute of Linguistics. Clark, Eve 1973 Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition 2:161-182.

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