The Categorial Status of Body Part Prepositions in Valley Zapotec ...

although seems to have more restrictions than the Colonial preposition. I plan to
document the non-locative meanings of the preposition loh in future work.
4.0 Child Acquisition of Body Part Terms in SLQZ
This section examines the acquisition of BP locatives in San Lucas Quiaviní
Zapotec. I wanted to explore whether the fact that the BP locatives developed from and
are homophonous with body parts affects their acquisition. Do the homophony and
iconicity with body parts have a facilitating effect on the acquisition of BP locatives?
Are children sensitive to the grammatical differences between the BP locatives and the
BP nouns, such as those presented in Section 2?
This pilot study tested four SLQZ speaking children (ages 1;6, 2;3, 6;4, 7;11) 11 on
their knowledge of the meanings of both the body parts and the BP locatives using a
forced choice, picture identification task. The data suggest that the BP locatives are
acquired as independent grammatical elements and their acquisition is not related to the
acquisition of the corresponding body parts. Moreover, this dissociation between the
acquisition of the BP locatives and the body parts supports the hypothesis that the
locative terms are not synchronically metaphorical extensions of the nominal forms, as
the locatives can be acquired without the BP nouns having been acquired. The results are
consistent with an analysis of BP locatives as prepositions.
11
Ages are given in the following format: years;months. For example, 1;6 stands for one
year, six months old.
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