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

side or another. Each body part was paired with a different distracter body part for the
two trials.
The question asked of the children for each pair was Cu'an ____ bùunny? 'Where
is the person's ___?' In SLQZ it is generally unnatural to have unpossessed body parts in
sentences, so rather than present the child with an awkward question such as Cu'an ni'ih?
'Where is the foot?', we decided to use the possessed noun construction. 15 All 16 pairs
are presented in Table 14; the answers that correspond to the question are in bold.
The test was designed so that all of the body parts were tested once before any
body part was tested a second time. This way, if a child got fussy half way through, she
would have provided at least one response for each body part.
The children were encouraged during the pre-test to select their answer by
pointing, but I counted anything that looked like choosing as a response. Most often the
two youngest girls chose by placing a sticker on the picture they were choosing. These
stickers were removed before the book was used to test another child.
15 Thanks to Pamela Munro and Silvia Lopez for much discussion on this.
50