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

linguistic order of acquisition of prepositions and how the SLQZ data correspond with
the observed order of acquisition in other languages.
There are other data that further substantiate the dissociation between the BP
nouns and prepositions in the acquisition of Valley Zapotec. In her dissertation, Jensen
de López (2002) reports the results of both a language comprehension task involving
approximately 40 children acquiring San Marcos Tlapazola Zapotec (SMTZ) and a
longitudinal study of one child acquiring SMTZ (15 to 33 months). (San Marcos
Tlapazola is very close to San Lucas Quiaviní and can be found in the map in Figure 2 to
the southwest of Tlacolula.)
Although her experimental design and the analysis of her data are founded in a
much different framework, some of her data are directly relevant and comparable to my
results. In Tables 21 and 22 I have organized data that Jensen de López gathered in her
longitudinal study of one boy acquiring SMTZ. Between the age of two and two-and-a-
half years old, the child reportedly uses four of the BP terms in locative constructions;
these are displayed in Table 21. He uses láani 'in', quia and lo 'on', and dets 'behind.'
Table 21. Production of Body Part Locatives in SMTZ
SMTZ
BP term 17
locational meaning reported age of first use of term “employed
as [a] spatial locative during the data
period” (136)
láani 'in' 24 months and 12 days
quia 'on, on top of' 24 months and 12 days
lo 'on, in front of' 27 months and 23 days
dets 'behind' 30 months
17
The SMTZ data are presented in Jensen de López’s orthography (Jensen de López
1999, 2002).
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