Zapotec Languages - Grammar

Grammar

Zapotec languages vary considerably. Some characteristics of Zapotec grammar common to the language family (though not necessarily present in all members) are: an extensive 3rd person pronoun system based on noun classes such as divinity, babies, animals, objects (inanimate), etc.; a distinction in the first person plural ("we") as to inclusive (including the hearer(s)) and exclusive (not including the hearer(s)); a frequent underspecificity of singular/plural distinctions.

Read more about this topic:  Zapotec Languages

Famous quotes containing the word grammar:

    “Literary gentlemen, editors, and critics think that they know how to write, because they have studied grammar and rhetoric; but they are egregiously mistaken. The art of composition is as simple as the discharge of a bullet from a rifle, and its masterpieces imply an infinitely greater force behind them.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
    —Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    “The new grammar of race is constructed in a way that George Orwell would have appreciated, because its rules make some ideas impossible to express—unless, of course, one wants to be called a racist.”
    —Stephen Carter (b. 1954)