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:
“Grammar is a tricky, inconsistent thing. Being the backbone of speech and writing, it should, we think, be eminently logical, make perfect sense, like the human skeleton. But, of course, the skeleton is arbitrary, too. Why twelve pairs of ribs rather than eleven or thirteen? Why thirty-two teeth? It has something to do with evolution and functionalism—but only sometimes, not always. So there are aspects of grammar that make good, logical sense, and others that do not.”
—John Simon (b. 1925)
“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)
“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)