Isthmus Zapotec

The consonants for Isthmus Zapotec are as follows:

This sound "bŕ" occurs very rarely for a bilabial trill [ʙ]. It occurs in words like "berenbŕ".

A couple consonant sounds may also be geminated (ex.; /l/ ~ /lː/, /n/ ~ /nː/).

Isthmus Zapotec has five vowels (a, e, i, o, u). These occur in the three phonation types of stressed syllables: model, checked, and laryngealized.

Checked vowels sound as if they end in glottal stop; for example words such as in English "what, light take, put." The glottal stop is a vowel feature. Checked vowels can also be a slightly laryngealized during a glottal closure.

Laryngealized vowels are longer and pronounced with a creaky voice. Sometimes they are pronounced with a clear pronunciation of the vowel after a soft glottal stop. There are not breathy vowels in Zapotec.[7]

An example for the morpheme {-ka}, attaching it to an Isthmus Zapotec word will make the word plural. The Isthmus Zapotec word zigi (chin) when {-ka} is added as a prefix will become kazigi (chins). Zike (shoulder) will become kazike (shoulders) and diaga (ear) will become kadiaga (ears).

Yes/no question particles In Isthmus Zapotec are not mandatory, however, the question particle [lá?] is required in these form of questions.[10]

Isthmus Zapotec has mainly open syllables.

• Discourse level is the highest level of complexity in Isthmus Zapotec that covers a broad range levels from utterance to verbal to conversation unit.
• There are still limitations of discourse level as to whether there should be another level between discourse level and utterance level.
• The discourse level comes in two forms, monologue and conversation.
• Monologue form includes similar properties of utterance level to the point they are overlapping one another.
• Conversation form has two subclasses, dependent and independent clauses. Independent clause is more common than dependent clause, it has utterances or non-verbal units as its opening and closing in most cases.

• Utterance level consists of two class, dependent and independent. Dependent utterance has three subdivisions, conversation utterance opener is used in initial human interaction. conversation utterance sequence is used in ongoing speech (listen and respond), and conversation utterance closer is used in closing the conversation. Independent utterance types include poetry, letters, instructions, etc.

1. Utterance opener: Hello, how are you doing today?
2. Utterance sequence: I'm doing great, thanks for asking.
3. Utterance closer: Bye, see you later.

• Sentence level is composed of grammatical units that can be a complete statement, dependent and independent classes are its major category. Dependent sentence is the subsequent statement of a previous sentence while independent sentence is not. Dependent has two clauses and each with different composition.

1. Clause sentence: multiple clauses and in occasional cases of tagmeme, a smallest functional element unit in language.
2. Non-clause sentence: incomplete clauses or fragments.

• Independent level includes two different classes as well, clause and non-clause sentence.

1. Clause sentence: contains only clauses
2. Non-clause sentence: A phrase or word that forms independent clause but less prevalent, only vocatives and limited informational sentences.

• A clause is similar to a sentence, it can include another clause within the clause and phrases. The clause is part of predicate in which belongs to a sentence containing an action about the subject. Clause level contains two categories, dependent and independent.

1. Dependent clauses takes slots in sentences, clauses, or phrases. For example, the sentence "when she gets here, tell me," has two dependent markers, one is when (time slot) and the other is the comma. There could also be location slot just like in the sentence she's driving to the dentist.
2. Independent clauses takes only takes places in obligatory slots that can be clause or phrase at the same time.

• Phrase level mainly contains few words that function as units and dependent phrases even when phrase level is primarily independent. For example, "how much money does he have?", how much money is the independent clause, and the reply (a number) is the dependent phrase including the tagmeme.
• Phrases are mostly composed of words or filled with other clauses and phrases.

• Word level is the most common level among the hierarchical structure, mainly composed of phonemes, affixes, suffixes, and other grammatical units. Two categories of word level is its ability to become a sentence by its own, dependent and independent.

Independent words can be separated and count as a complete sentence by its own and at least reply to a question that is specific to an object, location, etc. For example, "what do you call this building?" or "which store did you go to?".

Dependent words have two forms, enclitic and proclitic. Separating them will not form a complete sentence or response but they fill in more slots than independent words.[11]