Language name and location: Coatec Zapotec, Mexico [Refer to Ethnologue]

语言名称和分布地区: 科亚特克-萨波特克语 (San Baltaza Loxicah Zapotec), 墨西哥

1. ðuβ ˥˨

21. 

2. t̪op ˩˥

22.   ɣaɭ ˥˩ t̪iβtʲop ˩˥

3. t͡ʂon̪ ˩˥

23.   ɣaɭ ˥˩ t̪in̪βt͡ʂon̪ ˩˥

4. ðap ˥˨

24.   

5. ɣaʔj *

25.   

6. ʂop ˥˨

26.   

7. ɣað ˥˨

27. 

8. ʂoʔn̪ *

28.  

9. jæʔ *

29.  

10. t̪iʔ *

30.  ɣaɭ ˥˩ n̪t̪iʔ

11. t̪i(ʔ)βðjuβ ˥˨(10 + 1)

40.  t̪op ˩˥ ɣaɭ ˥˩ ( 2 x 20 )

12. t̪i(ʔ)βtʲop ˩˥ (10 + 2)

50.  t̪op ˩˥ ɣaɭ ˥˩ n̪t̪iʔ

13. t̪in̪ ˥˨

60.  t͡ʂon ̪˩˥ ɣaɭ ˥˩ ( 3 x 20 )

14. t̪i(ʔ)ða ˥˨     (10 + 4)

70. 

15. t̪iʔn̪ *

80.  ðap ˥˨ɣaɭ ˥˩  ( 4 x 20 )

16. t̪i(ʔ)n̪βðjuβ ˥˨ (15 + 1)

90. 

17. t̪i(ʔ)n̪βtʲop ˩˥  (15 + 2)

100. ðuβ ˥˨ ajoʔ *

18. t̪i(ʔ)n̪βt͡ʂon̪ ˩˥ (15 + 3)

200. t̪op ˩˥ ajoʔ *

19. t̪i(ʔ)n̪βðap ˥˨  (15 + 4)

1000. ðuβ ˥˨ mil ˥  ( mil < Spanish )

20. ɣaɭ ˥˩ 

2000. t̪op ˩˥ mil ˥

Linguists providing data and dateː Dr. Rosemary Beam de Azcona, Seminario de Lenguas Indigenas, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM ( Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Mexico, January 25, 2013.

提供资料的语言学家: Dr. Rosemary Beam de Azcona, 2013 年 1 月 25 日

Other comments: Coatec Zapotec or San Baltaza Loxicah Zapotec has a vigesimal.

Please note that the following are the base morphemes. They cannot occur in isolation. They must occur with a complement, not two, but two something. If there is no noun and one is counting in a more abstract sense, one adds a sort of dummy inanimate pronoun. So if teaching a child or a foreigner to count on his fingers etc., the following would have added to them an enclitic, the third person inanimate pronoun, which in this variety would be /=e ˥/ following a consonant and /=j ˥/ following a vowel.

Note also that in this language the phonemic glottal stop functions as a tone. Phonetically it has a high rising pattern in most instances, though this varies while the glottalization is more consistent and makes the contrast with the other four tones of the language. This is why there are no tone letters transcribed below for glottallized morphemes.

There is some doubt about tone, including glottalization on unstressed syllables, and about the lexical integrity of some of the compositional forms. This requires more fieldwork or at least access to some recordings that I currently don’t have access to. In the compositional forms in 11-12, 14, and 16-19, I suspect that the glottalization in the first syllable is actually not there, or at least not there all the time, but I currently can’t say for certain. Likewise, I am not sure whether to consider forms like /t̪op ˩˥ ɣaɭ ˥˨ n̪t̪iɁ βɣaɁj/ ‘55’, as single words, or if multiple words then I’m not sure how many. This has repercussions because if there is only one stressed syllable per word and if tone only contrasts on stressed syllables, then certain of these tones/glottal stops might not be real.

In the past I have elicited all the numbers here and more, but unfortunately it’s been a long time and I don’t trust my memory with data so I am not filling in all the boxes. The problem is, most of my field-notes and recordings are in the United States and I am here in Mexico. When I was last in the US I sent notes and recordings to the AILLA archive, but they haven’t digitized them yet so the information is temporarily unavailable. The forms here for 22 and 23 are surprising to me and not what I would have guessed based on memory, but I was able to find them in a text and so I expect that they are correct. If you’re still working on this topic in a few months feel free to check back with me to see if the notes are digitized yet, or look for them on the AILLA website. Consider the form 55 which I cited above, I believe it should say '15'. It seems that a morpheme –n̪- unites powers of ten/twenty but when ones are added to these units –β- is used. The unique forms for ‘13’ and ‘55’ are not repeated in greater numbers, where instead the compounds revert to 10+ 3 and 10+ 5 strings. In 22 and 23, or at least the forms gleaned from this text I mentioned, it is surprising here that the ti string shows up, as if meaning ‘10’, but note that the -n̪- is absent. Compare ‘22’ to ‘30’. The form for ‘22’ is surprising and the ti makes it look like it would be 32 instead of 22, but you can see that ’30 has an –n- which is lacking in the form given in the text for ‘22’. The forms for ‘70’ and ‘90’, which I did not fill in below because I could not find them in the notes I have with me, I did find in the notes of a previous researcher (Dow Robinson, who published his notes in 1961 I believe), though I do not completely trust his notes, but since mine are unavailable, it’s worth mentioning that I interpret his transcription of ’70’ as /t͡ᶊon̪ ˩˥ ɣaɭ ˥˨ nʐo ˩ t̪iɁ/ and his transcription of ‘90’ as /ðap ˥˨ ɣaɭ ˥˨ nʐo ˩ t̪iɁ/. /n-ʐo˩/ is HABITUAL-there.are, so perhaps the latter string would be literally ‘four twenties there are ten’ and furthermore perhaps the –n- seen in ‘30’ and ‘50’ below comes from a shortening of /nʐo˩/.  Obviously, mil is a Spanish loanword.

Note that for numbers 5, 8, 9, 10 and 15: In this language the contrast between plain and laryngealized vowels has merged with the tonal contrast, so that the glottal stop here essentially counts as the tone.