| 释义 |
Zapotec, n. and a.|ˈzæpəʊtɛk|
Also 8– Zapoteca, -o, 9 Zapoteque.
[ad. Sp. zapoteco, zapoteca, ad. Nahuatl tzapoteca, pl. of tzapotecatl, lit. ‘person of the place of the sapodilla’.]
A. n. A member of an American Indian people of southern Mexico.
1797Encycl. Brit. XI. 668/1 To the south-east..were the great provinces of the Mixtecas, the Zapotecas, and the Chiapanecas. 1875Ibid. I. 694/2 In Chiapa were the Zapotecs, in Yucatan the Mayas. 1877L. H. Morgan Anc. Soc. ii. vii. 195 The confederacy was confronted by hostile..tribes..: the tribes of Chiapas, and the Zapotecs. 1953S. Bedford Sudden View iii. v. 231 The ancient Zapotecs..who may have come from Asia across the Behring Straits, and who are believed to have built..these temples at Mitla and Monte Albàn. 1979P. Theroux Old Patagonian Express v. 75 These Indians—the Zapotecs—were a matrilineal people.
b. Any of several dialects or languages of the Zapotecs.
1881Encycl. Brit. XII. 828/1 The other chief stock or at least not yet classified Mexican tongues are the Miztec and Zapotec of Oajaca, [etc.]. 1936E. C. Parsons Mitla i. 16 These ladies understand Zapoteco..but they do not speak it. 1965Language XLI. 73 In Trique, Isthmus Zapotec, and certain other languages of Mexico, certain clause types have the preferred ordering predicate, subject, object. 1973Times 24 Mar. 11/8 The student of architecture we met in the square of Oaxaca was talking Zapotec to his girl-friend.
B. adj. Of or pertaining to the Zapotecs.
1861[see expectant ppl. a. 1 b]. 1927D. H. Lawrence Mornings in Mexico 45 Four words in the idioma, the Zapotec language..‘You understand them?’ 1934A. Huxley Beyond Mexique Bay 46 A bas-relief of an ithyphallic man—the work..of the pre-Zapotec occupants of the site. 1972Bk. Thousand Tongues (rev. ed.) 464/2 The Zapoteco language is spoken in a number of regional dialects. 1980Sci. Amer. Feb. 46/3 Its hieroglyphs, mostly carved from 500 B.C. to A.D. 700, record the rise and decline of the Zapotec state.
Hence Zapoˈtecan a. and n.
1922K. Al-Shimas Mexican Southland vii. 122 The Zapotecan tongue is spoken by at least 500,000 souls. Ibid. 126 Those accosted made answer in Zapotecan. 1962E. Birney Ice Cod Bell or Stone 54 Rhythmic and Zapotecan-proud the classic women dance. 1978Language 506/2 In the Zapotecan family of Oaxaca, ‘Choapan Zapotec phonology’, by Larry and Rosemary Lyman..employs ‘a hierarchically oriented framework’ of five levels, from phoneme to ‘phonological sentence’. |