Consonants

Most stops occur to be realized as fricatives and may fluctuate as well; /p b d ɡ/ become [ɸ β ð ɣ~x]. Rhotic consonants are voiceless when preceding a voiceless consonant; /ɾ~r/ ~ [ɾ̥~r̥]. Most consonants may also be geminated (ex. /t/ ~ /tː/). Approximant consonants are phonetically realized as [j̟] and [w̟].

Voiceless stops generally have a slight aspiration. Some sounds are only found in loanwords (/f/ and /j/).^[4]

The following is represented in the San Juan Guelavía dialect:

Vowels

Tlacolula Valley Zapotec vowels are classified as modal, creaky (á), checked (a'), or breathy (ah).^[4]

Vowels may also occur as pharyngealized /vˤ/ or glottalized /vˀ/.

Vowels may be differentiated by phonation and tone. Tlacolula Valley Zapotec has four tones: level high, level low, rising, and falling. Vowels differing in phonation often occur together in the same syllable as diphthongs. While a given vowel complex will always have the same tone, there are no tone contrasts for the same vowel complex.^[4]

The chart the level high, level low, rising, or falling the tone makes that the syllables make in the vowels of the word. Speakers take notice of the vowel complex, in the chart most words are spelled in the same way.^[5]

Word order variation

Zapotec languages also show the phenomenon known as pied-piping with inversion, which may change the head-initial order of phrases such as NP, PP, and QP.^[11]

Verbal morphology

Noun morphology

There is virtually no true morphology in the Zapotec noun. There is no case marking. Plurality is indicated (if at all) in the noun phrase, either by a number or a general quantifier that may be simply translated as "plural". Possessors are also indicated in the noun phrase either by a nominal or a pronominal element. (In both of these cases, since the plural morpheme and the pronouns may be enclitics, they are often written as if they were prefixes and suffixes, respectively, although they arguably are not true affixes.)^[11]

The only clear morphology in most varieties of Zapotec is the derivational prefix /ʂ-/ (or its cognate) that derives an inherently possessed noun from a noun that does not take a possessor. Compare Mitla Zapotec /koʰb/ 'dough', /ʃ-koʰb/ 'dough of'. The derived noun is used when the possessor is indicated, as in /ʃkoʰb ni/ 'his/her dough'.^[11]

Determiners

In Western Tlacolula Valley Zapotec, determiners come in varied forms and have a multitude of uses, with current research suggesting that they may have even more purposes that have yet to be discovered. Most often though, they are used to indicate definiteness, and make both spatial and temporal distinctions in regular discourse, which is similar to several other Zapotec languages.^[12] The use of these specific determiners is extremely similar to that of the demonstrative adjective and the definite article in English and Spanish. These four main determiners are: =rè (the proximal), =kang (the medial), =re (the distal), and =ki (the distal/invisible).^[12] The three spatial determiners each have their own specific usages: =rè (the proximal) is used to reference something close to the speaker, =re (the distal) has the same purpose for things that are slightly further away, but generally still visible, and =ki (the distal/invisible) is for referents that are not visible at all to the speaker at the time of utterance.^[12] It is possible that =kang (the medial) can be used to signify a medium distance between =rè and =re, but it is more likely that its main function is actually indicative.^[12] Also, research in the last decade has revealed that the distal =ki is typically the most commonly used determiner, since its function of denoting the past tense is required when telling folktales, local legends, or recounting personal narratives.^[12] At this time, there is still no evidence to suggest that the speaker’s position relative to that of the referent’s carries any significance in any of these scenarios.^[12]