which words are modified to express grammatical categories. With regards to verbs it may be called conjugation, and in the case of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and particles it is called declension. In Tzeltal, inflection is most commonly achieved through affixation, though other inflectional processes exist as well. Person marking The affixes of person marking depend on the case of the verb. In the absolutive case, all person-marking affixes are suffixes: Use of the -ik in the third person plural is optional. Ergative case is marked with prefixes, each of which has two allomorphs depending on whether the word begins with a vowel or a consonant. Rather than having different prefixes for singular and plural person, the plural is expressed with the addition of a suffix as well as the prefix: Variation between k~hk is characteristic of central Tzeltal. Thought often pre-aspirated, the prevocalic second person ergative form is the sole case of a Tzeltal initial vowel not preceded by a glottal stop. The sets of phrases below demonstrate various combinations of person marking, one with the consonant-initial verb tʼun ("follow") and the vowel-initial verb il ("see") (all are in the imperfective aspect, denoted by ya). ya h-tʼun-at I am following you ya a-tʼun-on You are following me ya s-tʼun-otik He is following us ya h-tʼun-tik-0 We are following him ya h-tʼun-tik-at We are following you ya a-tʼun-otik You are following us or you (pl.) are following us ya h-tʼun-tik-ex We are following you (pl.) ya a-tʼun-on-ik You (pl.) are following me ya s-tʼun-at-ik They are following you ya hk-il-at I see you ya aw-il-on You see me ya y-il-otik He sees us ya hk-il-tik-0 We see him ya hk-il-tik-at We see you ya aw-il-otik You see us or You (pl.) see us ya hk-il-tik-ex We see you (pl.) ya aw-il-on-ik You (pl.) see me ya y-il-at-ik They see you Aspect marking Lacking grammatical tense, Tzeltal makes grammatical aspectual distinctions, using "preverbal auxiliaries" and/or verbal affixes, whereas temporal relations are pragmatically inferred. There are four aspects in Tzeltal: imperfective, perfective, progressive, and perfect. Each aspect is marked differently for transitive and intransitive verbs. Verbs are the only grammatical component able to receive aspect marks in Tzeltal. Imperfective The imperfective aspect corresponds to an event or action considered as ongoing or unbound. If the action marked as imperfective is understood to be in the present tense, it is generally interpreted as an