2.5.2. Potential Adjectives Derived from Verbal Roots 256
2.6. Adjectives Derived from Verbal Roots or Stems with -lac or -lic 257
2.6.1. Adjectives Derived from Celeritive Stems 257
2.6.2. Adjectives Derived from Inchoative Stems 258
2.6.3. Adjectives Derived from Transitive Roots with -lac 259
2.6.4. Adjectives Derived from Positional Roots with -lac or -lic 259
2.7. Positional Adjectives Marked by -cabal 260
2.8. Derived Adjectives Marked by -en 260
2.9. Derived Adjectives Marked by -em or -om 261
2.10. Adjectives Derived from CVC Transitive and Positional Roots Without Suffixation 262
3. Participles 264
3.1. Participles Marked by -(a)an 264
3.2. Participles Marked by -bil 269
3.3. Participles Marked by -Vl 274
4. Pluralization 274
5. Adjectival Compounds 277
6. Adjectival Phrases 280
Contents xi
7. Summary of Adjectival Changes Through Time 281
Notes 281
CHAPTER 11: POSITIONALS 282
1. Positional Adjectives 283
1.1. Positional Adjectives in Colonial Yucatec 283
1.2. Positional Adjectives in Modern Yucatec 284
2. Positional Verbs 285
2.1. Positional Verbs in Colonial Yucatec 285
2.2. Positional Verbs in Modern Yucatec 286
3. Summary of Changes in Positionals Through Time 287
CHAPTER 12: AFFECTS 288
1. Verbal Affects 288
1.1. Verbal Affects in Colonial Yucatec 288
1.1.1. Verbal Affects Marked by -m 288
1.1.2. Verbal Affects Marked by -ancil/-ancal 296
1.2. Verbal Affects in Modern Yucatec 299
1.2.1. Verbal Affects Marked by -b’-al 299
1.2.2. Verbal Affects Marked by -(á)ankil 300
2. Adjectival Affects 305
2.1. Adjectival Affects in Colonial Yucatec 305
2.1.1. Adjectival Affects Marked by -ci 305
2.1.2. Adjectival Affects Marked by -nac 306
2.2. Adjectival Affects in Modern Yucatec 313
3. Adjectival Compounds Derived from Basic Color Terms 314
3.1. Color Compounds in Colonial Yucatec 314
3.2. Color Compounds in Modern Yucatec 318
4. Sound Symbolism 320
5. Some Semantic Foci of Affects 322
6. Summary of Changes in Affects Through Time 325
Note 325
CHAPTER 13: REDUPLICATION 326
1. Adjectival Reduplication 326
1.1. Reduplicated Adjectives Based on Adjectival Roots 326
1.2. Reduplicated Adjectives Based on Affect Stems 329
1.2.1. Reduplicated Adjectives Marked by -ci 330
1.2.2. Reduplicated Adjectives Marked by -nac 335
2. Participial Reduplication 340
2.1. Reduplicated Participles Marked by -Vc 340
2.2. Reduplicated Participles with Infixes 341
2.2.1. Reduplicated Participles Marked by -Vl- 341
2.2.2. Reduplicated Participles Marked by -uN- and -aN 341
2.2.3. Reduplicated Participles Marked by -man- 347
2.3. Reduplicated Participles Derived from Verbal Roots without Affixes 349
2.3.1. Reduplicated Participles Derived from Intransitive Roots without Affixes 349
xii Contents
2.3.2. Reduplicated Participles Derived from Transitive Roots without Affixes 349
3. Verbal Reduplication 351
3.1. Verbal Reduplication without Affixes 351
3.2. Reduplicated Transitive Verbs in Compound Stems 353
3.3. Verbal Reduplication with Infixes 354
4. Nominal Reduplication 354
5. Reduplicated Particles 355
5.1. Reduplicated Particle Stems without Suffixes 355
5.2. Reduplicated Particle Stems with Infixes 356
6. Reduplicated Number Words 357
7. Stem Reduplication 358
8. Phrase Reduplication 359
8.1. Reduplicated Phrases Composed of Simple and Compound Expressions 359
8.2. Semantic and Syntactic Parallelism 361
9. Conclusions 364
Notes 364
CHAPTER 14: PARTICLES 366
1. Particle Roots 366
2. Derived Particles 367
3. Adverbial Particles 368
3.1. Temporal Adverbs 368
3.2. Locative Adverbs 369
3.3. Manner Adverbs 370
4. Interrogative Particles 371
5. Negative Particles 373
6. Conjunctive Particles 375
7. Prepositional Particles 379
8. Modal Particles 381
9. Reportative Particles 383
10. Exclamatory Particles 384
11. Particle Compounds 386
12. Particle Phrases 388
13. Summary of Changes in Particles Through Time 390
CHAPTER 15: DEICTIC PARTICLES 391
1. Terminal Deictics 391
1.1. Terminal Deictics in Colonial Yucatec 391
1.2. Terminal Deictics in Modern Yucatec 393
1.3. Historical Change in Terminal Deictics 393
2. Initial Deictics and Deictic Frames 395
2.1. Initial Deictics in Colonial Yucatec 395
2.2. Initial Deictics in Modern Yucatec 399
2.3. Embedded Terminal Deictics 402
2.4. Historical Change in Initial Deictics and Deictic Frames 405
2.4.1. Vowel Fusion in [y]-Final Initial Deictics 406
Contents xiii
2.4.2. Retention of /l/ in Terminal Deictics that Immediately Follow Initial Deictics Ending
in a Laryngeal Consonant 420
3. Summary of Changes in Deictic Particles Through Time 421
Notes 421
CHAPTER 16: SYNTAX AND DISCOURSE 423
1. Basic Word Order 423
1.1. Basic Word Order in Transitive Clauses 424
1.2. Basic Word Order in Intransitive Clauses 426
1.2.1. Basic Word Order in Passive Clauses 426
1.2.2. Basic Word Order in Antipassive Clauses 428
1.3. Indirect-Object Advancement 429
2. Focused Word Orders 431
2.1. Agent Focus 431
2.2. Patient Focus 435
2.3. Subject Focus 437
2.4. Adverbial Focus 439
2.4.1. Manner Adverbial Focus 439
2.4.1.1. Focused Manner Adverbials with Transitive Stems 439
2.4.1.2. Focused Manner Adverbials with Intransitive Stems 443
2.4.2. Temporal Adverbial Focus 446
2.4.2.1. Focused Temporal Adverbials with Transitive Stems 447
2.4.2.2. Focused Temporal Adverbials with Intransitive Stems 449
2.4.3. Locative Adverbial Focus 451
2.4.3.1. Focused Locative Adverbials with Transitive Stems 451
2.4.3.2. Focused Locative Adverbials with Intransitive Stems 453
2.5. Information Questions 454
2.6. Conclusions 460
3. Topicalization 460
4. Stative and Equational Clauses 462
4.1. The Formation of Stative Clauses 462
4.2. The Existential Predicate, yan 466
4.2.1. Expressing “t
o Have” with yan 466
4.2.2. yan in Locational Clauses 468
5. Double Verb Sequences 470
5.1. Aspectual Head Verbs in Double Verb Sequences 470
5.2. Complement Constructions 472
5.3. Coordinate and Subordinate Clauses 478
6. Imperatives 481
6.1. Positive Commands 481
6.2. Negative Commands 485
7. The Declarative Mode 487
8. Summary of Changes in Syntax and Discourse Through Time 491
Notes 492
Appendix: Documentary Sources of Maya Clauses, Phrases, and Allusions 493
References Cited 503
Figures
1-1. Towns Mentioned in Grammar. 5
5-1. Chronicle of the Pox Family of Dzan. 86
5-2. First Page of the Crónica de Mani. 88
5-3. Aspects of Yucatec Maya. 103
9-1. Hieroglyphic Spellings of Numbers Between “20” and “40” on Pages 26c-28c of the
Dresden Codex. 235
xv
Tables
5-1. Comparison of the Frequencies of the Use of of ti- and Ø- for Translating Spanish Preterite
and Compound Indicative Subjunctive Verbs into Maya. 84
7-1. Comparison of Inherited and Innovated Passives Derived from Transitive Roots in the
Calepino de Motul. 143
7-2. Passives of Laryngeal-Final Transitive Roots in the Calepino de Motul. 144
7-3. Passives Based on Transitive Stems Derived from Monosyllabic Noun Roots in the
Calepino de Motul. 160
7-4. Passives Based on Transitive Stems Derived from Disyllabic Noun Roots with -t in the
Calepino de Motul. 161
7-5. Passives of Laryngeal-Medial Transitive Roots in the Calepino de Motul. 162
8-1. Botanical Terms in the Hocaba Dialect of Modern Yucatec. 222
12-1. Colonial Affect Verbs and Related Adjectives in the Calepino de Motul. 289
12-2. Colonial Affect Verbs Marked by -ancil/-ancal in the Calepino de Motul. 297
12-3. Affect Verbs and Related Adjectives in the Hocaba Dictionary. 301
12-4. Colonial Affect Adjectives Marked by -nac in the Calepino de Motul. 307
12-5. Compound Stems Based on Basic Color Terms in Early Colonial Dictionaries. 315
12-6. Compound Stems Based on Basic Color Terms in Books of Chilam Balam and
Ritual of Bacabs. 318
12-7. Compound Stems Based on Basic Color Terms in the Hocaba Dialect of Modern Yucatec. 319
13-1. Fully Reduplicated Adjectives Marked by -ci in the Calepino de Motul. 330
13-2. Partially Reduplicated Adjectives Marked by -ci in the Calepino de Motul. 331
13-3. Partially Reduplicated Adjectives Marked by -kil in the Hocaba Dictionary. 336
13-4. Partially Reduplicated Adjectives Marked by -nac in the Calepino de Motul. 339
13-5. Reduplicated Adjectives with -Vl- Infix in the Calepino de Motul. 342
15-1. Documents Containing le, ley, or lei as Initial Deictics in the Titles of Ebtun. 408
15-2. Documents Containing le, ley, or lei as Initial Deictics in the Documentos de Tekanto. 409
16-1. Abbreviation Conventions. 423
16-2. Comparison of the Aspectual Suffixes Associated with the Basic and Focused Word Orders
for the Agents of Transitive Verbs. 433
16-3. Aspectual Suffixes that Co-Occur with Transitive and Intransitive Verbs in the Basic Word Order
Compared with Those Governed by Focused Adverbials. 440
xvii
Preface
Although I was not aware of it at the time, this project had its early beginnings more than 40 years ago,
when I spent the summer of 1971 in Yucatan with the goal of collecting oral histories of the Caste War of
Yucatan (1847–1853) and its aftermath for a comparative study of revitalization movements in the Maya
area. That study culminated in the publication of my second book, The Indian Christ, the Indian King: The
Historical Substrate of Maya Myth and Ritual ten years later (Bricker 1981). As was customary then, shortly
after arriving in Merida, I went to pay my respects to the leading scholar of the region, Don Alfredo Bar-
rera Vásquez, who was then Director of the Instituto Yucateco de Antropología e Historia in the Palacio
Cantón on the Paseo Montejo. After I had explained the research that I was hoping to carry out that sum-
mer, he told me that the Biblioteca Crescencio Carrillo y Ancona, which at that time was housed in the
Palacio Cantón, had about 200 letters from the Caste War, many of them written in Maya, and he asked
me whether I would like to include them in my study. Of course, I said “yes.” And that opportunity not only
enlarged the scope of the research I carried out during that summer, as well as in subsequent years, but
also planted the seeds for the research that is described in this book.
During the 1970s, the purely synchronic focus of the field of social anthropology in which I had been
trained was gradually superceded by a more diachronic approach to ethnographic research, in which his-
torical documents were employed for contextualizing the communities that were the object of study in
time. Don Alfredo’s timely offer set me firmly on this path and alerted me to the possibility that such docu-
ments could be used for contextualizing the language as well as the culture historically. So also did the
holdings of such documents in the Latin American Library at Tulane University, where I spent my academic
career, especially the Hacienda Tabi papers, the Crónica de Mani, and facsimile copies of the Xiu Chronicles
and the testaments in the Libro de Cacalcħen (also known as the Libro de los Cocomes).
Another influence on this work was the fact that I had originally been hired at Tulane to teach Anthro-
pology 680 “Spoken Yucatecan Maya,” which I continued to do on a usually biennial schedule until I retired
from teaching at the end of 2005. Therefore, although my initial research project after coming to Tulane
was in sociocultural anthropology, the language of the people became another priority in my academic life.
By the end of 1978, I had finished the book manuscript whose research had introduced me to Maya
historical documents and had submitted it for publication. I was now ready to move in an entirely different
direction.
Although I had been teaching Yucatecan Maya for almost a decade with the assistance of Eleuterio
Poʔot Yah, a native speaker of the language from the town of Hocaba, and had acquired some mastery
over its grammar, I wanted to develop the kind of oral fluency that comes only from living in a community
where the language is spoken on a daily basis. My first sabbatical, during the spring semester of 1979,
provided me with the opportunity to carry out this goal. I chose for this purpose the town of Ebtun, situ-
ated about four kilometers west of Valladolid in the center of the peninsula, because of the existence of a
large corpus of Maya documents known as the Titles of Ebtun (Roys 1939), a collection encompassing 125
documents, running from 1600 to 1833. I wanted to document the twentieth-century dialect of this town
in order to compare it with what had been recorded in the Colonial documents, as a first step in the task of
xix
xx Preface
identifying the grammatical changes that had taken place over time. In all, I spent three and a half months
in Ebtun during that semester, living with a Maya midwife and local he
alth promoter, whose home served
as a clinic for pregnant women who were usually accompanied by their husbands. Their conversations, as
well as those of other people who dropped by for a visit, were instrumental in my acquisition of fluency in
their language.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several people have had a pivotal role in the design and execution of this study.
The first was Don Alfredo Barrera Vásquez, who, as explained above, called my attention to letters and
other documents penned by native speakers of the Maya language, making a historical grammar possi-
ble. I am indebted to him for setting me on the path to explore the antecedents of the Modern Yucatecan
A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000) Page 2