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gouernador vay ti cah y etel t u cuch-cabal Tutul Xiu
the governor here in the town and in the province of Tutul Xiu,
y etel almehen Don Franco Che gouernador Ticul ...
and the noble, Don Francisco Che, governor of Ticul, etc.’ (MA557-001E-K)
The verb, v hu=molcinah, is a perfective transitive that is not preceded by t(i). Because it immediately fol-
lows a reference to the date on which the event took place and the document was penned not long after
the survey took place, it cannot imply that the event took place long ago. Perhaps for the same reason,
none of the other perfective verbs in that early document are associated with t(i) either.
These examples support Smailus’ claim that perfective stems associated with the clitic particle t(i)
referred to completed actions that took place earlier in time than those without it. However, it is not clear
that the earlier of two events distinguished in this way should be described as having taken place “long
ago.” Perhaps “a while ago” or “some time ago’ would be closer to the mark.
2.1.2. HISTORICAL CHANGE IN ASPECTUAL CLITIC PARTICLES ASSOCIATED WITH THE PERFECTIVE STEM.
In Colonial Yucatec, the vowel in ti usually assimilated to the vowel in the clitic pronoun before transitive
perfective stems:
(58a) t in bilah in nok
‘he repulgado mi ropa’
‘I have hemmed my clothes’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 52r)
(58b) t a kamah va a chij
‘por uentura haste desaiunado’
‘have you eaten breakfast yet?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 237r)
(58c) t u leɔah y it sarten miztun
‘lamio el gato el suelo de la sarten’
‘the cat licked the bottom of the frying pan’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 266v)
(58d) tac ɔaah ti
‘ya se lo emos dado’
‘we have already given it to him’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 122r)
In (58d), the vowel in ca ‘we’ has first metathesized with c, before assimilating with the vowel in ti.
No such changes occurred when ti preceded intransitive perfective stems because the ergative split
resulted in the subject pronouns being suffixed to those stems:
(59a) lay vot olah ca ti hulen vaye
‘a esto he venido aqui; esta fue mi consideracion’
‘this I considered when I arrived here’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 352v)
(59b) bahunx v mek hachil ca ti bini_
‘quanto cacao, o ettz embio el suegro a su consuegro?’
‘how much cacao went from the father-in-law to the father of his son-in-law?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?:
fol. 303v)
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TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
By the end of the Colonial period, Ø- had disappeared, leaving only ti- as the aspectual clitic particle
associated with the perfective stem. And eventually ti- was reduced to t- before all perfective verb stems,
both transitive and intransitive. In the meantime, the two forms of the first person plural clitic pronoun had
merged, with c (phonetic [kə]) replacing ca (phonetic [ka]) as the ergative pronoun before all verbs. This
change meant that tac dropped out of use in such contexts, resulting in an apparent triconsonantal cluster
composed of tc plus the initial consonant of the verb. This cluster was reduced by deleting the consonant
of the clitic pronoun but retaining the schwa to separate the aspectual clitic from the consonant that fol-
lowed. Thus, t c conah ‘we sold it’ and t c ɔaah became t conah (phonetic [tə konah]) and t ɔaah (phonetic
[tə ȼ’áah]), respectively, as in:
(60a) bay bic c tial bal t conahe
‘thus how what we sold was ours’ (DZ791A-015A-B)
(60b) he ix bahun t conah kax lae
‘and here is how much we sold this forest for:
hun kal peso cata[c] ox pel peso lae
these 20 pesos plus 3 pesos’ (PS791A-016A-B)
(60c) chen y oklal ma t ɔaah y ohel u binel yn yum just.as ti hoi
‘it is only because we did not let him know that my lord justices
were going to Merida (HB783A-814A-C)
The same process can be found in Modern Yucatec today:
(61a) tíʔ t kanahiʔ
‘we learned it there’ (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965:52)
(61b) máʔ t ʔúʔuyahiʔ
‘we didn’t hear it’ (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965:54)
The reduction of ti- to t- had a different result with intransitive perfective stems, where the subject pro-
nouns were suffixed to the verbs and therefore did not provide vowels for resolving consonant clusters.
My documentary database contains a few examples of t before perfective intransitive stems, beginning in
1798 (62a) and continuing into the middle of the nineteenth century (62b–c):
(62a) la u chun t binon c heb u pach
‘this is the reason why we went to divide the field’ (EBT798B)
(62b) t binoob y icnal ca t bin_ lay yum curao
‘they went with him when that father priest went’ (TKX848A)
(62c) t u 23 u xocol u mesil marzo
‘on the 23rd of the count of the month of March
ca t kuch_ a tropaoob ti in cahal chan santa cruz
was when your troops arrived in my town of Chan Santa Cruz’ (CRZ851E)
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
91
What eventually happened is that t, being a relatively weak consonant, was reduced to an even weaker
consonant [h], or it disappeared altogether:
(63a) h k’uč a kìik šan y éetel uy íičam
‘your sister arrived also with her husband’ (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965:363)
(63b) _ tàal a kìik šan y éetel uy íičam
‘your sister came also with her husband’ (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965:363)
(63c) téek _ b’inih
‘he went immediately’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:273)
(63d) h tàalen
‘I came’ (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965:343)
(63e) _ tàal u č’oten š ʔòop b’ehláʔeʔ
‘Ophelia came to shake me down today’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:87)
In a sense, then, the inflection of intransitive perfectives has come full circle, back to the use of a Ø- aspec-
tual clitic that represented one of two options in Colonial times. However, although there are still two clitic
particles associated with perfective stems, one with transitives (t) and the other with intransitives (h/Ø),
they both have the same function, namely that of marking the actions referred to by the verb as com-
pleted, without temporal specification. And in that respect they do not have the same ambiguities as the
ones that confused the Franciscan grammarians during the Colonial period.
2.2. ASPECTUAL HEAD WORDS AND CLITIC PARTICLES ASSOCIATED WITH THE IMPERFECTIVE STEM. In con-
trast to the perfective stem, which refers to an action as a whole, the imperfective stem is used for referring
to actions in the past, present, or future that are incomplete, habitual, or beginning, ending, or in progress.
This information is conveyed by head words that are drawn from several form classes: root intransitives,
nouns, and particles.
Discrete parts of an action — its beginning, middle, and end — were referred to by three head words
in Colonial Yucatec, representing the inceptive, durative, and terminative aspects. The head word for the
inceptive aspect was the root intransitive hopp (phonetic [hóʔop’]) ‘to begin,’ that was itself inflected for
perfective aspect as hoppi ‘it began.’ The
durative aspect was indicated by the particle tan (phonetic [táan]).
And the terminative aspect was signalled by the root intransitive, ɔoc (phonetic [ȼ’óʔok]) ‘to finish,’ that, like
hopp, was inflected for the pefective aspect as ɔoci ‘it finished.’ Some examples of the use of these head
words with transitive imperfective stems appear below:
(64a) hoppi in cantic
‘I began to relate it’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 200r)
(64b) bay bic tan k ilic ti ox ppel vuchben hunob
‘thus how we were seeing it in three ancient books’ (KAN777A)
(64c) ma kun yail in beeltah ca ɔoci in botic in ppax
‘I worked hard to finish paying my debts’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 290v)
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The incompletive or habitual aspect, which refers to generic, unbounded actions, was represented by
the particle lic in Colonial Yucatec:
(65a) lic in venel tamuk in payal chi
‘I usually fall asleep while I pray’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 266v)
(65b) lic u ɔocol hanal ca tacech vaye
‘when the meal ends, you should come here’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 267r)
(65c) lic y ubic v tħan dios t u ciilmac y olil
‘he listens to the word of God happily’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 72v)
(65d) lic v tzaicen in mehen
‘my son quarrels with me’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 113r)
(65e) lic v hakbicon dios
‘God loves us’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 175v)
(65f) lic in nac-oltic Juan y etel v pectzile
‘I am annoyed with John and his rumors’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 316v)
lic was sometimes reduced to c during Colonial times:
(66a) bal c u ɔibtic au ol
‘what do you think?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 129v)
(66b) he c u benel lo
‘there he goes!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 205r)
(66c) he c u tal_ padre la
‘here comes the priest!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 406r)
(66d) ɔib c u nentic y ol
‘he is engaged in writing’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 326v)
Although not common, the imperfective inflections of hopp and ɔoc also functioned as head words
during the Colonial period:
(67a) bai tun las tres akab u tial y ahal cabe c u hoppol c meyah minan venel ton
‘thus, then, at 3 o’clock at night, before dawn, we begin working
without having slept’ (HB784-216A-D)
(67b) bai bic c u ɔocol c mansic u yabal num=ya
‘thus, how we finish experiencing much suffering’ (HB784C-204A-B)
These examples, as well as those in (64a) and (64c), indicate that hopp and ɔoc retained their own aspectual
inflections, even when functioning as aspectual head words in their own right. Such aspectual inflections
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
93
are, therefore, complement constructions, composed of a main word (the aspectual “head word”), followed
by a complement (the verb with the imperfective stem).
Eventually, however, only the perfective form of these head words was retained in the language, and
the -i suffix disappeared when it was reduced to a phrase-terminal marker (cf. 1.1.2. above), paving the way
for them to be grammaticalized as aspectual head words, which is their primary function today.
The particle, yan (phonetic [yàan]) ‘be existent, have,’ that functions as an impersonal verb and copular
nominal, also serves as an aspectual head word in Yucatecan Maya. Blair and Vermont-Salas (1965:109)
have assigned to it the label “compulsive aspect” because it expresses “obligation or compulsion with
respect to the activity indicated by the following verb form.”
Such expressions are rare in Colonial documents. The Calepino de Motul contains only two examples
of its use with this meaning, both with imperfective antipassive stems based on tħan ‘to speak.’ Such stems
take –Ø instead of -ic or -Vl as aspectual suffixes (see 1.1.3. in Chapter 7):
(68a) yan in mucul tħan in mucul can au icnal
‘tengo que dezirte y contarte en secretos palabras y cuentos secretos’
‘I must speak with you in confidence’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 310r)
(68b) yan a tħan ten
‘tienes que dizirme’
‘you have to speak to me’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 214av)
Although the Calepino contains many other examples of yan followed by imperfective verb stems, their
putative Spanish translations do not express compulsion. Instead, yan is treated like the Maya counterpart
of the Spanish auxiliary verb, haber, in present perfect constructions, as in the following examples, where
the first English gloss is a literal translation of the Spanish version of the sentence, and the second English
gloss, in square brackets, is a direct translation from the Maya version:
(69a) yan a chijc bak ti viernes
‘has comido carne en viernes’
‘you have eaten meat on Friday’
[‘you must eat meat on Friday’] (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 141r)
(69b) yan va a chijc yacil cħuplal
‘has por ventura escuchado cuentos suzios de mugeres’
‘have you listened to dirty stories about women?’
[‘do you have to listen to dirty stories about women?’] (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 141r)
(69c) yan xin au emçic a kazal
‘has por uentura caido en polucion assi’
‘have you fallen into pollution like this?’
[‘must you lower your genitals?’] (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 164v)
(69d) yan au alic yamab y okol hun pay
‘has dicho testimonio falso contra alguno’
‘you have given false testimony against someone’
[‘you have to give false testimony against someone’] (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 215v)
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TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
(69e) yan in kebantic xiblal
‘he pecado con vn hombre’
‘I have sinned with a man’
[‘I must sin with a man’] (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 243r)
(69f) yan a payic ciçin
‘has ydolatrado’
‘you have committed idolatry’
[‘you must commit idolatry’] (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 361v)
The interrogative format of some of these examples, as well as their content, suggest that the original
source from which they were extracted was a Spanish catechism that was poorly translated into Maya. The
Maya present perfect marked by -ma was certainly known to the Colonial Spanish grammarians and lexi-
cographers. An entry in the Calepino de Motul describes its function explicitly:
(70)
ma.
postpuesta al cuerpo de los verbos actiuos y algunos nombres denota tener hecha su
operacion.
‘placed after the body of the active verbs and some nouns denotes having performed their
operation.’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 278r)
Perhaps because -ma could be suffixed to both nouns and verbs, or because transitive verbs inflected with
it were never accompanied by an auxiliary verb that could be equated with haber, they were not regarded
as the Maya equivalent of the Spanish present perfect.
Finally, there is one example of the use of yan as the compulsive aspect particle in a Colonial Maya
document written in 1784:
(71)
yan ca mentic u pach bul
‘we have to prepare his bean field’ (HB784B-118)
The context is a complaint against a Spanish priest in the town of Chunhuhub, who was accused
of forcing
his parishioners to labor on his agricultural estate all day long and well into the night without compensa-
tion (see also [67a–b]).
2.2.1. HISTORICAL CHANGE IN ASPECTUAL HEAD WORDS ASSOCIATED WITH THE IMPERFECTIVE STEM. As
(66a–d) shows, the incompletive aspectual particle, lic, was already being reduced to c in the early Colonial
period, and they coexisted throughout the Colonial period and for some decades afterward. In Tekanto,
for example, during the first three decades of the nineteenth century, the imperfective stem co-occurred
with both lic and c:
(72a) lic yn kubic he bax ɔeɔetac t u matah yn commadre M.a Candelaria Mutul ti v yum
‘I deliver whatever my godmother, Maria Candelaria Mutul, gave bit by bit to her father’ (TK809B)
(72b) c in kubic tanbuj lay solar
‘I deliver half of this house site’ (KAN805B)
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95
An interesting pair of examples drawn from a land document produced in Tekanto in 1820 shows that
some transitive incompletive constructions underwent the same phonological change as transitive per-
fective constructions after the merger of the two forms of the first-person plural clitic pronoun had taken
place (as already described in 2.1.2. above):
(73a) t _ conah ti yn yum D.n Juan Segura
‘we sold it to my lord Don Juan Segura’ (TK820A)
(73b) lic _ conic hun ac cħen
‘we sell one well’ (TK820A)
The clitic pronoun was deleted in both cases, to reduce the number of consonants in the cluster from three
to two. Other examples of the deletion of this pronoun after lic during the same period include:
(74a) lic _ ɔaic v hahil vay c uy ubicob missae
‘we certify that they listen to Mass here’ (SCL803A)
(74b) lic _ hoksic u hunil xan
‘we take the document out too’ (TK819B)
(74c) lic _ kubic v hunil
‘we deliver the document’ (TK817D)
On the other hand, the reduction of lic to c, when combined with the merger of the two forms of the
first-person plural clitic pronoun, resulted in a different kind of adjustment during the last decade of the
eighteenth century:
(75a) ley lae h conic y oklal lahu ca kal peso taknil
‘as for this, we sell it for 30 pesos in coins’ (DZ791A-005A-C)
A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000) Page 18