-ici is not limited to CiC intransitive stems; it also occurs in antipassive stems, where neither the root vowel,
nor the immediately antecedent vowel is “i”:
(111a) onteel haab in menyahnici y icnal in haan
‘muchos años trabaje en casa de mi suegro’
‘for many years I worked in the house of my father-in-law’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 351r)
(111b) lotay v tħanil tħanici Apostolob
‘hablaron los apostoles en diuersas lenguas
‘the apostles spoke in diverse languages
ca emi spiritu sancto y okolob
quando descendio el espiritu sancto sobre ellos’
when the Holy Spirit descended over them’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 273v)
It is therefore possible that -ici was actually composed of two suffixes, -ic and -i, and the latter had some
kind of deictic function that assigned the event in question to a less specific past.
The examples in (108a–e) and (110a–e) emphasize the distinction made by the Colonial grammarians
between the recent past (marked by -ic) and the undifferentiated past (marked by -[i]ci) in two ways. -ic is
glossed in terms of the preterite in (108c), but is qualified as referring to the recent past by the inclusion of
[h]oy ‘today’ in the gloss. [h]oy also appears in the glosses of (108a–c) and (108e), but not in (108d), where
the recent past is signalled by the use of the present perfect. In these ways, all the examples in (108a–e) are
glossed in terms of the recent past.
Only two of the examples in (110a–e) have Spanish glosses, and in both cases -[i]ci is glossed in terms
of the preterite (110a, d), suggesting that it refers to the undifferentiated past.
The contrast here is the same as the one claimed by Colonial grammarians for the two aspectual clitic
particles, Ø- and t(i)-, only in this case it is possible to provide a test of its validity that does not depend on
the contrast between the preterite and present perfect tenses that are employed in the Spanish glosses.
We can use for this purpose adverbially focused constructions in which calendar dates serve as tem-
poral adverbs. They appear in two distinct genres in Colonial sources: (1) cofradía books containing dated
records of festivals and the expenditures for supporting them and (2) chronicles of known events that took
place in the recent and distant past.
The following examples of the use of -ic with dates serving as focused temporal adverbs come from the
cofradía book maintained in Chunhuhub during 1783:
(112a) helel en 20 de abril manic pasgua resuresion
‘today on the 20th of April, Easter Sunday passed’ (HB783B-220A-B)
(112b) helel en 10 de agosto manic u fiesta ca yum Sor ah bolon pixan Sn Lorenso
‘today on the tenth of August, the fiesta of our father, the fortunate Saint Lawrence passed’
(HB783B-234A-C)
The ones in (113a–c) come from a variety of other sources, including the Books of Chilam Balam of Chu-
mayel and Tizimin and a notarial document:
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD 111
(113a) Chumayel 28 sihic ayijada Micaela Castañeda
‘[in] Chumayel, on the 28th [month not mentioned], the godchild, Micaela Castañeda, was born’
(Gordon 1913:24)
(113b) oxil cauac culhic can ahau katun
‘on 3 Cauac, Katun 4 Ahau was seated’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 19r)
(113c) hele en 18 de mayo de 1785 años bay xulic in tħan
‘today on the 18th of May of 1785 years, thus ended my words’ (EBT785A)
The example in (113a) is an incomplete record of a birth written on a blank page of the Book of Chilam
Balam of Chumayel, the one in (113b) comes from a list of Maya New Year dates for the years 1752 through
1771, specifying that Katun 4 Ahau began on the day 3 Cauac in the Maya sacred calendar in 1752, and the
one in (113c) occurs at the end of the testament of a woman named Rosa Camal who lived in Ebtun.
I heard the same kind of construction in Ebtun and Hocaba in 1979:
(114a) làas sèeys kóohiken
‘at six o’clock I arrived’ (V. Bricker 1979a:241, 268)
(114b) dyèes déeh ʔáabril kóohiken
‘on the tenth of April I arrived’ (V. Bricker 1979a:268)
The Chronicle of Oxkutzcab is a sixteenth century Maya document that correlates the years, 1534–
1545, with their counterparts in the Precolumbian calendar. It contains several intransitive verb stems with
the -[i]ci suffix, each of which is immediately preceded by the Maya calendar-round dates for the first day
of the year:
(115a) 1543 años hun muluc t u hun te pop cinciob
‘1543 years: 1 Muluc was on the first of Pop when the people of
ah ɔiɔomtunob t u men v katun espayoresob
Dzidzantun died because of the war of the Spaniards’ (OX685-028A-D)
(115b) 1545 años oxlahun cavac t u hun te pop hoppci x̃ptianoil
‘1545 years: 13 Cauac was on the first of Pop when Christianity began
t u men frayleçob vay ti cah lae
because of the friars here in this town’ (XIU685-032B-C)
Here, unlike the examples in (112a–b) and (113a–c), the temporal reference is to a year in the past, not to a
day in progress, for which the -ic suffix would have been more appropriate. The same is true of the follow-
ing examples from the Katun chronicles in the Books of Chilam Balam of Chumayel and Tizimin:
(116a) hoo ahau vlci ɔul ti chibil uinic
‘during [Katun] 5 Ahau, the cannibalistic foreigners arrived’ (Gordon 1913:79)
112
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
(116b) cabil ahau uchci kakil noh kakile
‘during [Katun] 2 Ahau, the smallpox epidemic, the great epidemic, occurred’ (Gordon 1913:76)
(116c) XI buluc ahau hulciob kul uinicob ti lakin
‘during [Katun] 11 Ahau, the holy men arrived in the east’ (Gordon 1913:76)
(116d) Do. 1519 a.s eɔlahci ku na ti hoo
‘in the year 1519, the cathedral was sited in Merida (Gordon 1913:63)
(116e) bolon ahau hoppci xptianoil
‘during [Katun] 9 Ahau, Christianity began,
vchci ca put si
and resurrection happened;
laili ichil u katunil vlci yax obispo Toral
still during the katun, the first bishop, Toral, arrived’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 19r)
(116f) vaxac ahau paxci cah Mayapan
‘during [Katun] 8 Ahau, the town of Mayapan was destroyed
t u menel vitzil ɔul
by the mountaineer foreigners’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 19r)
Such constructions were not limited to Katun chronicles during the sixteenth century. They can some-
times be found in other kinds of historical narrative:
(117) y oklal ho t u kal y abil hulciob ek padresob
‘because 25 years ago, the black [robed] priests arrived,
t u pachob españolob
accompanying the Spaniards’ (MID567:fol. 367, 94–95)
In none of the examples do the temporal references implicate a single day, agreeing in this respect with
the function of the -[i]ci suffix postulated by the Colonial grammarians.
There are, however, two apparent exceptions to this view of the -[i]ci suffix, one in the Chumayel and
the other in the Tizimin, both of which are concerned with the same event that took place in the 1530s:
(118a) bolon imix u kinil cimci ah pul ha
‘9 Imix was the day when the water-bringer died;
lei tun hab 1536 cuchi
‘this, then, was the year 1536’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 19r)
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD 1
13
(118b) bolon ymix hi u kinil lay cimci ah pul [h]a lae
‘9 Imix, here was the day when this water-bringer died;
napot xiu t u habil de 158 años
it was Napot Xiu in the year of Our Lord 158’ (Gordon 1913:76)
The 1536 date is the one mentioned for this event in the Chronicle of Oxkutzcab (H. Bricker and V. Bricker
(2011:77–81). These passages refer to the massacre of a group of Maya priests led by Napot Xiu on their
way to conduct ceremonies at the site of Chichen Itza for the purpose of alleviating a severe drought that
gripped the land during that year. The specific reference to 9 Imix as the day when the massacre was said
to have taken place does not agree with the function assigned to the -[i]ci suffix; it should have been -ic, if
the Colonial grammarians were right.
The use of -[i]ci in this context would make sense if the purpose of the contrast between the two suffixes
had been to mark the difference between the immediate past (the past closest to the speaker or writer)
and the historical past (the past at some remove from the speaker or writer). That would have permitted
-ic alone to serve as the marker of the immediate past and -i in [i]c-i as the marker of the historical past.
On the other hand, the Chronicle of Cħac Xulub Cħen (now known as Chicxulub) contains examples of
the use of -ici and -ic with intransitive stems in focused adverbial contexts that clearly assign -ic to a specific
day in the past and -ici to a temporal span longer than a single day;
(119a) t uy oxlahun pis u kinil u de octubre de 1518
‘on the thirteenth day of the month of October of 1518,
ocic ha t u jolob in mektan cahilob
the subjects of my town were baptized’6 (CHX-387A-C)
(119b) 1521 años t uy oxlahun u kinil agosto
‘1521 years, on the thirteenth day of August,
chucic u lumil mexico t u men españolesob
the land of Mexico was captured by Spaniards’ (CHX-259B-E)
(119c) oxlahun kan ah cuch hab ti maya xoc lae
‘13 Kan was the yearbearer in this Maya count;
1543 años lai y abil binci españolesob te t xaman cħeile
1543 years, this was the year when Spaniards went there, south of [Tixcum]che’ (CHX-278A-279B)
The days referred to in (119a–b) fell in 1518 and 1521, long before the composition of this chronicle, sug-
gesting that “today” was not what the chronicler had in mind. The distinction here is one of specificity, the
assignment of an event to a single day in a year, whereas only the year, 1543, corresponding to the second
half of a Maya year that began on 13 Kan, is specified in (119c),7 not the day. In other words, -ic follows tem-
poral adverbs that refer to a specific day, and -ici follows temporal adverbs that place events less precisely
in longer periods of time.
There is, however, one passage in the Chronicle of Cħac Xulub Cħen that seems to contradict the gen-
eralization that -ic follows temporal adverbs that refer to a specific day:
114
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
(120) t uy abil 1517 años lai y abil hauic cħa katun lae
‘in the year 1517 years: this was the year when the celebration of the katun stopped;
lai hauic u uacuntabal u tunil balcah
this was when the world stones ceased to be set up’ (CHX-248-250B)
This passage refers to the cessation of the custom of celebrating the end of the twenty-year period known
as the katun by erecting a stela, an event that should have occurred during 1517. Since it did not happen,
no date could have been associated with it.
Thus, the sources in which -ic and -ici are suffixed to intransitive stems seem to support two different
sets of functions for these suffixes. In some cases, the contrast is based on how precisely an event could be
placed in time (a single day or during a given year). In others, the distinction seems to have been phrased
in terms of relative distance from the speaker or writer (the immediate versus the historical past).
The subjunctive suffix of intransitive verbs in focused adverbial constructions was -ebal in Colonial
Yucatec, and, like the -ic and -[i]ci perfective suffixes of such verbs, it involved an ergative split in terms of
a person hierarchy:
(121)
Singular
Plural
1st
in tal-ebal
*ca tal-ebal
2nd *a tal-ebal
*a tal-ebal-ex
3rd tal-ebal-Ø tal-ebal-ob
The first-person singular and third-person singular and plural forms of talebal appear in context below:
(122a) lauac ix ya in cah au oklal
‘y aunque estoy fatigado
‘and even though I am tired,
bin in talebal in tohcin au ol ca t u chij
fuera por amor de vos a consolaros’
I will come willingly to console you-all’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol 263v)
(122b) ix ma kin bin talebal cimil c okol
‘sin pensar bendra la muerte sobre nosotros’
‘death will come over us unannounced’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 229r)
(122c) napul bin talebal vaye
‘derecho ha de venir aqui sin detenerse en otra parte’
‘he will come here directly’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 324r)
(122d) heuac t u men v num=yaob bin talebalob ɔeɔili nahal yani
‘furthermore, because their miseries will come, there are skimpy profits’ (Kaua n.d.:I, 14L)
The other ergative pronouns (a and ca) that are not represented in (122a–d) appear with other intransitive
stems in (123a–c):
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD 115
(123a) ma c ohel iual va çamal v kin
‘no sabemos si oy si mañana
‘we do not know if today or tomorrow
ca lukebal vay y okol cabe
nos partimos deste mundo’
we will leave this world’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 227r)
(123b) in nibi bin a haɔebal
‘por orden y traza mia has de ser azotado’
‘by my order you will be whipped’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 326v)
(123c) lauac tab nail bin au ocebalex
‘en qualquiera c[a]sa que entraredes’
‘in whatever house you-all will enter’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 263v)
In land surveys, -ebal was often suffixed to ben or bin ‘to go’:
(124a) bay benebal ti lakin
‘thus it may go to the east’ (OX595-023)
(124b) hun taɔ binebal latulah t u hol noh laam ti chikin lae
‘it will go straight until the end of the big depression in the west’ (OX683-043B-044B)
By 1700, there were occasional examples of -ebal being reduced to -bal:
(125) ma bal bin ocbal ya tiob
‘nothing will inflict pain on them’ (DZ700-031)
Other examples of the reduction of -ebal to -bal showed up in the middle of the nineteenth century in
documents attributed to the Talking Cross of Chan Santa Cruz during the Caste War of Yucatan (1847–1853):
(126a) t u men ɔoc u kuchul t ora likbal yucatan hum pulili
‘because already the hour has arrived for Yucatan to arise for once and for all!’ (V. Bricker 1981a:192,
lines 183–187)
(126b) le c inv alic ti tech a mentex
‘that is what I say to you: you should do it
u tial manbal in noh man=kinalo
so that my great festival might be celebrated’ (V. Bricker 1981a:211–212n)
(126c) t u men ɔoc u kuchul t u orail y t u habil
‘because already the hour and the year have arrived
/> xulbal u hach tus=beltal in familiaob chen de coca
for the senseless exploitation of my kinsmen to end’ (V. Bricker 1981a:204, lines 590–594)
116
TENSE/ASPECT AND MOOD
In a letter written during that uprising on 2 April 1848, the Maya leader, Jacinto Pat, used the expression
in talbal ‘that I might come,’ indicating that the ergative split in terms of the pronominal hierarchy was still
in use at that date:
(127) bay xan c in ɔaic y ohete a tzicbenil
‘thus also, I inform Your Excellency,
de cuatro c in hokol vay t u cahhil hotzuc
on the fourth [of April], I am departing from here in the town of Tihosuco
y in tropa u tial in talbal t u cahil Peto
with my troops in order that I might come to the town of Peto’ (HTZ848B)
More recently, there is evidence of the survival of the -bal suffix (as -b’ah) with b’in ‘to go’ in Sotuta:
(128) letíʔ le ʔàaviláaʔ čúʔuk téʔe yáʔaškab’áoʔ
‘he, this Avila, was imprisoned there in Yaxcaba,
téʔe lìinyah téʔe hač téʔe way hóʔoh kàah
there on the railroad line, just there, here at the entrance to town,
u tyáʔal u binb’ah hóʔoʔ
in order that it can go to Merida’ (SOT971B:3)
By 1971, when I recorded the text from which this sentence comes, the ergative pronoun u had replaced
-Ø as the third-person subject of the verb. This process may already have been underway in the middle of
the nineteenth century, for the document from which the likbal-Ø example in (126a) comes also contains
an example of u likbal:8
(129) ɔoc tun u kuchul t u orail t u habil
‘already, then, the hour and the year have arrived
u tial u likbal in sihsah masevalilob ll okol ɔulob t u ca=ten
for my Indian children to rise up against the Whites again
hencen bixih cat lik bateil uchie
in the way that wars used to arise’ (V. Bricker 1981a:191, lines 121–129)
5.2. TRANSITIVE STEM SUFFIXES THAT CO-OCCUR WITH FOCUSED ADVERBIAL PARTICLES. The movement
of an adverbial particle or phrase to a position in front of an imperfective transitive stem did not result
in a change in the stem suffix in Colonial Yucatec, paralleling, in this respect, the behavior of imperfec-
tive intransitive stems in similar contexts. The transitive imperfective suffix remained -ic in the focused
environment:
A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000) Page 21