A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000)
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(31a) táan u kíimláʔahal im pak’al
‘my plants are dying one after another’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:128)
(31b) t u lúub’láʔahal le čeʔoʔ
‘those trees are falling one after another’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:173)
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INTRANSITIVE VERBS
5. INTRANSITIVE COMPOUNDS
The relational noun, et (phonetic [ʔéet]), when combined with intransitive verbs, resulted in compounds
that referred to the action being performed in the company of others (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 166r), as in
the following examples:
(32) Intransitive
Root
Gloss
Compound Gloss
ben
to go
et=ben
to accompany
cim
to die, expire
et=cim
to die together
em
to descend, come down
et=em
to descend together
hok
to come out, emerge, appear
et=hok
to emerge, appear together
mal
to pass, pass by, move
et=mal
to pass where others pass, participate
Their use in context can be illustrated with the following examples based on et=mal:
(33a) çaati Pedro t u men v lobil tij uil et=malech
‘Peter got lost because of the evil there where you passed’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 168v)
(33b) bacac-ix t u hunali ca yax yumob çipobe
‘and because our first fathers sinned,
tij tacaanoni tijx et=malon con y al v mehene
we who are their children engaged in their sins’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 399r)
Other intransitive compounds were formed by combining an adjective instead of a noun with an intran-
sitive root:
(34)
Adjectival
Intransitive
Root
Root
Compound
çuu kuch
çuçu=kuch
‘thick, dense’
‘to come, arrive’
‘to frequent a place’
yam hul
yam=hul
‘first, before’
‘to come, arrive’
‘to come first’
yam tal
yam=tal
‘first, before’
‘to come’
to arrive early’
lob cim
lob=cim
‘bad, evil’
‘to die, expire’
‘to die badly’
pot hok
pot=hok
‘very’
‘to come out, emerge,
‘to be manifest’
appear’
INTRANSITIVE VERBS 137
pot
mal ~ man
pot=mal ~ pot=man
‘very’
‘to pass, pass by, move’
‘to exceed, surpass, excel’
taɔ
mal ~ man
taɔ=mal ~ taɔ=man
‘straight, continuous’
‘to pass, pass by, move’
‘to skirt’
The following examples illustrate the use of such compounds in context:
(35a) pot=mani v lobil y okol v lobil v yum
‘his evil exceeded the evil of his father’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 381v)
(35b) ma a yam=talel
‘don’t come too early!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 214r)
(35c) macx
yam=huli tech va Pedro xin
‘who came first, you or Peter?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 214r)
(35d) bin
taɔ=manac
‘he will pass by’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 402r)
Note that, in (35b), the clitic pronoun, a, precedes the compound. If the adjective precedes both the clitic
pronoun and the verb, it does not form a compound, as in (36):
(36)
taɔ a benel chi koben
‘go straight to the kitchen!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 402v)
Here, the emphasis is on going straight, not moving around an object, as in (35d).
The Calepino de Motul contains two examples of intransitive compounds based on two intransitive
roots:
(37) Intransitive
Intransitive
Root (1)
Root (2)
Compound
em çih
em=çihil
‘to descend, come down’
‘to be born’
‘to abort, miscarry’
ɔoc
luk
ɔoc=lukul
‘to end, be finished, be over’
‘to leave, withdraw, avoid,
‘to end, expire; be finished
escape’
or perfect’
The cognate of ɔoc=lukul is ȼ’ok=luk’ul in Modern Yucatec, which is an adjectival, not intransitive com-
pound, meaning ‘adequate, sufficient, enough’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:53).
There is also one example of an intransitive compound that combines a transitive root, haay ‘to
destroy, level, flatten, raze,’ with an intransitive root, cim ‘to die, expire,’ yielding haay=cimil ‘to die out, be
massacred.’ Its use in context is illustrated below:
(38)
haay=cimi valakob
‘all my livestock died’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 203v)
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INTRANSITIVE VERBS
The Hocaba dictionary of Modern Yucatec contains only two examples of intransitive compounds.
One of them combines the intransitive root, b’in ‘to go,’ with the numeral root, káʔah ‘two,’ producing the
compound stem, káʔah=b’in ‘to go again.’ The intransitive root in the other example is wen ‘to sleep’; it is
combined with the positional root, mul ‘to pile up, gather,’ in the compound, múul=wen ‘to sleep together
[in the same bed or hammock]’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:32). Another compound with an intransitive meaning
combines the nominal root, han ‘food,’ with the same positional root: múul=han ‘to eat together (from the
same plate),’ as in the following contextual example:
(39)
táan u múul=hanal y éetel u kìik
‘he is eating together with his older sister’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:96)
6. INTRANSITIVE PHRASES
A number of intransitive phrases consist of an intransitive verb followed by ol ‘heart (non-corporeal), mind,
will, desire, energy, spirit, condition, quality,’ in every case inflected with a clitic pronoun. This is the case
with phrases composed of the intransitive verb, lepp, and the noun, ol, which refer to becoming angry,
indignant, furious, or aroused:
(40a) baci a pay=chacte v leppel y ol padre tech
‘don’t provide the priest with an opportunity for him to become angry with you!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?:
fol. 362r)
(40b) leppi va y ol a kazali
‘did your genitals become aroused?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 266r)
The examples in (40a–b) contrast the imperfective and perfective inflection of lepp, which in both cases are
followed by the noun, ol, with the clitic pronoun, y.
In the next pair of examples, the verb is formally intransitive (kahi), but the gist of the sentence is
transitive:
(41a) kahi vol ppolom in manci nok
‘I recognized the merchant from whom I bought the clothes’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 233r)
(41b) kahi ti vol ppolom in manci nok
‘I recognized the merchant from whom I bought the clothes’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 233r)
The sentenc
es in these examples differ only in the presence or absence of the preposition, ti, after kahi. In
both cases, the noun that follows the verb is inflected for possession (as uol rather than simply ol).
The example of kahi vol in (41a) is of interest for historical linguistics because it resembles the defec-
tive transitive verb, k’ah=ʔóol, ‘to know /someone/’, in Modern Yucatec. It is defective because it does not
take the transitive aspectual stem suffixes (-ik, -ah, and -eh/-Ø) or head words. On the other hand, a fully
inflected transitive verb can be derived from it by suffixing -t to k’ah=ʔóol, whereupon its meaning changes
from ‘to know /someone/’ to ‘to recognize,’ the same gloss that is attributed to the phrase kahal ol and
INTRANSITIVE VERBS
139
the transitive compound, kah=oltah in the Calepino de Motul (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 233r, 234v). See 3. in
Chapter 7 for additional examples of defective transitive verbs.
The noun, ol, follows intransitive verbs in other phrases as well:
(42a) tuubi au ol ten
‘you did not recognize me [literally, you forgot me]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 427v)
(42b) kaatpahi vol ti benel cumkal
‘my mind changed about going to Conkal’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 240v)
However, the noun, ol, does not occur in all intransitive phrases. The following examples involve other
nouns, namely haa ‘water,’ be ‘road,’ and tħan ‘word’:
(43a) oci haa t u hool
‘he was baptized [literally, water entered into his head]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 191r)
(43b) mani t u beel v yum
‘he followed in the footsteps of his father’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 291v)
(43c) kuchi v tħan in vayak
‘my dream came to pass’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 253r)
(43d) ti kuchon hokebal be
‘we arrived where the road forked’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 190v)
Intransitive phrases in Modern Yucatec have the same structure as in Colonial Yucatec, with an intransi-
tive verb followed by a noun inflected for possession with a clitic pronoun. The Modern cognate of Colonial
ol is ʔóol ‘heart, will, energy, spirit,’ which serves as the noun in the next example:
(44)
k’učpah uy óol u p’aten
‘he dared to leave me’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:158)
The intransitive phrase composed of the intransitive root, ȼ’óʔok ‘to finish, end,’ and the noun, b’èel ‘road,’
refers to marriage graphically as a road coming to an end:
(45a) š pìileʔ sáamal u ȼ’óʔokol u b’èel
‘Phyllis, she will marry tomorrow [literally, her road will end]’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:53)
(45b) hóʔolhak ȼ’óʔok u b’èel
‘he married yesterday’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:53)
The earliest documented use of this phrase for marriage is in Beltrán de Santa Rosa María’s eighteenth-
century grammar (1746:175).
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INTRANSITIVE VERBS
7. SUMMARY OF CHANGES IN INTRANSITIVE VERBS THROUGH TIME
Only two changes have occurred in intransitive verbs since the sixteenth century. Four intransitive verbs of
motion that marked their imperfective stem with -el in Colonial Yucatec have replaced it with no suffix (-Ø)
in Modern Yucatec. The inchoative suffix, -h, that was most numerous in Colonial Yucatec rarely occurs in
Modern Yucatec, having been replaced by the inchoative suffix, -ch (phonetic [č]), that had been much less
common in Colonial Yucatec.
NOTES
1. According to the Colonial grammarians, San Buenaventura (1684: fol. 18v) and Beltrán de Santa Rosa
María (1746:62–63), -ac served as the subjunctive suffix for such inchoatives (as it still does in Mopan
[Hofling 2011:16]). If so, çebac in the following sentence may be an example of the subjunctive stem of
çebhal ‘hurry, to make haste’ in the Calepino de Motul:
he uil ca bin çebac v tħanile bin in çebel halab tech
‘if the word comes promptly, I will tell you promptly’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 184r)
2. The phonetic realization of ca=kalic in Modern Yucatec is [káʔa=ʔáʔalik] (cf. V. Bricker et al. 1998:121).
The use of “k” (phonetic [k’]) in ca=kalic may represent a merging of the medial glottal stop in [káʔa]
with the initial glottal stop in [ʔáʔalik] in fast speech.
CHAPTER 7
TRANSITIVE VERBS
There are two kinds of transitive stems in Colonial and Modern Yucatec: root and derived. Aspectual suf-
fixes are attached directly to the root in root transitive stems, but follow the derivational suffix in derived
transitive stems (see 1.2.1. and 1.2.2. in Chapter 5).
1. VOICE
Root transitives can have as many as four voices: active, passive, antipassive, and middle. Derived transi-
tives have only three voices, lacking the middle voice. Only the active voice can take a direct object. In that
sense, the passive, antipassive, and middle voices are formally intransitive, but because voice is normally
regarded as a property of transitive verbs, it will be considered at length in this chapter.
A transitive verb is passivized by deleting the subject and making the object the subject of an intran-
sitive verb. The former nominal subject may be moved into an oblique phrase after the verb, or it may be
deleted entirely from the clause.
As its name implies, the antipassive is the antithesis of the passive voice: in antipassivization, it is the
object, rather than the subject, that is deleted from the verb. The former nominal object may be moved
into an oblique phrase after the verb, but it is usually deleted entirely from the clause.
The passive stem always implies an agent, even when no agent is mentioned. The middle voice stem is
used when there is no agent, as when the subject experiences a change without apparent cause.
1.1. VOICE IN ROOT TRANSITIVES. Of the four voices associated with root transitives, the active voice has
remained essentially unchanged through time, and the passive voice has undergone significant structural
changes.
1.1.1. THE ACTIVE VOICE OF ROOT TRANSITIVES. The active stems of most root transitives in Colonial
Yucatec had a CVC structure, in which the vowel was short. The -ic (imperfective), -ah (perfective), and -Vb
(subjunctive) suffixes immediately followed the CVC stems (V echoes the vowel in the root):
(1a)
lay v chun licil in haɔicech a puɔul loe
‘that is the reason why I whip you: you run away’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 267r)
(1b)
v keyahen batab
‘the leader scolded me’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 244r)
141
142
TRANSITIVE VERBS
(1c)
he cuch=teelbil cahe v nah v tzicib v chun u tħan
‘as for the subject town here, it should obey its chief’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 87r)
The active stems of all root transitives have a CVC structure in Modern Yucatec, and, as in Colonial Yucatec,
the aspectual suffixes (-ik [imperfective], -ah [perfective], and -eh/-Ø, but not -Vb’, [subjunctive]) are attached
to this base:
(2a)
k u huč’ik tíʔ kaʔ
‘she ground it on a grinding stone’ (EBT979A)
(2b)
míin miš hum p’éel k’oháʔanil t u ȼ’áah tíʔob’ yah
‘I don’t think a single illness gave them pain’ (EBT979B)
(2c)
k’ab’éeh túun b’ey máaš
y òoh(e)l u ȼ’akeh
‘someone is needed then, who knows how to cure like this’ (EBT979B)
1.1.2. THE PASSIVE VOICE OF ROOT TRANSITIVES. During the second half of the sixteenth century, the pas-
sive stems of root transitives were changing from their relatively simple and consistent structure shared
by all passives inherited from Proto-Yucatecan to the more complex and heterogeneous structure that is
evident in Modern Yucatec today. A late phase of this transition was captured by the Calepino de Motul,
which contains examples of both the inherited and the innovated patterns. The Calepino lists as entries
only the imperfective stems of these passives; the shapes of the other aspectual stems of the innovated
passives can be inferred from example sentences in the Calepino, but not for the inherited passives, which
are few in number and poorly represented by example sentences. The inherited passive was marked by
the suffixation of -b (phonetic [b’]) to the CVC root and then -Vl for the imperfective aspect (V echoes the
vowel in the root).
Eight root transitives in the Calepino de Motul have both the inherited (CVC-b-Vl) and innovated
(CVVC-Vl) imperfective forms of the passive stem, indicating that the transition was still underway during
the late sixteenth century (Table 7-1). For example, tokbol (phonetic [tok’-b’-ol]; inherited) and tookol (pho-
netic [toʔok’-ol]; innovated) both mean ‘be punctured.’ The presence of -b (phonetic [-b’]) in the inherited
form and its absence from the innovated form imply that it was reduced to a glottal stop before metasthe-
sizing with the coda consonant (see 2.2.2.2.1. in Chapter 3). And the fact that both forms of the stem are
listed in the Calepino means that they were in free variation at that time.
The passive of one root transitive seems to have been more conservative. For luk ‘swallow’ (phonetic
[luk’]), the Calepino lists only lukbul ‘be swallowed’ (phonetic [luk’-b’-ul]) as the passive stem. Another pas-
sive — kubul ‘be delivered, transferred, offered’ — is ambiguous; because the coda consonant of the transi-
tive root (kub; phonetic [k’ub’]) is [b’] and the passive suffix is also [b’], the coda consonant must be reduced
to a glottal stop, for which there is no symbol in the Calepino. Therefore, kubul could have represented
either phonetic [k’ub’-b’-ul] or [k’uʔub’-ul], contrasting with the transitive root xab ‘transplant, scatter,