A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000)

by Victoria R. Bricker

  ‘he will lie’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 428r)

  Other examples of the perfective antipassive of root transitives in -n in the Calepino include:

  (10a) hochnech ua ti domingo

  ‘did you harvest on Sunday?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 188r)

  (10b) xenen t u men in ban-ban=hanal

  ‘I vomited because I ate too much’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 456r)

  (10c) cħehnech xin t a cuch=teel

  ‘did you distribute widely in your province?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 154r)

  (10d) macx ti cizni teex

  ‘who among you-all farted?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 71v)

  For Modern Yucatec, I can also offer a minimal pair that contrasts the imperfective antipassive stem of

  the root transitive t’an ‘speak, call, address,’ with its active counterpart:

  (11a) máʔalob’ a t’anik màayah

  ‘you speak Maya well’ (V. Bricker 1978:17)

  TRANSITIVE VERBS

  149

  (11b) máʔalob’ a t’àan_ ʔič màayah

  ‘you speak well in Maya’ (Blair and Vermont Salas 1965:50)

  Here, as in Colonial Yucatec, the imperfective antipassive is marked by -Ø (no suffix), and the nominal direct

  object has been moved into an oblique phrase after a preposition, in this case ʔič ‘in, within.’ But in the

  Modern example, the vowel in the antipassive stem is long, with a low or falling tone, whereas the vowel

  in the antipassive stem in (8b) is neither doubled nor accented. It is likely that the long vowel and low tone

  that today characterize almost all antipassives based on root transitives developed some time after the

  Calepino de Motul was compiled (see 2.3.2.3. in Chapter 3). Other examples of the imperfective antipassive

  stem based on root transitives in Modern Yucatec are shown in (12a–c) below:

  (12a) le š č’úupaloʔ man=taȼ’ t u hàač’_

  ‘that girl is constantly chewing’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:93)

  (12b) b’áʔaš k u kùup_ t a puksíʔik’al

  ‘what have you kept to yourself?’ [literally, what holds in your heart?] (V. Bricker et al. 1998:138)

  (12c) ȼ’óʔok in màač_

  ‘I have collected’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:176)

  -n still marks the perfective and subjunctive antipassive stems, but it is now followed by -ah in the per-

  fective stem:

  (13a) hòočnahen

  ‘I won [literally, I harvested]’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:107)

  (13b) pèehnahen

  ‘I chipped’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:333)

  (13c) káʔah p’èehnaken

  ‘I may chip’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:333)

  This can be seen most clearly by comparing (13a) with (10a), where the antipassive stems are based on the

  same transitive root: hochnech (Colonial) and hòočnahen (Modern).

  There are a few exceptions to this description of the antipassive stems based on root transitives in

  Colonial and Modern Yucatec. For example, the antipassive stem of can ‘to learn’ in Colonial Yucatec was

  canbal or cambal, and it is kàamb’al in Modern Yucatec:

  (14)

  in kìikeʔ tíʔ k u kàamb’al hoʔeʔ

  ‘as for my older sister, she studies there in Merida’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:122)

  The -b’al suffix looks suspiciously like the imperfective passive suffix in Proto-Yucatecan, which seems to

  have moved to the antipassive stem. The length and low tone of the stem vowel agrees with the shape of

  this stem in Modern Yucatec. The perfective and subjunctive stems of this antipassive are kàamb’alnah and

  kàamb’alnak, respectively, in Modern Yucatec. The presence of -b’al in these stems is unusual.

  The -bal suffix also appears in the three antipassive stems of the glottal-stop-final root transitive, chij

  ‘to eat meat,’ as chibal ‘to eat eggs, fish, chili, sauce, bite; hurt, ache’ in Colonial Yucatec:

  150

  TRANSITIVE VERBS

  (15a) muuxi ualak t u chibal cħamac

  ‘my chickens are gone, eaten by a fox [literally, my chickens are gone, a fox is eating]’ (Ciudad Real

  1600?: fol. 314v)

  (15b) hunac pecni hunac chibalnici

  ‘it moved often; it bit often’ (Bacabs, 1779?:175)

  (15c) manan cħamac bin chibalnaci

  ‘there is no fox that will bite’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 8v)

  The imperfective counterpart of this stem in Modern Yucatec is:

  (15d) táan u číʔib’al in nak’

  ‘my stomach hurts’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:68)

  I lack information on the perfective and subjunctive stems of this antipassive.

  Not all antipassives based on glottal-stop-final root transitives are marked by -bal. In Modern Yucatec,

  for example, the transitive roots, p’oʔ ‘to wash clothes, launder’ and haʔ ‘to sharpen’ have antipassive stems

  marked by -Ø (no suffix), but retain the short vowel of the transitive root:

  (16a) le š č’úupaloʔ táan u p’oʔ

  ‘that girl is menstruating’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:231)

  (16b) háʔanahih2

  ‘it sharpened’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:91)

  Finally, the antipassive stems of three root transitives are marked by a -Vl suffix (V echoes the stem vowel).

  The Calepino de Motul illustrates the use of cónol ‘to sell’ and ukul ‘to drink’ in the following sentences:

  (17a) kanan in conol vaye

  ‘I must sell out here [referring to the estate I love very much]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 238r)

  (17b) cħehb’il av ukulex c i(n)u ilic

  ‘I see you-all drinking freely’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 154r)

  (17c) matbil y ukul

  ‘he drinks gratis’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 300v)

  There are also examples of the imperfective antipassive stems of these root transitives in Modern

  Yucatec:

  (18a) le máak k u kòonoloʔ

  ‘that man who sells’ (Blair and Vermont Salas 1965:437)

  (18b) kóʔoš ʔuk’ul

  ‘let’s drink!’ (Blair and Vermont Salas 1965:103)

  TRANSITIVE VERBS 151

  Note that the stem vowel in kòonol is long with low or falling pitch, whereas the stem vowel in ʔuk’ul is

  short. These stems contrast with their passive counterparts, kóʔonol and ʔúʔuk’ul, whose stem vowels have

  an infixed glottal stop. The third antipassive stem in this group is pak’al ‘to plant, sow.’ Like ʔuk’ul, both

  vowels in this stem are short:

  (19a) táan k pak’al

  ‘we’re planting’ (Blair and Vermont Salas 1965:103)

  (19b) pak’alnahen hóʔolheh

  ‘I planted yesterday’ (Blair and Vermont Salas 1965:103)

  It is noteworthy that the -Vl suffixes in these examples only mark them as antipassives, not as imper-

  fectives, in contrast to the -Vl suffixes in the passives described in 1.1.2. above and the middle voice stems

  that will be discussed in 1.1.4. below. They are retained in the perfective and subjunctive stems of these

  antipassives, but appear only in the imperfective stems of passives and mediopassives, where their func-

  tion is entirely aspectual, not stem-formative.

  1.1.4. THE MIDDLE VOICE OF ROOT TRANSITIVES. The orthography used in the Calepino de Motul makes it

  difficult to distinguish the middle voice (also known as the mediopassive) from the passive voice in terms

  of spelling alone. It is not clear whether the middle voice stem still had the CVhC shape of the Proto-Yu-

  catecan stem of this voice during the second half of the sixteenth century, or if the laryngeal /h/ had al-

  ready disappeared, resulting in the
lengthening of the vowel and high or rising pitch that characterizes the

  middle voice in Modern Yucatec. Only root- or stem-initial /h/ was recorded as such in the Calepino, and

  vowel length was not marked, but because the nuclei of both kinds of stems are heavy, their vowels were

  sometimes doubled or accented. The same was true of the many innovated passives in Colonial Yucatec,

  whose CVʔVC stems were heavy because of their infixed glottal stops.

  Middle-voice stems can often be distinguished from passive stems semantically, in the sense that they

  refer to actions that take place without apparent cause, whereas passives imply an agent, whether or not

  the agent is actually mentioned. For example, cħóoxol ‘to fall like a beast of burden or when a person falls

  after stumbling’ is based on the root transitive cħox ‘to knock down, throw down.’ It is a mediopassive

  because the falling has no apparent cause. The vowel in the first syllable of cħóoxol is both doubled and

  accented, a spelling that is consistent with both the Proto-Yucatecan (cħohxol) and Modern Yucatecan

  (č’óošol) forms of this stem.

  A similar argument can be made for interpreting haual ‘to stop, cease, conclude, close’ as a medio-

  passive. Following the gloss of this entry is a statement that there is an accent on the first syllable. The

  example sentences for this entry do not imply an agent:

  (20a) ma=bal ma tan v haual

  ‘nothing lasts forever’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 280r)

  (20b) hah-i-hah v haual in cimil ca ix lecec xan hah-i-hah

  ‘my illness stopped suddenly, and it returned suddenly too’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 172v

  (20c) haui in num=ya y etel in cħapahal

  ‘my suffering and illness ceased’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 178v)

  152

  TRANSITIVE VERBS

  (20d) haui v uahil ca ix oci t u hahal cucutil c ah lohil

  ‘it ceased to be bread and became the actual body of Our Savior’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 178v)

  A sentence containing the imperfective stem of this verb in Modern Yucatec documents the presence of a

  long vowel and high tone in the first syllable of háawal:

  (20e) ȼ’óʔok u háawal u číʔib’al in koh

  ‘my toothache already stopped’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:199)

  The sentences in (21a–b) illustrate the imperfective and perfective stems of ȼ’úum ‘to deflate, shrink,

  dwindle’:

  (21a) ȼ’óʔok u ȼ’úumul u čùupil uy ič in sukúʔun

  ‘the swelling on my older brother’s face already went down’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:56)

  (21b) ȼ’úum in k’úʔum

  ‘my corn meal dwindled to nothing’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:56)

  There are, in fact, ca. 360 middle voice stems in the Hocaba dialect of Modern Yucatec ((Bricker et al.

  1998), representing 87 percent of the root transitives (N = 412). They are much less common in the Calepino

  de Motul, perhaps reflecting the absence of such a formal category of verb stems in Latin and Spanish.

  1.2. VOICE IN DERIVED TRANSITIVES. Transitive stems may be derived from roots in other form classes by

  suffixing -(e)s, -t, and -cin/-cun to them. -(e)s derives causative stems from intransitive roots. -t derives

  transitive stems from nominal roots. And -cin/-cun (-kíin-s/-t or -kúun-s/-t in Modern Yucatec) derive tran-

  sitive stems from other form classes, such as adjectives, particles, positionals, and affects.

  Also considered here are the root transitives with medial laryngeals, whose passives have followed the

  same course of development from the pattern they inherited from Proto-Yucatecan as the -s and -t derived

  transitives. They are formally, if not semantically and historically, derived transitives in Modern Yucatec.

  1.2.1. VOICE IN CAUSATIVE STEMS DERIVED FROM ROOT INTRANSITIVES. Causative stems have three

  voices: active, passive, and antipassive.

  1.2.1.1. THE ACTIVE VOICE IN CAUSATIVES DERIVED FROM ROOT INTRANSITIVES. The aspectual suffixes

  that co-occur with causatives derived from root intransitives are -ic (imperfective), -ah (perfective), and -Ø

  (subjunctive), as shown in these examples of cim-s ‘to kill,’ which is derived from the intransitive root cim

  ‘to die’:

  (22a) heix ma haalil cie yanix v cimçic vinic

  ‘pure wine without liquid will cause a man to die’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 215v)

  (22b) tepal cħicħob t in cimçah

  ‘I killed many birds’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 417r)

  (22c) valah in cimez_ Juan

  ‘I said that I killed John’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 204r)

  TRANSITIVE VERBS 153

  The example of in cimez in (22c) indicates that the subjunctive stems of causatives take the -es allomorph

  of the causative suffix and that the subjunctive suffix is -Ø, not -Vb, as in root transitives.

  In Modern Yucatec, kíim is the cognate of Colonial cim and kíin-s of Colonial cim-s (the nasal having

  assimilated to the causative suffix):

  (23a) le ʔúučoʔ wáah k a kíinsik hun túul máakeʔ kíinsb’ileč

  ‘formerly, if you killed someone, you would be killed (too)’ (V. Bricker 1981a:222, lines 136–138)

  (23b) t u láah kíinsah le máakóoʔ

  ‘they murdered all those people’ (EBT979C)

  (23c) máaš atan b’íin u kíinseh

  ‘whose wife will he kill?’ (V. Bricker 1979b:129)

  The example of u kíinseh in (23c) suggests that the -es allomorph of the causative suffix no longer co-oc-

  curs with causative subjunctive stems and that -eh must be suffixed to -s if nothing follows it.

  1.2.1.2. THE PASSIVE VOICE IN CAUSATIVES DERIVED FROM ROOT INTRANSITIVES. Both Colonial and Mod-

  ern Yucatec have inherited the Proto-Yucatecan pattern of passivizing causatives derived from root intran-

  sitives by suffixing -b (phonetic [-b’]) to the causative stem. This pattern of suffixation usually produces a

  triconsonantal cluster composed of the coda consonant of the intransitive root, followed by -s and -b, re-

  quiring the insertion of an epenthetic vowel, probably schwa, but represented as /a/ in the Colonial orthog-

  raphy, between the two suffixes.3 The aspectual suffixes that co-occur with passivized causatives derived

  from intransitive roots were -al (imperfective), -i (perfective), and -ac (subjunctive) in Colonial Yucatec:

  (24a) hun ppel v hoksabal tamuk v ɔibtabal t u menel essno lae

  ‘each one is removed while it is being written by this notary’ (MA629-049-050B)

  (24b) ca ti hoksabi v takin cah ɔabal ti t u tohol v poc=che cole

  ‘then the money of the town was removed to be given to him as the price of the abandoned field’

  (TK610-018A-D)

  (24c) hex Dios t u hunal loe yanili ti ma çihçabac babal

  ‘and as for that God alone, he existed before anything had been created

  t u menel y oklal ma chunlizi ma hopplizi

  because he had no origin nor beginning’(Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 215v)

  The causative stem in (24a–b) is hok-s ‘to take out, remove, withdraw,’ which is derived from hok ‘to come

  out, emerge.’ In the third example (24c), çih-ç ‘to bear, give birth’ is the causative stem, having been derived

  from çih ‘to be born.’

  Beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century, the passivizing suffix -b was reduced to a

  glottal stop in the imperfective and subjunctive stems, and because there was no symbol for this laryn-

  geal in the orthography used for this language then, -abal and -abac became -al and -ac, respectively in

  nineteen
th- century texts:

  154

  TRANSITIVE VERBS

  (25a) t u men hach talan keban u cimsal cristiano

  ‘because it is a most grievous sin for a Christian to be killed

  etas xolocbal u c[a]n u kaba in yume

  while kneeling (and) mentioning my Father’s name;

  ma uchac bin cinsacobi

  it is not possible that they will be killed’ (V. Bricker 1981a:194, lines 245–248)

  This change is evidenced in Modern Yucatec today in the imperfective (-áʔal) and subjunctive (-áʔak) stems

  of causative passives,4 but not in their perfective stem (-áʔab’), which retained the -b’ form of the passive,

  but emulated the other stems by lengthening the epenthetic vowel between the -s and -b’ suffixes and

  inserting a glottal stop in it:

  (25b) entonses káʔah túun t u súublevàart u b’ahóʔob’ le yáʔaškab’aʔoʔ túunoʔ

  ‘then when the people of Yaxcaba rebelled then,

  ʔàan káʔah ʔéensáʔak t u mèen tak u káampanáil

  yes, even though the bell was lowered by them;

  ʔéensáʔab’ih peroh máʔ b’isáʔab’iʔ káʔah náʔaksáʔab’ih

  it was lowered, but it was not taken away, and it was raised’ (SOT971B:2)

  The intransitive root of ʔéensáʔak and ʔéensáʔab’ is ʔéem ‘to descend.’ The underlying form of b’isáʔab’

  is b’insáʔab’, which is derived from b’in ‘to go.’ náʔak ‘to rise, climb’ is the intransitive root from which náʔaksáʔab’ih is derived.

  1.2.1.3. THE ANTIPASSIVE VOICE IN CAUSATIVES DERIVED FROM ROOT INTRANSITIVES. The antipassive

  voice of causatives derived from root intransitives is best known from elicitation in Modern Yucatec (e.g.,

  V. Bricker 1978:5–6). It is marked by suffixing -ah to the causative stem. The imperfective stem takes no

  additional suffixes, and in this respect, it resembles the active perfective stem, whose direct object is in the

  third person and singular:

  (26a) t inw oksah_ b’úʔul

  ‘I planted beans’

  (26b) t inw oksah_

  ‘I planted it’

  (26c) t inw oksah

  ‘I am planting’

  The active example in (26a) can be distinguished from the antipassive example in (26c) by the presence of

  a nominal direct object (b’úʔul). The active example in (26b) has an implied direct object, but because the