A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000)
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examples demonstrate:
(20a) paayi v beel t u men v sucun
‘he was guided by his older brother’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 360r)
(20b) loten y etel viɔin
‘I and my younger brother were born together’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 273r)
(20c) in kamah v yaah ti in yum
‘I contracted the illness from my father’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 237v)
(20d) maih
v yumech va ma tan a tzeecte
‘you would not be his father if you do not punish him’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 288r)
(20e) in mam batab y al vix cit
‘my cousin is the leader, the son of my mother’s sister’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 292r)
Wills provided the most common context for mentioning kin terms in Colonial times, when people
who owned substantial property specified how it should be distributed among their heirs. The following
examples come from the will of Luis May, which was notarized on December 10, 1743:
(21a) hun ac yn solar yan t u likin votoch lae
‘one of my house plots that exists east of my home
c in kubic ti yn mehen P.o Antt.o May
‘I hand over to my son, Pedro Antonio May’ (TK743K)
(21b) hun ac yn matan solar ti Anjelina Mena vy atan Fran.co Koh
‘one of my house-plot gifts from Angelina Mena, the wife of Francisco Koh,
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195
c in ɔaic ti ynv ix mehen Maria Anttonia May y v balob t u lacal
‘I bequeath to my daughter, Maria Antonia May, and all its contents (TK743K)
(21c) hex kax lae ti yan t u likin multun ac bel ɔuma
‘and this forest here, it is there to the east of the mound opposite the road to ɔuma;
v matma yn na ti v mam y yn yum
the gift of my mother from her maternal cousin and my father,
lic tun yn ɔaic ti yn mehen manuel may lae
which I then bequeath to my son, this Manuel May’ (TK743K)
Because the Colonial Maya had a system of double descent, kinship terms in the male line were dif-
ferent from those in the female line. In addition, men and women used different terms to refer to their
children. Women referred to both sons and daughters as inu al or ual ‘my child,’ as was the case in (20e),
where, because the cousin (mam) is a leader (batab), he must be the son of the speaker’s aunt. The term
used by men to refer to their children was mehen, but unlike the term used by women, its default meaning
was ‘son.’ In referring to their daughters, men added the clitic particle, ix, to mehen, as in inv ix mehen
‘my daughter.’ That is why Luis May referred to his son as yn mehen in (21a) and to his daughter as ynv ix
mehen in (21b).
The same explanation may account for the ix particle in vix cit ‘my mother’s sister’ in (20e). Although
cit is not listed as an entry in the Calepino de Motul, there is evidence that it represented an alternative to
yum in referring to “father” (see below). The use of ix as a feminine gender clitic particle was not limited to
kinship terms; it marked agentive nouns derived from several kinds of roots in Colonial Yucatec (see 2.1.
below).
When the honorific suffix, -bil, was suffixed to a kinship term, it resulted in a noun that was never pos-
sessed (n10). The following kinship terms were listed as entries with -bil and the clarification, sin denotar
cuyo ‘without specifying whose,’ in their glosses in the Calepino de Motul:
(22)
-bil Noun
Gloss
iɔinbil
honored younger brother or sister
mambil
honored first cousin
mehenbil
man’s honored son
onelbil
honored consanguineal relative
yumbil
honored father
The noun, citbil, is not mentioned in the Calepino, but it substituted for yumbil in the expression, Dios
yumbil Dios mehenbil Dios Espiritu Santo ‘God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit,’ in documents
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, suggesting that it, too, meant ‘father’ and providing a
rationale for the presence of ix in ix cit ‘father’s sister.’
The Calepino contains only one sentence illustrating the use of a kinship term with -bil:
(23)
ma vchac v cħaic v ba tan ba mambilob
‘it is not possible for honored first cousins to marry each other’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 292r)
As time passed, and Spanish rule took hold, the bilateral kinship system of the conquerors gradually
replaced the original double-descent system of the Maya of Yucatan, and Spanish kinship terms replaced
196 NOUNS
some of the Maya kinship terms. By the 1980s, when I was eliciting words for the Hocaba dictionary, only
fourteen of the original twenty-three kinship terms were still known, and of them, four were no longer in
common use. For example, yùum ‘father’ had largely been replaced by tàatah (from Nahuatl) and papah
(from Spanish), mamah (from Spanish) had replaced naʔ ‘mother,’ and tyòoh ‘uncle’ (from Spanish tío) and
tyàah ‘aunt’ (from Spanish tía) were the only collateral terms in the first ascending generation known in
Hocaba. On the other hand, the original terms for relatives in Ego’s generation (sukúʔun ‘older brother,’
kìik ‘older sister,’ ʔíiȼ’in ‘younger sibling,’ ʔíičam ‘husband,’ ʔatan ‘wife,’ and b’àal ‘brother-in-law’) were in
common use during the 1980s. So also, were čìič ‘grandmother,’ ʔáab’il ‘grandchild, great-nephew, great-
niece,’ ʔilib’ ‘daughter-in-law,’ and háʔan ‘son-in-law.’ They were inflected for possession with no suffix (-Ø),
continuing the pattern that had characterized kinship terms during the Colonial period.
When the Spanish loans, papah ‘father’ and mamah ‘mother,’ are inflected for possession, the first
vowel in the root is lengthened and acquires low tone: im pàapah ‘my father’ and in màamah ‘my mother,
resulting in their classification as n8, instead of n1.
Only one kinship term has retained the honorific -bil suffix of Colonial Yucatec that marked them as
n10: yùumb’ìil ‘holy father’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:319). Instead, -tzil (phonetic [-ȼil]) now has the same func-
tion as -bil did in Colonial Yucatec. Furthermore, -tzil already had that function in Colonial Yucatec. The
Calepino de Motul classifies both mehenbil and mehentzil as nouns whose possessor cannot be specified
(n10) and translates mehentzil as ‘man’s honored son [legitimate and beloved]; courteous son’ (Ciudad Real
1600?: fol. 303).
1.2.3. REFLEXIVE AND RECIPROCAL NOUNS. Colonial Yucatec had a noun, ba, glossed as ‘self,’ that func-
tioned as a reflexive pronoun when it was inflected for possession:
(24a) balex a ba ti ciçin
‘protect yourselves from the Devil!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 44r)
(24b) ma xana maix v nah vinic v bulez v ba ti keban
‘on the contrary, nor is it a good thing that the man drowns himself in sin’ (Ciudad Real 1600?:
fol. 302v)
This noun was not limited to transitive contexts, but also occurred in nominal phrases:
(25a) t a ba t a hunal
‘by yourself alone’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 419v)
(25b) hun tul t u ba Dios ox tul t u ba v personasilob
‘a single God and three are his persons’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 427r)
(25c) v cħaah v bal v ba
‘he recovered his poss
essions’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 150r)
Reciprocal expressions were formed by combining u ba with tan ba:
(26a) a nupbeçah va vinicob vchebal v cħaicob v ba tan ba
‘did you unite the people so that they might marry each other?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 339r)
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197
(26b) va ma tan v pak=tehal t u ba tan baob v kakil y etel ticin çuuce
‘if the fire is not combined with dry hay,
ma uil tan y eleli
it will not burn’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 365v)
(26c) yan ti y olob v mahal v ppatic v ba tan baob
‘they are resolved not to leave each other’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 216r)
(26d) v paclam=pactah v ba tan ba Juan y etel Pedro
‘John and Peter looked at each other’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 356v)
The Modern cognate of ba is b’ah ‘self’ in Modern Yucatec:
(27a) t in šot(ah) im b’ah
‘I cut myself’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:24)
(27b) kiŋw ilik im b’ah
‘I see myself’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:12)
There are no u b’ah táan b’ah expressions in the Hocaba dictionary of Modern Yucatec, but the following
example, in which táan has been incorporated in the transitive stem, may be a vestige of such expressions:
(28)
t u núup’=taant(ah) u b’aʔob’
‘they met each other’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:271)
2. DERIVED NOUNS
Several kinds of nouns could be derived from adjectival, verbal, and particle roots in Colonial Yucatec, as
well as from nominal roots themselves. The major classes of such derivations were agentive, instrumental,
abstract, verbal, and relational nouns.
2.1. AGENTIVE NOUNS. Although agentive nouns were, and still are, drawn from all the other form classes,
root transitives represent the most common source of this derivational class. They were marked by two
clitic particles in Colonial Yucatec: ah and ix. Although agentive nouns marked by ah could refer to both
male and female actors, when it was paired with ix, it referred only to males, and ix referred to females. For
example, ah chuy (< chuy ‘to sew, embroider’) could refer to both ‘tailors and seamstresses’ (Ciudad Real
1600?: fol. 148v), whereas ah kam (< kam ‘to receive, respond’) referred only to ‘male inkeepers, hosts, and
temporary manservants’ and ix kam only to ‘female inkeepers, hostesses, and temporary maidservants’
(Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 236v). On the other hand, ah kuch (< kuch ‘to spin’) referred only to ‘female spin-
ners’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 252v) because only women engaged in spinning. In other words, agentive
nouns derived from verbal roots that took ah as their clitic particle were not marked for gender, but those
beginning with ix were marked for feminine gender.
The same was true of agentive nouns derived from adjectives. Thus, ah uijh (< uijh ‘hungry’) meant
‘hungry person,’ either a man or a woman, whereas ah pukuz (< pukuz ‘pot-bellied’) specified a ‘pot-bellied
198 NOUNS
man’ because ix pukuz referred to ‘pot-bellied woman’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 384r). The glosses of such
pairs of terms were not always parallel. For example, ah çuc (< çuc ‘tame, gentle’) referred to a ‘gentle
man’ and ix çuc to ‘younger daughter,’ even though its literal translation was ‘gentle woman’ (Ciudad Real
1600?: fols. 14r, 109r, 228r). Similarly, the Calepino de Motul glosses ah coo (< co ‘crazy, foolish, insolent,
boisterous, roguish, cunning, deceitful’) as a ‘bold, daring, intrepid, brave, courageous person’ and ix coo
as a ‘whore; playful, jesting woman’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fols. 10r, 75v, 227v).
The same principle of female being the marked gender was true of agentive nouns derived from nomi-
nal roots:
(29)
Masculine
Gloss
Feminine
Gloss
ah baac
little boy
ix baac
little girl
ah bouat
prophet
ix bouat
prophetess
ah haa
chocolate maker [male]
ix haa
chocolate maker [female]
However, the glosses of several agentive nouns derived from kinship terms seem counter-intuitive. In the
following examples, ah ‘male’ co-occurs with both atan ‘wife’ and icham ‘husband,’ yielding ah atan ‘married
man’ and ah icham ‘married woman.’ Even stranger is the combination of both ah and ix with mehen ‘child’:
ah ix mehennal ‘father who has children.’ And the Calepino de Motul lists both ah ál and ix al as agentive
nouns referring to women:
(30a) ah ál: woman who has given birth [while she is still in bed]; woman who has given birth many
times; mare, cow
(30b) ix al: woman or animal who has given birth and has children
The second of these terms was still known in the Hocaba dialect during the 1980s as: š ʔàal ‘woman who
has given birth’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:4). Over time, ah was reduced to h and ix to x (phonetic [š]). Both
gender particles appear with almost equal frequency in the Hocaba dictionary, but this may be an artifact
of our elicitation procedure. ah was much more common than ix in agentive nouns in Colonial times.
When ah was combined with a surname, it designated membership in a lineage (e.g., ah chan ‘member
of the Chan lineage’). Similarly, when it co-occurred with the name of a town, it indicated residence in that
town (e.g., ah cumkal ‘resident of Conkal’).
2.1.1. MARKING AGENTIVE NOUNS FOR OWNERSHIP WITH -NAL. The example of ah ix mehennal contains
the -nal suffix that co-occurs with ca. thirty nominal roots and stems in agentive constructions, where it
indicates ownership, as in the following examples:
(31)
Agentive Noun
Gloss
ah alnal
woman who has children, mother
ah atan[n]al
married man
ah cabnal beekeeper
ah cahnal
resident of a town
ah colnal
owner or foreman of cornfield or farm
ah cħennal
owner of sinkhole where cacao grows
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199
ah ichamnal
married woman
ah kaknal
someone with smallpox
ah kaxnal
owner of forest
ah otochnal householder
ah ppentacnal
slave owner
ah ppocnal
person with hat
In this list the noun for ‘wife’ (atan) was used to refer to a married man because he was the “owner” of
his wife, and the noun for ‘husband’ (icham) was used to refer to a married woman because she was the
“owner” of her husband.
Other examples of these agentive nouns, this time in context, appear in (32a–c) below:
(32a) cen Dio Pox ah otochnal vay ti cah ɔaane
‘I who am Diego Pox, a householder here in the town of ɔaan’ (DZ587B-106A-B)
(32b) ca yx t in payah Francisco Mex y etel Gaspar Mex ah kaxnal te ti lakine
‘and then I summoned Francisco Mex and Gaspar Mex, the owner of the forest there in the east’
(SB596A-014A-C)
(32c) ti hun=molob al=mehenob chun=tħanob y. Juo Chan alcarde ordinario
‘gathered there were the nobles, the elders, with Juan Chan, the ordinary magistrate
ti cah
Mani lae y. Franco Cuy tinyente v nucil al=mehenob
in this town of Mani, with Francisco Cuy, deputy of the senior nobles,
ah cahnalob vay t u cahal Mani lae
residents here in this town of Mani’ (MA733E-504A-505D)
Of the eight agentive nouns with -nal (phonetic [-náal]) in the Hocaba dialect of Modern Yucatec, none
of them is introduced by the Modern cognate of the clitic particle ah, and only four of them imply owner-
ship (the noun in the fourth [wakaš ‘cow’] is a Spanish loan [vacas ‘cows’]):
(33)
Agentive Noun
Gloss
kahnáal
inhabitant, resident
kolnáal farmer
ʔotočnáal
owner of house
wakašnáal cattleman
The others simply refer to the agent of an action:
(34)
Agentive Noun
Gloss
ȼ’isnáal copulator
ȼ’onnáal hunter
lošnáal boxer
poč’náal insulter
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An example of the use of kahnáal in Hocaba appears in (35) below:
(35)
le máakóʔob’ kahnáalóʔob’ wayaʔ lóotil kàahilóʔob’
‘the people who are residents here are from various countries’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:120)
2.1.2. AGENTIVES MARKED BY -YAH. The Calepino de Motul lists a few agentive nouns that are marked by
both -yah and the clitic particle ah:
(36)
Agentive Noun
Gloss
ah cooyah
noisy, lively, merry, rebellious, mischievous person
ah tzucyah
lewd, lascivious person
ah ɔutyah
barterer, money changer; publican
ah hobonyah painter
ah hubyah agitator
ah kinyah
sorcerer, fortune teller
ah kobenyah
cook, chef
ah tokyah
medical phlebotomist
Two agentive nouns in this list are derived from adjectival roots (coo ‘crazy, foolish, insolent, boisterous,
roguish, cunning, deceitful’; ɔut ‘avaricious, stingy, niggardly’), two from transitive roots (hub ‘to disturb,
disarrange, agitate’; tok ‘to puncture, let blood’), and three from nominal roots or stems (hobon ‘color,
pigment, paint’; kin ‘day, sun, time’; koben ‘hearthstones, kitchen’). (Alternatively, ah tokyah, may be the