A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000)
Page 53
over a flat surface with one that appears here and there, as in hair or a beard. Other compounds like
kan=haben ‘golden [i.e., aged]’ (< haab ‘year, age; period of years’) and çac=hopen ‘lustrous white ( silver)’
(< hop ‘light fire’) refer to the luster imparted by ageing or burnishing. They contrast with chac=yulen
‘abraded red’ and çac=yulen ‘abraded white’ (< yul ‘to burnish, polish’), as in a remedy for throat abscesses
on page 181 of the Book of Chilam Balam of Kaua:
(19)
lay ɔon koch kake t u cal uinic tac y ulel
‘as for this croup, it is in a person’s throat until it appears
sac=yulen va ix chac=yulen
whitish or reddish’ (Kaua n.d.:II, 4R)
The use of the compounds, chac=yulen and çac=yulen, instead of the simple terms for red (chac) and white
(çac), emphasizes the raw appearance of the inflamed throat and therefore makes it more vivid. In addi-
tion, a pun may have been intended here, for yul can mean ‘larynx, trachea,’ as well as ‘to burnish, polish.’
This is a clear case of evocative language of the kind characteristic of affects.
Other evocative examples of color compounds in the Books of Chilam Balam include:
(20a) mehene ca a tales ten av ix mehen ynv ilab
‘son, you will bring me your daughter for me to see;
lay hach çac=haɔen u uiche hach cichpame
this one whose face is so gleaming white, she is very beautiful’ (Gordon 1913:40)
(20b) zac=oppen u pach u cheel
‘brittle white is the bark of the tree’ (Ixil n.d.: fol. 17v, line 22)
(20c) zac=pozen u lee
‘whitish is its leaf’ (Ixil n.d.: fol. 17v, line 23)
(20d) c u tħan lume hohochil kan=pikeen
‘he says: as for the Earth, it is empty and translucent yellow’ (Chan Kan n.d.: 27, line 8)
(20e) hele en 19 de abril de 1629 años vli u yanal sak
‘today on the nineteenth of April of 1629 years, the other locusts arrived;
318 AFFECTS
Table 12-6. Compound stems based on basic color terms in Books of Chilam Balam and Ritual of Bacabs.
ek
chac
kan
çac
yax
Root
‘black’
‘red’
‘yellow’ ‘white’ ‘green’ Gloss
ɔoy ‘dull’?
—
—
—
—
+
dull green
chal ‘clear’
—
—
—
+
—
very white, transparent
hol ‘clear away’
—
+
—
—
—
red hot
hom ‘clear level’
—
—
—
+
—
clean, swept, clear
lah ‘all’
—
—
—
+
—
uniformly white
muc ‘bury, hide’
—
—
—
+
—
whitewashed
nic ‘flower, rose’
—
+
—
—
—
pink, rose-colored
opp ‘brittle’
—
—
—
+
—
brittle white (bark)
pik ‘clear, lighten, brighten’
—
—
+
—
—
translucent yellow
pil ‘?’
—
—
—
+
—
pale
poç ‘pale, colorless’
—
—
—
+
—
whitish
ppul ‘whiplash, stroke (of bell)’
+
+
+
—
—
acquired black, red, yellow
tan ‘wide’
—
—
+
—
—
orange-colored (sun, moon)
topp ‘intense’
—
+
—
+
—
intense red, white
yapp ‘much, many’
—
+
—
—
—
many red fruits
yul ‘burnish, polish’
—
+
—
+
—
abraded red, white
NOTE: A plus sign (+) indicates that the compound is attested, whereas a minus sign (—) means that it is unattested.
chac=nicen u pachob
pink is their color’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 21r)
(20f) ox
chac=nicen chac xulab
‘a rose-colored cluster of large ants’ (Gordon 1913:91)
The full set of lexemes that co-occur with color terms in these literary works are listed in the first column
of Table 12-6.
An inspection of Tables 12-5 and 12-6 reveals that, in most cases, only one of the five basic color terms
appears with each lexeme. I suspect that the sparseness of the matrix in Table 12-5 is an artifact of an
elicitation process that did not recognize the significance of such constructions in compiling the Calepino
de Motul and other Colonial dictionaries. The gaps in Table 12-6 are related to the genres represented by
the Books of Chilam Balam and the Ritual of the Bacabs. There are no examples of color compounds in my
database of notarial documents, for which evocative language was apparently not appropriate.
3.2. COLOR COMPOUNDS IN MODERN YUCATEC. Although less numerous, the data on color compounds in
the Hocaba dialect of Modern Yucatec are more coherent because they were elicited systematically, once
Eleuterio Po’ot Yah realized that they had something in common. As mentioned in 3.1. above, this was not
true of the compilation of the Calepino de Motul and other Colonial dictionaries, where no effort seems to
have been made to test each of the non-color lexemes with each color term. It is for this reason that only
AFFECTS
319
Table 12-7. Compound stems based on the basic color terms in the Hocaba Dialect of Modern Yucatec.
ʔéek’
čak
k’áan
sak
yáʔaš
Root
‘black’
‘red’
‘yellow’ ‘white’ ‘green’ Gloss
ʔol ‘soft, tender’
+
+
+
+
+
soft, tender
b’an ‘fell, shake down’
—
—
+
+
—
abundant
ȼan ‘harden, temper’
+
—
+
—
—
shiny (like metal)
č’áʔay ‘bloody’
+
+
+
+
+
watery
č’ìit ‘bamboo’
—
—
—
—
+
light
č’uy ‘hang, suspend’
—
—
+
—
+
premature
haȼ’ ‘hit, whip, beat’
+
+
+
+
+
glossy, gleaming, brilliant
hep’ ‘tighten, squeeze, cinch’
+
+
+
—
+
deep
hoʔ ‘?’
+
—
—
—
—
dark
kum ‘swell’
+
+
—
—
+
puffy
k’al ‘close, cover, imprison, lock’
—
—
—
—
+
green (eyes)
nay ‘dream’
+
—
—
—
—
dusky
pak’ ‘wall’
—
+
+
+
+
expanse
píik’ ‘clear, lighten, brighten’
+
+
+
+
+
translucent
pil ‘?’
+
+
+
+
+
light, pale, dilute
pos ‘pale, colorless’
+
+
+
+
+
pale
puk’ ‘dilute, dissolve, mix’
+
+
+
+
+
faded
p’oš ‘break out in rash’
+
+
+
+
+
prickly
p’uč ‘beat, flail, thresh’
—
—
+
—
—
yellowed (from smoke)
sam ‘rather, slightly’
+
—
—
—
—
slightly
til ‘?’
+
+
+
—
+
dull
t’ub’ ‘submerge’
—
+
+
—
+
eye color
yaʔp’ ‘much, many’
—
+
+
+
—
many
yúʔul ‘blunt’
+
+
+
+
—
abraded
NOTE: Stems shared with Colonial Yucatec are bolded.
seven of the sixty-nine lexemes appear with more than one color term in the Colonial dictionaries (Table
12-5), whereas more than half of the non-color lexemes in Table 12-6 co-occur with three or more color
terms.
Twelve of the twenty-four color compounds in Table 12-7 are shared with the Colonial sources, indi-
cating significant continuity in this semantic tradition. That there are many fewer color compounds in the
Hocaba dialect of Modern Yucatec than in the Colonial sources may reflect the difference between a dictio-
nary of the dialect spoken in a single town and dictionaries whose entries came from more than one town.
This is suggested by the presence of more than one color compound for “jaundiced” (both kan=tzahen and
kan=pilen) in Colonial Yucatec, only the second of which is attested in Modern Yucatec (compare Tables
12-5 with 12-7). Furthermore, the terms that are not bolded in Table 12-7 suggest that Hocaba was unlikely
to have been one of the towns whose lexicon was incorporated in the Colonial dictionaries.
320 AFFECTS
Some examples of compounds based on each of the five colors are shown in context in (21a–i):
(21a) ʔéeʔ=kuméʔen uy ich hwàan
‘John’s eye is puffy black’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:7)
(21b) čak=p’ošéʔen le ʔàab’loʔ
‘those plums are red’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:60)
(21c) čak=p’ošéʔen uy ich le š č’úupaloʔ
‘that girl’s face is flushed’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:60)
(21d) čak=yaʔp’éʔen le p’àakoʔ
‘those many tomatoes are red’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:61)
(21e) le nòok’oʔ čak=poséʔen
‘that cloth is stained red or faded red’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:60)
(21f) b’áʔaš ten čak=yuléʔen a p’úʔuk
‘why is your cheek raw red?’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:61)
(21g) t in manah hun p’éel k’úum k’áam=b’anéʔen
‘I bought a pie-pan squash that was yellow’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:144)
(21h) sak=haȼ’éʔen u pòol
‘his hair is gleaming white’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:239)
(21i)
yáʔaš=pak’éʔen le k’áašoʔ
‘that forest is an expanse of green’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:313)
In (21a), ʔéeʔ=kuméʔen is based on ʔéek’ ‘black,’ but the compound in which it appears refers to a puffy
black or deep purple, as in a sky dark with clouds, or, in this case, a bruised eye. The examples based on čak
‘red’ characterize this color in multiple ways. The ‘red’ meaning of čak=p’ošéʔen is sufficient in (21b), but in
(21c), its second meaning, ‘flushed,’ is more appropriate. And if the intention is to refer to the visual specta-
cle of many red tomatoes in one place, then čak=yaʔp’éʔen is the obvious choice (21d). On the other hand, if
the red in question is faint, then čak=poséʔen can be used to describe it as “stained” or “faded” (21e). And if
the red has a rubbed or scrubbed appearance, then čak=yuléʔen describes it as “raw red” (21f). The remain-
ing examples (in [21g–i]) illustrate the use of other stems with the terms for “yellow,” “white,” and “green.”
4. SOUND SYMBOLISM
The Calepino de Motul contains a few examples of sound symbolism, also known as onomatopoeia, which
is ‘the formation of a word by imitating the natural sound of the object or action involved’ (Webster’s New
Twentieth Century Dictionary, p. 1250). They are listed below:
AFFECTS 321
(22)
Onomatopoiea
Gloss
am
sound, noise made by heavy footstep, earthquake
cilin-cilin
sound of kettledrum or bell
cuncum
noise or sound of feet or person walking
tzan
sound or pealing of a metal bell or stone
cħululu
noise made by intestines when someone is hungry
hum
sound, noise, din, clatter, clangor; buzzing, humming (bees, wasps, stone),
ringing (in ears), wheezing (of asthmatic person)
poom
boom!, heavy blow, sound of falling large object
tħob
sound of water
Of these, hum has a more generic meaning, referring to a variety of audible effects that are not restricted
to a single object or action. Although it has some of the same meanings as the English word, hum, and is
sp
elled in the same way, the pronunciation of the vowel would have been “oo.” The Calepino provides the
following contextual examples of the use of cħululu and poom:
(23a) cħululu ci v tħan in nak t u men vijh t u men hanal
‘cħululu is the noise my stomach makes from hunger for food’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 160r)
(23b) poom ca lubi Juan ti be
‘John fell with a boom on the road!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 380v)
The names of three birds and one mammal in Modern Yucatec obviously echo the sounds they make:
(24)
Faunal Name
Gloss
(š) čak=ȼ’íiȼ ‘ib’
cardinal
k’áʔaw
crow
k’éek’en
pig
púʔuhuy
nighthawk
The čak ‘red’ prefix in (š) čak=ȼ’íiȼ ‘ib’ refers to the color of the cardinal and the rest of its name to its call.
The name for the crow resembles the sound (“caw”) attributed to crows in English. And k’éek’en must refer
to the grunting of pigs, which is heard as “oink-oink” in English.
Other examples of onomatopoeia in the Hocaba dictionary of Modern Yucatec include:
(25)
Onomatopoiea
Gloss
b’okol
sound made by movement
b’ub’uč
trotting sound
č’iʔ
chirp
hìin
wheezing sound
hùum
sound, noise
kilim
thunder, hum (refrigerator)
k’oloʔ
gobble
nikič
squeak
píʔis
hiss
popok
sound of flapping wings
322 AFFECTS
tiriš
hiss, buzz
was
sound of hissing
wìis
wheeze
Two roots on this list are Modern cognates of Colonial roots listed in (22): hùum and kilim. Two affects, one
verbal (humancil ‘to make many sounds and much noise’) and the other adjectival (humucnac ‘noisy, loud’)
were derived from hum in Colonial Yucatec, and a verbal affect (kíilb’al ‘to tremble, shake, quake’) must be
derived from kilim in Modern Yucatec. In addition, the verb, boh ‘to beat, strike hollow object, which emits
a ringing sound,’ is the source of an adjectival affect (bobohnac ‘ringing hollow’) in Colonial Yucatec and
two affect verbs (b’ohb’al ‘to ring hollow’ and b’ohláankil ‘to creak, make noise’) in Modern Yucatec. Simi-
larly, the source of bubuchancil ‘to lose time while walking, wander alone sadly’ in Colonial Yucatec and its
cognate, b’ub’učáankil ‘to trot along’ in Modern Yucatec are probably derived from an onomatopoeic root,
bubuch (phonetic [b’ub’uč]) that refers to a trotting sound. And the affect verb, ʔáamb’al ‘to roar (plane),
rumble (earth),’ in Modern Yucatec must be related to Colonial am ‘sound, noise made by heavy footstep,
earthquake,’ from which an affect verb, aanac ‘to resound, sound loudly,’ was also derived.