A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000)
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(18a) kóʔon-éʔeš b’a=pačtik le k’áašaʔ
‘let’s surround this forest!’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:23)
(18b) k-óʔon-éʔeš túušt(i)k-éʔeš-óʔob’ le ʔeskwèláaʔ
let’s send them to this school!’ (CHK949)
PRONOUNS 53
1.3. HISTORICAL CHANGE IN CLITIC PRONOUNS. The principal differences between the Colonial and Mod-
ern paradigms for pronominal inflection concern the first-person singular and plural clitic pronouns. The
first-person singular clitic pronoun is often abbreviated as u (phonetic [w]) in Colonial Yucatec, but not in
Modern Yucatec (u iɔin versus iŋw íiȼ’in ‘my younger brother’).
Of greater historical interest is the merging of the two forms of the first-person plural clitic pronoun
(c before glottal-stop and laryngeal /h/ and ca before other consonants) in Colonial Yucatec into a single
form (phonetic [kə]) before all consonants in Modern Yucatec. The earliest evidence of this merger in my
corpus is in the ergative version of this pronoun associated with verbs in two documents from Oxkutzcab
in the Puuc region in the southwestern part of the peninsula that were produced in 1772 and 1775:
(19a) u tial ca c bete u carta de bentail hunac kaax u conma ti Diego Ppol cimi
‘in order that we prepare a bill of sale for one forest that he sold to Diego Ppol who died’
(OX772-003C-E)
(19b) u tial ca c ɔae u car[ta] bentail u man kax ti haan ah cimil Pasql Pech
‘in order that we give him a bill of sale for his purchase of a forest from the son-in-law of the
deceased Pasqual Pech’ (OX775-002D-E)
It then moved north to Tekanto in the northwestern part of the peninsula, where it occurs in a document
dated to 1779, this time as a possessive pronoun:
(20)
vay t u mektan cahil c yumilan ah bolon pixan santo agustin ah patron vay tek[an]to
‘here in the jurisdiction of the town of our patron, blessed Saint Augustine, the patron here in
Tekanto (TK779A-001C-F)
It showed up five years later in the southeastern part of the peninsula in multiple verbal contexts in a docu-
ment from Chunhuhub bearing a date of 1784:
(21a) ma t pathi c betic colob
‘we were not able to prepare our fields’ (HB784C-206A-B)
(21b) c u ɔocol c meyah trapich tac las ocho ua las nuebe akab tan c meyah
‘we were finishing working at the still at eight or nine at night, we were working’ (HB784C-215A-C)
(21c) bai cat c tasah tac bakhalal
‘thus when we brought it to Bacalar’ (HB784C-223A)
After four more years, it appeared in Ebtun in the northeastern part of the peninsula in 1787, once again
in a verbal context:
(22)
lay u chunpahal binon c ximbalte
‘this was the reason why we went to visit it’ (EBT787A)
Thus the geographic source of the replacement of the ca-allomorph of the first-person plural clitic pronoun
with c (phonetic [kə]) seems to have been the Puuc region, from where it spread to the north and east. The
merger began with the ergative pronoun and later was adopted more slowly by the possessive pronoun.
54 PRONOUNS
The circumstances that brought about this merger involved concomitant changes in the tense/aspect sys-
tem of the language, which are described in Chapter 5.
The ca-allomorph of the first-person clitic pronoun survives today only in the religious phrase ca yumil ti
Dios ‘our Lord who is God.’ However, because ca no longer means ‘our’ in Modern Yucatec, native speakers
of the language interpret this expression as caa yumil ti Dios (phonetic [káʔah yùumil tiʔ dyòos]) ‘second
Father who is God,’ claiming that it refers to Christ as the second manifestation of God in the Trinity.
2. INDEPENDENT PRONOUNS
The independent pronouns in Colonial and Modern Yucatec resemble the suffixed dependent pronouns
in not distinguishing between subjects and objects. The first- and second-person pronouns remained the
same over time; the third person pronouns did not.
2.1. INDEPENDENT PRONOUNS IN COLONIAL YUCATEC. The independent pronouns in Colonial Yucatec
appear in (23) below:
(23)
Singular
Plural
1st
ten ‘I, me’
t(o)on ‘we, us’
2nd
tech ‘you’
t(e)ex ‘you-all’
3rd
lay ‘he, she, it, him, her’
layob ‘they, them’
The first- and second-person pronouns are clearly related to the set B pronominal suffixes, which are also
not marked for case (see [5a–b] above). There were no third-person singular or plural independent pro-
nouns as such. For this purpose, Colonial Yucatec used the definite article lay (plural, layob), which, in com-
bination with deictic enclitics, functioned as demonstrative pronouns (see 7. below and 2. in Chapter 15).
2.2. INDEPENDENT PRONOUNS IN MODERN YUCATEC. The independent pronouns in Modern Yucatec are
listed in (24) below:
(24)
Singular
Plural
1st
tèen ‘I, me’
tóʔon ‘we, us’
2nd
tèeč ‘you’
téʔeš ‘you-all’
3rd
letiʔ ‘he, she, it, him, her’
letiʔob’ ‘they, them’
The first- and second-person pronouns are cognates of those in Colonial Yucatec; the third-person pro-
nouns are not. They are composed of two elements: le and tiʔ. le may have come from the le(y) form of lay
that made its first appearance in the late seventeenth century (see 2.3. below). tiʔ is the all-purpose prepo-
sition meaning ‘to, in, at, on, from, by’ in both Colonial and Modern Yucatec.
2.3. HISTORICAL CHANGE IN INDEPENDENT PRONOUNS. The transition from Colonial to Modern Yucatec
was marked by significant changes in the third-person independent pronouns, in the course of which lay
and layob were replaced by letiʔ and letiʔob, respectively. The first step in this change was the gradual con-
version of lay to le(y) or lei and layob to leob or leyob. le(y) appeared first in Ebtun in a document dated to
1675. It showed up in Tekanto in 1739, and, from then on, it was in free variation with lay in the northern
part of the peninsula. By the 1930s, lay had been superceded by le in almost all contexts, showing up oc-
casionally in letters sent by descendants of the rebel Maya from the Caste War of 1847–1853, living in what
PRONOUNS 55
is now the state of Quintana Roo, to the American archaeologist, Sylvanus G. Morley, who was working at
Chichen Itza at the time (Sullivan 1989).
In the meantime, completely new forms of the third-person independent pronoun had appeared in
the documentary record at Tekanto that would eventually replace the lay and layob forms. A document
bearing a 1747 date contained the first example of laytiob; its singular form — layti (also spelled laiti) — was
mentioned about forty years later in a document from Chunhuhub in the eastern part of the peninsula
dated to 1783. In the 1790s, layti began to receive competition from leyti and leiti. By the middle of the
nineteenth century, layti had dropped out of use completely, and leyti had assumed its modern form: leti.
lay occurs today only in the adverbial frame, láayli ... eʔ ‘always, still, even, now” (Blair and Vermont-Salas
1965:30; Hanks 1990:18–19, Tabl
e 1.1); léeyli ... eʔ is a variant of this expression in the Hocaba dialect (V. Bricker et al. 1998:165). The first mention of layli ... (e) appeared in two documents from 1567:
(25a) layli tun lukiob vaye ca talob Españae
‘especially some who left from here when they came to Spain’ (Zimmermann 1970:32 and folio 68r)
(25b) y oklal layli sacach tocicoon
‘because he still frequently defends us’ (MID567:fol. 366, line 62)
leyli ... e (also spelled leili ... e) did not appear in my corpus until almost three centuries later, in 1825, some
time after the first appearance of le(y) at Tekanto, but it did not replace layli ... e in other regions.
3. INDIRECT OBJECT PRONOUNS
In order to understand the structure of indirect object pronouns in Colonial Yucatec, it is necessary to con-
sider their structure in Modern Yucatec first. Such pronouns consist of two morphemes: (1) the preposition
tiʔ, which means ‘to’ or ‘from’ in this context, and (2) an independent pronoun from the set listed in (26):
(26)
Singular
Plural
1st
tiʔ tèen ‘to me’
tiʔ tóʔon ‘to us’
2nd
tiʔ tèeč ‘to you’
tiʔ téʔeš ‘to you-all’
3rd
tiʔ letiʔ ‘to him, her, it’
tiʔ letiʔob’ ‘to them’
The terms listed in (26) are frequently abbreviated in Modern Yucatec as follows:
(27)
Singular
Plural
1st
ten ‘to me’
tóʔon ‘to us’
2nd
teč ‘to you’
téʔeš ‘to you-all’
3rd
tiʔ ‘to him, her, it’
tiʔob’ ‘to them’
It should be noted that the long vowels in tèen and tèeč become short in their abbreviated form, permit-
ting them to be distinguished from the independent pronouns listed in (24). However, there is no change
in tóʔon and téʔeš under the same circumstances, and the elimination of tiʔ before them makes them
indistinguishable from their independent forms.
When the third-person singular and plural indirect object pronouns are abbreviated, the preposition tiʔ
remains, and letiʔ is deleted. The -ob’ suffix in letiʔob’ then attaches to the preposition, leaving tiʔob’ as the
short form of the third person plural.
56 PRONOUNS
The documents in my Colonial database contain a few examples of ti ten ‘to me’ and ti toon ‘to us,’ but
no examples of the long form of the second- and third-person singular and plural indirect object pronouns:
(28a) t u ɔah v hahal tħan ti ten
he gave his true word to me’ (KAN-790B)
(28b) ma u chen satal ti toon
‘it won’t just be removed from us!’ (DZ791A-008B)
On the other hand, the abbreviated forms of the indirect object pronouns are well represented in Colonial
documents:
(29)
Singular
Plural
1st
ten ‘to me’
toon ‘to us’
2nd
tech ‘to you’
teex ‘to you-all’
3rd
ti ‘to him, her, it’
tiob ‘to them’
The first- and second-person singular and plural forms in (29) closely resemble the corresponding indepen-
dent pronouns in (23). Some examples of their use in context appear in (30a–f) below:
(30a) laytii c u ɔaic toon
‘it is he who gives it to us!’ (HB784B-104B)
(30b) licil c alic tech
‘we say it to you’
(30c) ma ix mac bin luksic ten
‘and no one will take it away from me’ (OX683-013A)
(30d) ma bahun in ɔibte hun tech
‘I have never written a letter to you’ (Ciudad Real 1600?:fol. 129v)
(30e) ti ɔabi ti lae
‘this was given to him’ (MA733H-805C)
(30f) halabi ix tiob
‘and it was said to them’ (DZ587A-017A)
4. STATIVE PRONOUNS
Colonial Yucatec had a set of four stative pronouns that appeared frequently in notarial documents:
(31)
Singular
Plural
1st
tencen ‘I who am’
t(o)onc(o)on ‘we who are’
2nd
techcech ‘you who are’
teexcex ‘you-all who are’
PRONOUNS 57
The use of such a pronoun in a notarial document from Tituc near Chunhuhub in the eastern part of the
Yucatan peninsula in 1784 is illustrated in (32) below:
(32)
Toncon Then.te Alc.es Reg.s essnno y etel t u lacal u cahil tituc
‘We who are deputy, magistrates, councilmen, scribe, and the entire town of Tituc
lic c talel t a tzicbenil tan Ca yum Ahaucan
come before Your Excellency, our father Bishop’ (HB784C-201A-202C)
There were also abbreviated forms of these pronouns that retained only the second syllable of the full
forms:
(33)
Singular
Plural
1st
cen ‘I who am’
coon ‘we who are’
2nd
cech ‘you who are’
ceex ‘you-all who are’
It usually follows a prior reference to the same person (and number) in the discourse. The two forms of
the stative pronouns appeared frequently in documents throughout the Colonial period and occasionally
during the first half of the nineteenth century. They have not survived into Modern Yucatec.
5. INDEPENDENT POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS
In Colonial and Modern Yucatec, possession is normally expressed by one of the set A clitic pronouns fol-
lowed by a noun root or stem, as in (2a–c) and (11a–b) above. A more emphatic way of expressing posses-
sion in Colonial Yucatec involved combining the clitic pronouns with tial:
(34)
Singular
Plural
1st
in tial ‘mine’
ca tial ‘ours’
2nd
a tial ‘yours’
a tialex ‘you-all’s’
3rd
u tial ‘his, hers, its’
u tialob ‘theirs’
The counterpart of this paradigm in Modern Yucatec is:
(35)
Singular
Plural
1st
in tyáʔal ‘mine’
kə tyáʔal ‘ours’
2nd
a tyáʔal ‘yours’
a tyáʔaléʔeš ‘you-all’s’
3rd
u tyáʔal ‘his, hers, its’ u tyáʔalóʔob’ ‘theirs’
It should be noted that tial is sometimes spelled tiyal in the Colonial sources, indicating replacement of
the glottal stop between the two vowels with a glide, whereas the solution for vowel hiatus in Modern
Yucatec is to palatalize the initial consonant of tiʔal and to move the glottal stop into the -al suffix (cf. 2.3.1.
in Chapter 3).
The third-person singular form of the independent possessive pronoun also serves as a subordinate
conjunction in the following examples from Colonial and Modern Yucatec:
58 PRONOUNS
(36a) v tial c ilab v lumob v kax Feliphe Chel
‘in order that we might see the lands of the forest of Felipe Chel’ (YT718B-105B)
(36b) u tial c chinpolte a tzicbenil tan
‘in order that we might bow our heads before Your Excellency’ (HB784C-203A-203B)
(36c) u tyáʔal u tàal u kaškóʔob’ túun húʔuhiʔeʔ
‘in order that they come to find Huhi then’ (V. Bricker 1979c:31[no.24])
The example in (36b) is the continuation of the sentence begun in (32) above.
6. REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS
The base of reflexive pronouns in Colonial Yucatec was the noun, ba ‘self,’ which was inflected for person
with the set A clitic pronouns:
(37)
Singular
Plural
1st
in ba ‘myself’
ca ba ‘ourselves’
2nd
a ba ‘yourself’
a baex ‘yourselves’
3rd
u ba ‘himself, herself, itself’
u baob ‘themselves’
The cognates of these possessive pronouns in Modern Yucatec are:
(38)
Singular
Plural
1st
im b’ah ‘myself’
kə b’ah ‘ourselves’
2nd
a b’ah ‘yourself’
a b’ahéʔeš ‘yourselves’
3rd
u b’ah ‘himself, herself, itself’ u b’ahóʔob’ ‘themselves’
See 1.2.3. in Chapter 8 for contextual examples of such pronouns.
7. DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS
The base of the demonstrative pronouns was lay in Colonial Yucatec, which became le in Modern Yucatec,
as explained in 2.3. above. This base was combined with the deictic enclitics, la (proximal) and lo (distal) and
the topicalizing enclitic, e, to form demonstrative frames in Colonial Yucatec (see 2. in Chapter 15):
(39a) lay kax lae
‘as for this forest’ (OX595-007)
(39b) lay kax loe
‘as for that forest’ (OX595-010A)
(39c) ley kax lae
‘as for this forest’ (OX772-018C)
PRONOUNS
59
In these examples, the demonstratives have an adjectival function because lay and ley modify the noun
kax ‘forest.’ However, there are also a few examples where no noun is present, and the demonstrative has
a purely pronominal function:
(40a) lay lae v tial Salvador Masun
‘as for this one, it belongs to Salvador Masun’ (OX785-031A-031B)
(40b) t u lacal layob lae
‘as for all of these’ (MA733A-015)
(40c) ley lae h conic y oklal lahuca-kal peso taknil
‘this one, we buy it for 240 peso coins’ (DZ791A-005A-005B)