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

by Victoria R. Bricker

lúub’ul

  fall

  lukul

  l(ù)k’ul

  leave, withdraw, avoid, escape

  malel ~ manel

  máan

  pass by, move

  naacal

  náʔakal

  rise, climb

  ocól

  ʔ(ò)okol

  enter

  puɔul

  púuȼ’ul

  flee, elope

  talel tàal come

  The data set in (1) suggests that intransitive roots could have several shapes in Colonial Yucatec: CVC,

  CVhC, and CVʔVC. The Calepino de Motul specifies that, in the case of puɔul ‘flee, elope,’ the accent fell on

  the first syllable (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 383r), confirming that it was heavy and implicating CVhC or CVʔVC

  as its possible shape. Its Modern cognate, púuȼ’, indicates that CVhC must have been the original shape.

  Similarly, the examples of ʔéem ‘go down, descend,’ hóok’ ‘come out, emerge,’ líik’ ‘arise, ascend,’ lúub’ ‘fall,’

  and máan ‘pass by, move’ in Modern Yucatec must have developed from CVhC roots in Colonial Yucatec,

  even though the Calepino did not mark them as heavy by doubling their vowels or specifying that they

  were accented. On the other hand, the Calepino does mark the root vowel in naacal ‘rise, climb’ as heavy by

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  INTRANSITIVE VERBS

  both doubling it and mentioning that it was accented (1600?: fol. 316r), but because the Modern cognate

  of this root intransitive is náʔakal, the shape of the root must have been CVʔVC, not CVhC. And by placing

  an accent on the second vowel in ocól ‘enter,’ the Calepino indicates that the root vowel must have been

  short (1600?: fol. 342v), as it is in the Hocaba dialect of Modern Yucatec. That vowel is lengthened and bears

  a low or falling tone when followed by a suffix other than -ol, as in h ʔòok’ih ‘he entered’ or ʔòoken ‘enter!’

  in Hocaba and other western dialects (Blair and Vermont-Salas 1965:342–344). The root vowel is long and

  marked by a low or falling tone with both -Vl and other suffixes in Ebtun in the eastern part of the peninsula

  and is indicated parenthetically in the relevant Modern cognates of the CVC root intransitives in (1).

  The Calepino de Motul cites root intransitives with their imperfective stem suffixes, -el or -Vl (V echoes

  the vowel in the root). -Vl also serves as the imperfective suffix in Modern Yucatec, but -el does not. The

  -el suffix echoes the root vowel in benel, the earliest form of binel, and may have been retained for that

  reason, but that cannot be the explanation for the use of -el in hulel, malel/manel, and talel. It disappeared

  with b’in ‘go’ and máan ‘pass by, move’ some time after the middle of the nineteenth century and seems to

  have been subsumed in the root in ʔúʔul ‘come, arrive here’ and tàal ‘come’ in Modern Yucatec.

  Some examples of the use of -el with these root intransitives are shown in (2) below:

  (2a)

  can vaɔ in benel ti ppolmal te bak=halale

  ‘four times I was going as a merchant to Bacalar’ (DZ587A-046A-B)

  (2b)

  bay v binel ti chikine

  ‘thus it goes to the west’ (SB596C-220)

  (2c)

  ma tan y ulelob v chayan talob te t u luumil castillae

  ‘the rest who came from the land of Castille there are not arriving here’ (KC567-026A-C)

  (2d)

  hauex a ba licil v malel padre

  ‘open a path for the priest to pass!’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 178r)

  (2e)

  hex na ɔul pox lae ych cah Mayapan v talel ca u heɔah lum Chichi=can

  ‘and this Na ɔul Pox here, he was coming from the city of Mayapan when he established the land of

  Chichican’ (DZ569-026-027)

  The perfective stems of these verbs (and all other root intransitives) were marked by -i (phonetic [-ih]) in

  Colonial Yucatec:

  (3a)

  ca biniob ti cah tikal

  ‘then they went to the town of Tikal’ (TK590A-012)

  (3b)

  hek lay v kabaob al=mehenob huliob vay ti cah lae

  ‘here are the names of these nobles who arrived here in the town’ (MA557-017A-B)

  (3c)

  ca ix mani ti ma v heah v chij y et=un lae

  ‘and he passed by where he had been without opening his mouth’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 422v)

  (3d) tali ti chikin

  ‘it came from the west’ (MA596-010)

  INTRANSITIVE VERBS 125

  The subjunctive stems of all root intransitives were consistently marked by -Vc (phonetic [-Vk]; V echoes the

  vowel in the root), but the suppletive form, xijc (phonetic [šíʔik]), served as the subjunctive stem of bin ‘go’:

  (4a)

  ca ix t inu alah u xicin t u lacal regorsob y testigosob

  ‘and then I informed all the councilmen and witnesses

  ca xicen yn ximbal t u pach

  that I would go walking with them’ (SB596C-212A-213A)

  (4b)

  laacx ca huluc padre vaye

  ‘if only the priest would arrive here’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 258v)

  (4c)

  ti yan mul=tun y icnal u xetħel pak manac y ok be

  ‘there is a mound there next to the piece of wall that passes above the road’ (SB596C-269A-270)

  (4d)

  t u men num=ya bin talacob

  ‘because miseries will come’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 21v)

  1.2. OTHER ROOT INTRANSITIVES. Some root intransitives that are not verbs of motion appear in (5):

  (5)

  Colonial

  Modern

  Gloss

  áhal

  ʔ(à)ahal

  wake up

  cánal

  káʔanal

  tire, become tired

  cimil kíimil die

  çihil

  síihil

  be born

  ɔocol

  ȼ’óʔokol

  end, finish

  elel

  ʔ(è)elel

  burn

  helel

  héʔelel

  rest

  hoppol

  hóʔop’ol

  begin

  kaahal

  k’áahal

  remember

  tuubul

  túʔubul

  forget

  uenel

  w(è)enel sleep

  In this list, ȼ’óʔokol ‘end, finish,’ héʔelel ‘rest,’ hóʔop’ol ‘begin,’ káʔanal ‘tire, become tired,’ and túʔub’ul ‘for-

  get’ would have had a CVʔVC shape in Colonial Yucatec; the Calepino places an acute accent on the first

  syllable of one of them (cánal) (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 65r), doubles the vowel in another (tuubul) (1600?:

  fol. 427v), and mentions that the first syllable of a third example is accented, without placing an accent over

  the vowel (ɔocol) (1600?: fol. 131v). Only three root intransitives in this list could have had a CVhC shape:

  cimil ‘die,’ çihil ‘be born, and kaahal ‘remember.’ The vowel in the first syllable of kaahal is doubled, and the

  Calepino specifies that it bears an accent (1600?: fol. 233r). The other two examples are not singled out for

  such marking in the Calepino.

  The acute accent over the vowel in the first syllable of áhal ‘wake up’ implies that it was stressed in

  Colonial times (1600?: fol. 4r). The first syllable of ʔahal is not stressed in the Western dialects of Modern

  Yucatec, but it does have a long vowel and low or falling tone in the dialect of Modern Yucatec spoken in

  Ebtun. áhal is one of the rare bits of evidence that t
he vowel in some CVC roots was being lengthened and

  acquiring low tone after high tone appeared in Colonial Yucatec (see 2.3.2.3. in Chapter 3).

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  INTRANSITIVE VERBS

  2. DERIVED INTRANSITIVES

  Intransitive stems are derived from several kinds of roots in Colonial and Modern Yucatec: transitive verbs,

  adjectives, nouns, and particles. The ones derived from root transitives represent the passive, antipassive,

  and middle voices of such verbs. The intransitive stems derived from adjectives, nouns, and particles are

  known as inchoatives or versives. Other intransitives can be derived from derived transitives. There are, in

  addition, a suffix, -p, that derives agentless passives from various form classes, including root transitives,

  root intransitives, nouns, and adjectives, and a suffix, -k’, that converts root transitives, root intransitives,

  positionals, and nouns into celeritive stems.

  2.1. DERIVED INTRANSITIVES BASED ON ROOT TRANSITIVES. The passive stems of transitive roots were

  marked by -b (phonetic [-b’]) in Proto-Yucatecan. The Calepino de Motul contains evidence that, by the

  second half of the sixteenth century, that suffix had largely been reduced to a glottal stop and had metas-

  tasized with the final consonant of the root, generating a CVʔVC passive stem that was identical to that of

  CVʔVC root intransitives (cf. 2.3.2.1. in Chapter 3 and 1.1.2. in Chapter 7). The middle voice stem was produced by infixing [h] in transitive roots; the resulting CVhC stem had the same shape as CVhC root intran-

  sitives (cf. 2.3.2.2. in Chapter 3 and 1.1.4. in Chapter 7). Only the antipassive stem was marked by a suffix,

  -n, that did not change over time (cf. 1.1.3. in Chapter 7).

  2.2. INCHOATIVES OR VERSIVES. Although the term “inchoative” has often been used to refer to the act of

  becoming (as in “x becomes y”), its literal meaning is “to begin to do something,” a function handled by

  the head word for inceptive aspect, hopp (phonetic [hóʔop’]), in Colonial and Modern Yucatec (cf. 2.2. in

  Chapter 5). For this reason, some Mayanist linguists prefer the term “versive” to refer to acts of becoming.

  However, “inchoative” is used for “becoming” as well as “beginning” in some classical languages, such as

  Greek and Latin (Judith M. Maxwell, personal communication, 20 April 2009), perhaps justifying my contin-

  uation of the tradition in Maya studies of using “inchoative” for what some linguists call “versive.”

  Inchoative verbs were derived from several kinds of roots in Colonial Yucatec by -h, -ch-ah (phonetic

  [-č-ah]), and -tal. -h was employed much more frequently than the other suffixes for this purpose in the

  Calepino de Motul, but appears in only three inchoative stems in Modern Yucatec, having been replaced by

  the other suffixes in other inchoative stems.

  2.2.1. INCHOATIVES DERIVED WITH -H. Inchoative stems derived from adjectival, nominal, particle, and

  transitive roots appear as entries in the Calepino de Motul with their imperfective stem suffix, either -al,

  -il, or both, indicating that the vowel in the suffix was schwa (cf. 2.3.3. in Chapter 3 and V. Bricker and Orie

  2014). Some examples of this variation in the imperfective stems of inchoatives derived from the adjectival

  roots, ceel ‘cold,’ çak ‘itchy, itching,’ yij ‘ripe (fruit ready for harvesting from tree),’ netz ‘mean, vile, despic-

  able, stupid,’ tam ‘deep, serious,’ tu ‘stinky, rotten,’ and utz ‘good, just, well made,’ appear in (6) below:

  (6)

  -h-al Variant

  -h-il Variant

  Gloss

  ceelhal

  ceelhil

  feel, be cold

  çakhal çakhil itch

  yijhal

  yijhil

  ripen (fruit on tree)

  netzhal

  netzhil

  become mean, vile, despicable, rude, uncouth

  tamhal

  tamhil

  become deep

  tuhal

  tuhil

  stink, rot

  utzhal

  utzhil

  recover, improve

  INTRANSITIVE VERBS 127

  Adjectival roots are the source of ca. 65 percent of the inchoative verbs listed in the Calepino de Motul.

  Only ca. 17 percent are derived from nouns, and particles and root transitives are each responsible for

  about nine percent of the inchoative verbs in that work.

  The perfective stem of -h inchoatives was marked by -i (phonetic [-ih]). The subjunctive stem suffix

  that occurred with such inchoatives is not mentioned in the Calepino de Motul, nor in any document in my

  database.1 The inchoative derived from the adjectival root, cet ‘equal, even; jointly, together,’ is exemplified

  in context with the two aspectual stem suffixes for which I have information in (7a–b):

  (7a)

  chicul t u men Ds. licil u lah cethal

  ‘it was a sign by God while they were conjoining [referring to the conjunction of the sun and the

  moon]’ (Gordon 1913:270)

  (7b)

  ti cethi u tħanobi

  ‘there their words became adjusted’ (Gordon 1913:10)

  Another pair of contrastive examples is derived from the particle yan ‘there exists’:

  (8a)

  ti tali u yanhal y ahaulil bal=cahi

  ‘the kingdom of the world came into existence’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 17v)

  (8b)

  ca binob t cahtal chakan=putun ti yanhi y otochob ah ytzaob

  ‘then they went to settle [at] Champoton where the homes of the Itzas existed’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol.18v)

  Other examples of the imperfective and perfective inflection of -h inchoatives derived from the adjectival

  roots, yaab ‘much, many, often,’ koch ‘true, infallible, certain,’ and utz ‘good, just, well made,’ from the tran-

  sitive root, lob ‘hurt, harm, damage,’ and from the nominal root, xak ‘mixture of many things,’ are shown

  in (9a–e):

  (9a)

  in cechtah v yaabhal v bal in ba

  ‘I strongly wished that my possessions would increase’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 69r)

  (9b)

  ma tan v kochhal in vayak

  ‘my dream is not coming true’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 250r)

  (9c)

  lic va v lobhal t a ich v tzayomtic y otoch ku au et=vinicil

  ‘does it upset you that your neighbor frequents the church?’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 115r)

  (9d)

  vtzhi yanumal Ju.o v pectzil y icnal ahau

  ‘John pleased the king’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 443v)

  (9e)

  ti xakhi u pol

  ‘her hair became mussed’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 455r)

  The imperfective stem in -hal did not survive into Modern Yucatec, nor, indeed, into the other daughter

  languages of Colonial Yucatec: Itsaj, Mopan, and Lacandon. Mopan retained the pefective stem in -(a)hih

  (Hofling 2011:16), but paired with a -tal imperfective stem, of which there were only a handful of examples

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  INTRANSITIVE VERBS

  in the Calepino de Motul (see 2.2.3. below). The perfective suffix, -hi, has fared only slightly better through

  time. There are still traces of its use with the particles, šàan ‘slowly’ and yàan (or ʔan) ‘there exists,’ and with

  a root of unknown origin, páat ‘able,’ in Modern Yucatec:

  (10a) tiʔ le b’áʔaš ʔépokáil túun porkeh šáanhih k u kaškóʔob’ letiʔ e ȼ’òonóʔob’ pàarkeh

  ‘for in that epoch then, because it took time for them to exchange those guns and

  b�
��áʔatakil u tyáʔal beliséoʔ y éetel čikleh

  bullets in Belize for chicle’ (SOT971B:17)

  (10b) tiʔ e semàanáaʔ yanhih hun p’éel bàayléiʔ

  ‘during this week, there were some dances;

  yanhih mìisah káʔah p’éeh mìisah

  there were Masses, two Masses’ (PEN971:5)

  (10c) t u p’atah uy atan káʔah ʔanhih u č’íʔik u yàanal kóʔoleh

  ‘he left his wife and took another woman’ (HOC971B:3)

  (10d) páathih in t’àan

  ‘I could speak’ (V. Bricker et al. 1998:209)

  2.2.2. INCHOATIVES DERIVED WITH -CH-AH. Many fewer -ch-ah inchoatives (N = 35) than -h inchoatives (ca.

  112) appear in the Calepino de Motul. They are derived from adjectival, nominal, transitive, intransitive,

  particle, and onomatopoeic roots and are listed as entries with their imperfective stems. Among them are

  five sets of inchoatives that are derived from the same root (ceel ‘cold,’ çayal ‘twist, dislocate, fracture,’

  yaom ‘pregnancy,’ ma ‘no, not,’ and uk ‘drink’) with both -ah and -ch-ah suffixes:

  (11)

  -h Inchoative

  -ch-ah inchoative

  Gloss

  ceelhal/ceelhil

  ceelchahal

  feel, be cold

  çayahal

  çaychahal

  become dislocated

  yaomhal

  yaomchahal

  become pregnant

  maachal

  macchahal

  cease, stop

  ukahal

  ukahchahal

  be thirsty

  The aspectual suffixes that co-occurred with -chah ((phonetic [-čah]) inchoatives in Colonial Yucatec

  were -al (imperfective), -i (phonetic [-ih/-Ø], perfective), and -ac (phonetic [-ak], subjunctive). Their use is

  exemplified contextually by the inchoative stems derived from the transitive root, muc ‘bury, hide, conceal,

  cover up in hole’:

  (12a) vac muluc vchci v mucchahal kopob t u lacal

  ‘on 6 Muluc was when the valleys were becoming buried, all of them’ (Gordon 1913:61)

  (12b) ca mucchahiob t u yam sus t u yam kak=nab

  ‘then they became buried in the waves of sand, in the waves of the sea’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 12r)

  INTRANSITIVE VERBS

  129

  (12c) bin mucchahac ah tubul vah ah tubul ha

  ‘the forgotten bread, the forgotten water will be buried’ (Tizimin n.d.: fol. 14r)

  Other sentences containing inchoatives derived from the adjectival roots, ceel ‘cold’ and uij ‘hungry,’ and