User:Maunus/Mayan grammar

Wordclasses
The wordclasses of Mayan languages ae normally verbs, statives, adjectives and nouns. Statives is a class of predicative words that have the meaning fo a quality or state, like verbs they can sometimes be inflected for person but normally they lack inflections for tense and aspect and other purely verbal inflectional categories.

Morphology
The morphology of Mayan languages is not as complicated as in other Mesoamerican languages, although agglutinating and polysynthetic mayan words tend to be morphologically simple (although not as simple as e.g. Indo-European words). Verbs are marked for aspect or tense, person of subject and for transitives also person of object, and for plural of person. There are also different classes of very productive derivational affixes, most of which specify transitivity or voice. Few affixes with adverbial meanings are found in mayan, nor affixes with the kind of meanings expressed in english auxilary verbs (can, will, may etc.). Some mayan languages allow incorporation of noun stems into verbs, as direct objects or in other functions. Possessed nouns are marked for person of possessor. Compounding of noun stems is extensive. Another common feature in mayan is the use of clitics and free forms (particles) which syntactically are in between words and affixes. For this reason some analyses of mayan languages skip the word level entirely operating only with morphemes and phrases.

Morphosyntactic alignment
Mayan languages are ergative-absolutive languages. This means that the grammatical treatment of the subject of an intransitive verb is treated the same as the object of an transitive verb. Ergativity in mayan is shown by cross referencing pronominal markers on verbs - i.e. the same set of affixes is used to mark subjects on intransitive vebs and patient/objects of transitive verbs while a separate set of affixes mark agent/subject on transitive verbs. Although Proto-Mayan is thought to have been fully ergative the Ch'olan and Yucatecan languages have developed split ergativity showing ergative alignment in perfective veb forms and accusative alignment in nonperfective verb forms.

The Verb
The mayan verb has a number of positions for affixes relative to the verb root. Aspect, tense and mode is signalled by combinations of prefixes and suffixes. Person of subject and object are marked by pronominal prefixes to the root, the ergative prefix (for subject/agent of transitive verbs) being closer to the root than the absolutive (of subject/patient of intransitive verbs and object/patient transitive verbs). The initial slot is used for aspectual prefixes. Plural is expressed by a suffix or an enclitic following the last aspectual/temporal suffix. Voice is also signalled by suffixes.

Tense/Aspect systems
Tense systems in Mayan languages are generally simple. Jakaltek for example contrasts only past and non-past. Mam has only future and non-future. However the aspect sytems are nomally more prominent. Mood doesn't normally form a separate system in Mayan but are intertwined with the tense/aspect system. Kaufman has reconstructed the following tense/aspect/mood system for proto-Mayan: Incompletive aspect, progressive aspect, completive/punctual aspect, imperative, potential/future, optative, and perfective.

Voice
Proto-Mayan had an antipassive rule, downplaying the importance of the agent in relation to the patient, and at least one passive construction. Modern K'iche' has two antipassives one which ascribes focus to the object and another that emphasizes the verbal action. Other voice related constructions occuring in mayan languages are the the mediopassive, the incorporational voice (incorporating a direct object into the verb), the instrumental voice (promoting the instrument to object position), and referential voice (a kind of applicative promoting an indirect argument like benefactive or recipient to the objct position).

Nouns and Nounphrases
The mayan noun is fairly simple it inflects only for number (plural or singular) and if possessed for person and number of its possessor. There are no cases or genders in mayan languages. Compounding of noun roots to new nouns is extensive, and there are many morphological processes to derive nouns from verbs.

Classifiers
Mayan languages use numeral classifiers - that is when counting it is necessary to explicitly state the "class" of what one is counting, the class is usually defined by the objects shape. So when counting flat things a different form of the numeral is used than when counting something round or oblong or persons. In some mayan languages, for example Chontal the classifiers are affixes attached to the numeral but in others for example Tzeltal, they are free forms. In Jakaltek they can be used as anaphorical pronouns. Belwo is shown how Chontal can use two different numeral classifiers with the same noun to convey different meanings. If using the classifier -tek used to count plants then it is understood that one is counting the entire tree, but with the classifier -ts'it used to count slender long objects one is only counting a stick of the tree.

Possession
Possession is expressed by prefixing the pronominal prefixes of Set B to the noun. Normally the possessed noun precedes the possessor. This way of forming possessives is a main dianostic trait of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area and is recurrent throughout Mesoamerica.

Mayan languages often contrast alienable and inalienable possession. Jakaltek forexample contrasts inalienably possessed "My photo" (of myself) with alienably possessed  "My photo (of someone else)". The prefix we- maks the first person singular possessor while the absence of the -e possessive sufix in the first form marks inalienable possession.

Relative nouns
Since Mayan languages do not make widespread use of prepositions (the mayan languages that have prepositions normally have only one), the rely on other means to express locations and other relations between entities. The means they use for this is also recurrent throuhgout Mesoamerica and is another diagnostic trait of the Mesoamerian Linguistic Area. They make a special use of nouns to denote relations. Nouns that have the function of describing a relation in the way prepositions do in the languages that has them are called "relational nouns". Relation nouns are possessed by the constituent that is the fixpont and the relational noun describes which relation exist between the two. Forexample "its top the mountain" would mean "on top of the mountain". In Mayan most relatinal nouns are metaphorically derived from body part so for example "top of" is expressed by the word head. In Mayan then one would say "Its head the montain" to mean "on top of the mountain". For example in Classic K'iche' from the Popol Vuh u-wach ulew, meaning "on the earth", is literally "its face the earth".

The Mesoamerican linguistic area
Mayan languages show many features common to the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area:


 * They use relational nouns and locatives often derived from bodyparts, for instance chi rupam (inside) in Kaqchikel translates literally to "mouth-his-belly"; ti' na meaning door in Tzotzil is literally "house-mouth"; classic K'iche' u-wach ulew, meaning "on the earth", is literally "its face the earth".


 * They have the Mesoamerican possessive construction expressed with a possessive prefix: For example in Quiché u-tzi' le achih "the man's dog" literally meaning "his-dog the man". In Mayan languages the same set of possessive prefixes have many grammatical uses besides posession, such as the inflection of verbs. This has influenced Spanish usage in Mesoamerican regions including Guatemala, where constructions like "un mi chucho" ("a my dog") are heard.


 * They use numeral classifiers.


 * They have vigesimal (base-20) number systems.


 * They never have a verb final basic sentence form.


 * The generally have only one true preposition.


 * They often inflect the directionality or positionality of an action on the verb.

But some features are also specific for Mayan within the Mesoamerican area:


 * Mayan languages are ergative-absolutive languages. This means that the grammatical treatment of the subject of an intransitive verb is treated the same as the object of an transitive verb. (This feature has been used by Carlos Lenkersdorf to advance the Sapir-Worf hypothesis in relation to the Tojolabal language.)


 * They often have inflections marking the body position of a person doing an action.


 * They are synthetic and agglutinative (tending to form larger words from smaller morphemes on the fly) and inflect both object and subject on the verb.


 * Some Mayan languages use noun incorporation.


 * They have elaborate systems of grammatical voice, some Mayan languages distinguishing passives, middle voice, antipassive, focal antipassive, incorporational antipassive, instrumental and referential voice.

Syntax
Proto-Mayan is thought to have had a VOS basic word orderwith possibilities of switching to VSO in complex sentences, sentences where object and subject were of equal animacy and when the subject was definite. Today Yucatecan, Tzotzil and Tojolab'al have a fixed VOS basic wordorder. Mamean, Q'anjob'al, Jakaltek and one dialect of Chuj have a fixed VSO basic wordorder. Only Ch'orti' has a basic SVO wordorder. The rest allow both VSO and VOS wordorder.