Meaning in Mayan Languages [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9027924899, 9789027924896, 9783110869675

Table of contents :
Preface
Orthographic Note
I. Introduction
References
II. Sound Symbolism in the Mayan Language Family
Introduction
Sound Symbolism
Data and Analyses
Implications
References
III. Semantic Aspects of Yucatec Dual-Object Constructions
The Verbal Suffix -T in Yucatec
Some Syntactic Properties of -T Verb Stems
A Semantic Theory of -T Verb Stems
Implications of the Semantic Theory for Syntax and Morphology
References
IV. Chortí Semantics: Some Properties of Roots and Affixes
Contrast and the Paradigm
Linking and Nesting Relations
Personal Affixes, Grammatical Categories, and Semantic Components
Roots and Thematic Affixes: The ACT Feature
Some Derived Active Expressions
Field Testing
Some Implications and Conclusions
References
V. The Semantics of Social Categories in a Transformational Grammar of Jacaltec
Data for the Model
The Model
Explanatory Adequacy
Descriptive Adequacy
Observational Adequacy
Summary and Conclusion
References
VI. Acquisition of Botanical Terminology by Tzeltal Children
Introduction
Tzeltal Plant Taxonomy and Nomenclature
Geographical Context
Botanical Socialization
Plant Trail Task
Response Types
Summary
Developmental Trends
Development in Typical Child
Conclusion
References
VII. Cultural Significance and Lexical Retention in Tzeltal-Tzotzil Ethnobotany
Introduction
The Comparative Inventory
Analytic Categories
Cognate Sets of Tzeltal-Tzotzil Plant Names
Cultural Significance and Lexical Retention
References
VIII. Compound Place Names in Chuj and other Mayan Languages
Introduction
Sources and Identification of Chuj Place Names
The Nature of Chuj Geographical Nomenclature
Compound Chuj Place Names
Comparative Data on Compound Mayan Place Names
References
IX. Three Genres of Tzotzil Insult
Joking Insults
Ridicule and Criticism
Formal and Informal Discourses
Functional Differences
The Same Content in Different Genres
References
X. Chamula Tzotzil Proverbs: Neither Fish nor Fowl
Introduction
The Proverb in the Taxonomy of Chamula Oral Tradition
Proverbs and Contexts
Dynamic of Proverbs
Summary and Conclusions
References
XI. Semantic Universals and Particulars in Quiche
References
Index

Citation preview

JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA M E M O R I A E N I C O L A I VAN W I J K D E D I C A T A edenda curat C. H. V A N

SCHOONEVELD

Indiana

University

Series Practica,

158

MEANING IN MAYAN LANGUAGES Ethnolinguistic Studies

Edited by

M U N R O S. E D M O N S O N

1973 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS

© Copyright 1973 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. Ν.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers.

L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S CATALOG C A R D N U M B E R : 72-88201

Printed in Hungary

PREFACE

The papers in this volume were initially composed for a symposium on Mayan Ethnolinguistics for the national meetings of the American Anthropological Association in New Orleans. The symposium was planned at the preceding national meeting in Seattle, having been initially proposed by Dr. Brent Berlin of the University of California in Berkeley. It was held on November 21, 1969, and generated an enthusiastic response from those who attended. The present papers reproduce the symposium, but reflect the comments, corrections and reconsiderations springing from a stimulating exchange of views. One paper presented then was withdrawn from the proposed publication, Dr. Terence S. Kaufman's "Some Current Hypotheses on Mayan Diversification". The manuscript has been edited by Dr. Munro S. Edmonson of Tulane University, who wishes to acknowledge a special debt for the assistance of Dr. Victoria R. Bricker in the task, and to express gratitude for a Ford Foundation grant to the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane for the secretarial and editorial expenses involved. Thanks are also due to Mrs. Mary Margaret Smith and Miss Iris Eldness for their care in producing the final draft and to Mr. G. Stanley Beck for his work on some of the illustrations. The editor is also grateful to the contributors for their promptness and cooperation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface Orthographic Note

5 10

I. MUNRO S. EDMONSON

Introduction References

11 21

II. MARSHALL E. DURBIN

Sound Symbolism in the Mayan Language Family Introduction Sound Symbolism Data and Analyses Implications References

23 23 24 32 39 48

III. MICHAEL G. OWEN

Semantic Aspects of Yucatec Dual-Object Constructions The Verbal Suffix - T in Yucatec Some Syntactic Properties of - T Verb Stems A Semantic Theory of - T Verb Stems Implications of the Semantic Theory for Syntax and Morphology References

51 51 52 54 56 57

IV. JOHN FOUGHT

Chorti Semantics : Some Properties of Roots and Affixes Contrast and the Paradigm Linking and Nesting Relations Personal Affixes, Grammatical Categories, and Semantic Components ..

59 59 62 65

8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Roots and Thematic Affixes: The ACT Feature Some Derived Active Expressions Field Testing Some Implications and Conclusions References

71 74 77 79 82

V. CHRISTOPHER DAY

The Semantics of Social Categories in a Transformational Grammar of Jacaltec 85 Data for the Model 86 The Model 89 Explanatory Adequacy 98 Descriptive Adequacy 100 Observational Adequacy 101 Summary and Conclusion 102 References 104 VI. BRIAN STROSS

Acquisition of Botanical Terminology by Tzeltal Children Introduction Tzeltal Plant Taxonomy and Nomenclature Geographical Context Botanical Socialization Plant Trail Task Response Types Summary Developmental Trends Development in Typical Child Conclusion References VII. BRENT BERLIN, DENNIS E. BREEDLOVE,

ROBERT

M.

LAUGHLIN

107 107 108 115 115 118 124 133 134 135 139 141 AND

PETER

H. RAVEN

Cultural Significance and Lexical Retention in Tzeltal-Tzotzil Ethnobotany 143 Introduction 143 The Comparative Inventory 145 Analytic Categories 146 Cognate Sets of Tzeltal-Tzotzil Plant Names 152 Cultural Significance and Lexical Retention 160 References 164

TABLE OF CONTENTS

9

VIII. NICHOLAS A. HOPKINS

Compound Place Names in Chuj and other Mayan Languages Introduction Sources and Identification of Chuj Place Names The Nature of Chuj Geographical Nomenclature Compound Chuj Place Names Comparative Data on Compound Mayan Place Names References

165 165 166 167 171 176 181

IX. VICTORIA REIFLER BRICKER

Three Genres of Tzotzil Insult Joking Insults Ridicule and Criticism Formal and Informal Discourses Functional Differences The Same Content in Different Genres References

183 183 191 194 196 200 203

X. GARY H. GOSSEN

Chamula Tzotzil Proverbs : Neither Fish nor Fowl Introduction The Proverb in the Taxonomy of Chamula Oral Tradition Proverbs and Contexts Dynamic of Proverbs Summary and Conclusions References

205 205 208 211 224 229 232

XI. MUNRO S. EDMONSON

Semantic Universale and Particulars in Quiche References Index

235 246 247

ORTHOGRAPHIC NOTE

STOPS

Yucatec

b Ρ ρ' t

t' k k'

Alveopalatal

t' k k'

V C

c'

Flap

b' Ρ Ρ t

c

0

Labial

Ç

Vi

c

? c c' I Ï ' \t) M V ? tz tz' C (z) ( z i fcl |«3|

Tzotzil

?


-ik le-che?-o?) k-u-tz'o?ok-ol (Xi t-u-yil--ik le-beh-o?) 'Xi is looking at the tree, then Xi is looking at the road' The use of this propositional form to distinguish verb stems co-occurring with -t from other verb stems in Yucatec depends, then, upon finding lexical elements substituting for Rz which are limited to co-occurrence with -t stems as Ri. There are at least two lexical elements in Yucatec which substitute for R 2 and occur only with -t stems as Ri. These elements are u-ti?al 'in order to' and t-u-men 'because'. Their occurrence in the propositional form (xRiy)R2(xRiz) with -I verb stems as Ri is shown in Table 2. These two lexical items will NOT appear in the proposition as R2 with any other verb than a -t stem as Ri. The following sentences thus are impossible. *(Xi t-u-yil--ik le-beh-o?) u-ti?al-(X1 t-u-yil--ik le-che?-o?) *'Xi is looking at the road in order to look at the tree' *(.Jfi t-u-yil--ik le-beh-o?) t-u-men (Xi t-u-yil--ik le-chep-o?) *Ά"ι is looking at the road because Χχ is looking at the tree' TABLE 2 Relational Statements in Yucatec Restricted To -T Verb Stems

Monosyllabic

(la)

Xy xooy-t-ik le-beh-o? u-ti?al Xl xooy-t-ik le-che?-o? 'Xi detours from the road in order to detour around the tree'

(lb)

Xi xooy-t-ik le-beh-o? t-u-men X¡ xooy-t-ik le-che?-o? 'X1 detours from the road because Xt detours around the tree'

(2a) Χχ chaach-t-ik le-lu?um-o? u-ti?al X¡ chaach-t-ik le-tunich-o? 'Xi strains the dirt in order to strain out the stones' (2b) Χχ chaach-t-ik le-lu?um-o? t-u-men X1 chaach-t-ik le-tunich-o? 'Xi strains the dirt because X i is straining out the stones' (3a) Xi miis-t-ik le-nah-o? u-ti?al Xt miis-t-ik le-luuk'-o? 'Xi sweeps out the house in order to sweep out the mud' (3b) Xi miis-t-ik le-nah-o? t-u-men Xi miis-t-ik le-luuk'-o? 'Xi sweeps out the house because Xt sweeps out the mud* (4a) Xi bo?ol-t-ik le-taak'in-o? u-ti?al Xi bo?ol-t-ik le-meyah-o? 'Xi pays the money in order to pay for the work' (4b) Xi bo?ol-t-ik le-taak'in-o? t-u-men Xi bofol-t-ik le-meyah-o? 'Xi pays the money because Xx pays for the work'

56

MICHAEL G. OWEN

IMPLICATIONS OF THE SEMANTIC THEORY FOR SYNTAX AND MORPHOLOGY

This correlation between morphological and lexological data offers a solution to the two problems of morphological analysis presented earlier in the paper. The phonological unit /t/ which immediately follows monosyllabic stems of the canonical form CVVC and CV?VC are realizations of the morpheme -T\. The justification for this equivalence lies in the common syntactic properties of these stems, as demonstrated by their occurrence in the proposition forms specified above. The phonological unit /t/, when following stems produced by the other derivational processes exemplified in part one of this paper, is not a realization of the morpheme -7i, since these stems do not have the same syntactic properties as monosyllabic stems co-occurring with -TV There is no evidence that stems of the form CVC-CVC-t- or verb stems derived from Spanish loans (e.g. mostrar-t-) imply a relationship of simultaneity or complementarity between two possible direct objects. Further research may, of course, reveal that all stems co-occurring with -t do in fact share some other more general syntactic and/or semantic feature. The morphological elements -φ, -s, and -t which follow verb stems cannot be considered allomorphs of a single transitive morpheme since it has been shown that one of them—TVhas syntactic implications distinct from the others. As shown in the preceding section, stems co-occurring with the -φ suffix cannot relate two direct objects in the form specified for -Ti stems. Neither can verb stems co-occurring with the -s suffix participate in the frames which define -Γι stems. Sentences of the following form do not necessarily occur with -s verb stems. *(X t-u-kiim-s-ik Y) u-ti?al (X t-u-kiim-s-ik Ζ) 'X is killing Y in order to kill Z' *(X t-u-kiim-s-ik Y) t-u-men (X t-u-kiim-s-ik Z) 'X is killing Y because X is killing Z' In fact, verb stems occurring with the -s suffix are causatives which have syntactic properties quite different from all other transitive verb stems in Yucatec (Owen 1968: 47-52). The correlation that has been shown between morpheme and lexological data has further consequences, for it has also been shown that there are several lexotactic formulae which express the same basic relation between the two direct objects co-occurring with -Τι verbs. It is therefore justifiable to propose the existence of a sememic sign CONCOMITANCE which stands for the various equivalent lexotactic patterns in which only verb stems marked -Ti may occur. University of Washington

SEMANTICS OF YUCATEC DUAL-OBJECT CONSTRUCTIONS

57

REFERENCES Alvarez, Maria Cristina 1967 "Descripción estructural del maya del chilambalam de Chumayel", Publicaciones de la CEEM, No. 1 (Mexico). Beltran de Santa Rosa Maria, Pedro 1859 Arte del idioma maya reducido a sucintas reglas, y semilexicón yucateco. 2nd edition (Imprenta de J. D. Espinosa, Merida). Blair, Robert W. 1964 "Yucatec Maya noun and verb morpho-syntax", unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University. Coronel, Juan de 1620 Arte en lengua de maya (Mexico, Imprenta de Diego Garrido). Reprinted in Juan Martinez Hernandez, ed., Diccionario de Motul (1929), pp. 3-53 (Cia. Tipográfica Yucateca, Merida). Kaufman, Terence 1968 "Making monosyllabic dictionaries of Mayan languages", Escritura Maya, Año 2, No. 3 (6): 134-138 (Mexico). McQuown, Norman A. 1967 "Classical Yucatec (Maya)", in Norman A. McQuown, ed., Linguistics: Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 5, pp. 201-247. Owen, Michael G. 1968 "The semantic structure of Yucatec verb roots", unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University.

IV CHORTÍ SEMANTICS: SOME PROPERTIES OF ROOTS AND AFFIXES* JOHN G. FOUGHT

After reviewing the componential and combinatory aspects of semantic analysis and description from the perspective of structural linguistics, this paper presents a tentative and limited exploration of two areas of Chorti semantics: the personal pronominal system, and certain derivational suffixes together with the classes of roots which precede them.

CONTRAST AND THE PARADIGM

The method of componential analysis rests with compelling directness on the fundamental assumption of linguistics : "In a speech-community some utterances are alike or partly alike in sound and meaning" (Bloomfield, 1933:159). Utterances which are alike in sound and meaning are the same ; except for the study of the range of free variation, they are of no use in linguistic analysis. Utterances alike in meaning but different in sound are, of course, synonymous. For the most part, such sets of utterances are generated syntactically, rather than by the substitution of synonymous lexical items. While constructional synonymy or paraphrase is an alternative to contrast as a path to grammatical description (Hi¿, 1964), it starts from a knowledge of (weak) semantic EQUIVALENCE rather than the analysis of semantic differences, and so its possibilities will not be explored here. Those relatively few sets of utterances which are alike in sound but different in meaning (homonymous sets) are best accounted for in * This paper is based on research supported by the National Science Foundation through grants GS 516,1175, and IG 68-14, and directed in its early phases by Prof. Floyd G. Lounsbury, the principal investigator of the first two of these grants. My debt to him and to the writing of the late Uriel Weinreich is obvious; it is a pleasure to acknowledge their help, but they bear no responsibility for the details of this presentation or for my interpretation of their thinking. I wish to thank Dell Hymes, Andrew Sihler, James Munz, and the participants in the symposium on Mayan ethnosemantics for their comments on many specific points, and my colleague Henry Hiz for explaining to me something of parametric functions. If they or any other logical notions are misused here, the fault is mine alone. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the patience and skill of my Chorti informants, particularly Sr. Isidro González.

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terms of the phonological and semantic elements isolated under more favorable conditions. This paper, like most of structural linguistics, is concerned with utterances which differ in both sound and meaning, whether totally or partly, and are thus in CONTRAST. One variety of contrastive set, the paradigm, is subject to componential analysis. In Lounsbury's words (1964:1703), We shall regard as a paradigm any set of linguistic forms wherein: (a) the meaning of every form has a feature in common with the meanings of all other forms of the set, and (b) the meaning of every form differs from that of every other form of the set by one or more additional features.

Notice that this definition makes no reference to the form or sound of the members of the paradigm, but only to their meanings. Such "semantic" paradigms are thus a generalization of the more familiar "morphological" paradigms whose members share both a constant formal part and a constant semantic part, and differ by both a variable formal part and a variable semantic part. Traditionally, the constant part of such paradigms has been a root or stem and the variable part a class of inflectional or derivational affixes. The grammar books used in most language instruction are crowded with examples of this kind. In this study, paradigms are analyzed whose constant part is an affix and whose variable part is the set of roots or root-compounds or constructions found to occur with the affix. Just as a root is said to "take" a paradigmatic set of affixes, so, conversely, an affix may be said to "take" a paradigmatic class of roots (or stems or constructions). Thus, every form (or morpheme) belongs to a number of paradigms, and is therefore subject to componential analysis in different environments. Generalizing the componential analysis of paradigms to include all the morphemes of the language assures that the relationships between semantic and syntactic features and categories will be interesting, and provides an organizing principle for the guidance of the investigator, besides holding some promise of an opportunity to check and improve early, inappropriate or imprecise definitions of components by testing them under a variety of conditions. The notion of the paradigm, then, is basic to any contrastive analysis of semantic systems. One variety of paradigm-that with an affix as the constant-has been selected for use here because it seems especially well suited to use on the Mayan languages, with their abundance of classificatory terminologies, "modal" and other derivational morphology, and unusual system of person markers. An approach to semantic analysis which relies so heavily on affixes raises the question of the relation between "lexical" and "grammatical" meaning. Noting that the two are widely held to be qualitatively distinct, Weinreich pointed out that the dichotomy is nevertheless untenable : The opposite view is that there is no special kind of meaning such as "grammatical meaning" ; there are merely special signs which have the grammatical (not semantic!) property of obligatoriness. It is our contention that only the latter position is tenable, as it is the only one

CHORTÍ SEMANTICS

61

which conforms with the requirement that semantic and grammatical criteria must be autono m o u s . . . (1963/6:169).

The same position is taken here, although in his later "Explorations", Weinreich was led to a system "in which a sentence draws its semantic components not from its lexical items alone, but also from some of the syntactic categories utilized in its formation" (Weinreich, 1965/6:193), thus questioning the autonomy of semantics in grammar. As in the development of generative phonology, it was apparently the mathematical properties of rewrite rules and the theoretical dominance of the syntactic component which exerted strong pressure toward mixing "levels" which were conceptually distinct at the outset. Even within a generative theory, however, this particular justification for mixing the grammatical and syntactic features of forms need not be decisive. Weinreich himself suggested that "it may be possible to devise a notational convention under which the major lexical classes would not need to be represented as categories at all. However, in the present analysis we adhere to the principle that the segmental aspect of a linguistic unit is reflected in a category notation" [instead of a configuration of semantic features] (Weinreich, 1966:443η). To carry such a reform through to its conclusion would ultimately involve far more than the substitution of semantic feature configurations for syntactic category labels in the same rules. As new patterns of similarity and difference between feature configurations emerged, extensive rulerewriting would be motivated, and finally, the entire structure of the grammar might be changed, the syntactic component becoming interpretive and the semantic component becoming the base. In "The Ethnographic Study of Cognitive Systems" (in Fishman, 1968:441), Charles Frake raised a valid objection to one kind of inference from grammar: One cannot depend on a particular grammatical construction, such as one of the English phrasal compounds, to differentiate consistently a single cognitive relation, such as that of inclusion (cf. Hockett, 1958: 316-7). Because English is not unique in this respect (Frake, 1961), the practice of arguing from morphological and syntactic analysis directly to cognitive relations must be considered methodologically unsound.

The method proposed here, however, is different. Rather than inferring a constant semantic relation from a grammatical one, this method starts from a grammatical relation and everything one has been able to find out about the meaning of its various manifestations, and seeks to match some common feature of these meanings with one or more parts of the grammatical construction. No claim of cognitive or psychological reality need be made in this approach, and none is made here. So far, the componential analysis of semantic material has been successful when applied to areas of vocabulary-to paradigms-whose semantic structure is a relatively or even richly complex hierarchy, but obviously nothing in the method itself so limits its application. Indeed, the method is so general, and its underlying assumptions are so basic, that it is the natural end point of the ordinary analytic operations of struc-

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JOHN FOUGHT

turai linguistics. To stop short of a fully componential analysis, as I have pointed out in another connection (Fought, 1967:17-21), one must somehow suspend these operations and halt the analysis of contrastive elements into like and unlike components.

LINKING AND NESTING RELATIONS

A scheme of semantic dimensions and features (Lounsbury, 1964:1074), even if it covered the entire lexicon of a language, would not be a complete description of its semantics, any more than a list of phonological dimensions and features is a complete description of the sound-system of a language. In either case there must also be a statement of the combinatory properties of the elements. Two of Weinreich's last works were devoted to the formidable problems of combinatory semantics in grammar; from them I take the distinction between LINKING and NESTING, the fundamental types of relation between the SIGNIFICATA (necessary and sufficient conditions for denotation) of signs in discourse. Weinreich wrote (1963/6:163): Linking may be described as that effect of a grammatical conjunction of two signs which yields a product of their designata. Assuming, for example, that flower has the designatum [i.e., significatum] , C 1 'C 2 'C 3 ' (i.e., the conditions under which the flower denotes [ . . . ] ) and yellow has the designatum 'C 4 -C 5 \ then yellow flower, being a grammatical expression in English, has the compound designatum ' C j · 0 2 · € 3 · 0 4 ' C 5 ' .

On nesting, he wrote (1963/6:164): If we consider next such expressions as buy flowers or under water, we cannot say that the effect is an addition of designata at all. It is as if the designata of buy and under contained open slots which were harmoniously filled by flowers and water respectively, but in a nonadditive way.

The essence of the distinction, as I see it, is that in a nesting construction, the terms are in an unequal or asymmetrical relationship, while in a linking construction the terms are coordinate and equal (cf. Weinreich, 1963/6: 199n33). Compare, for instance, these two Chorti expressions: (1) / + .'im"9puts 'e'ui"nik+ / 'The man is good.' (2) /+.'u'io"tot'e'ui"nik+/ "The house of the man.' Expression (1) designates something which is good and is a man, but (2) does not designate something which is a house and is a man. Thus, (1) is a linking construction, and (2) is of the nesting type. Permuting the stress groups of (1) yields an acceptable and synonymous expression, while permuting the roots within the pattern of affixes

CHORTÍ SEMANTICS

63

yields an unacceptable nonsense form. Almost the reverse is true of (2) : permuting the stress groups yields at best a fragment of a larger construction, unacceptable by itself, while permuting the roots, with required morphological and morphophonemic adjustments, yields a new and different expression of the same form : (3) / + . 'u'uir)"kir 'io?o"tot + / "The man (master) of the house.' The numerous classificatory nomenclatures of Chorti take advantage of this construction type: /'u"na*?a?k "niu?ut/ 'the belly of my eye' = 'my eyeball', and "u?ut 'ni"na?a?k 'the eye of my belly' = 'navel' are just different permutations of the same roots in this construction. Construction (1) is a free form, complete as it stands; (2) and (3) are not. To make them so, they must be linked to another constituent, e.g. : (4)

I + . "ha?ax 'u'io"tot 'e'ui"nik + / 'That is the house of the man.'

The proform | haax | has as its antecedent a stretch of discourse, often quite long, or it may refer to an object, as a deictic. It is linked with the other constituent here, a nesting construction with a possessive prefix. The relation of possession can of course be viewed in a number of ways, and variously expressed : (5) The man has a house. The house belongs to the man. The house is the man's. The house of the man. The man's house. All these, like (4), might be translated into a logical notation in the same way, perhaps by means of a function of possession (p) having man (m) and house (h) as arguments : (6) ρ (m, h) or ρ (m, h'), where the nested argument, house, is indicated by order or by a diacritic. A more attractive alternative is the use of parametric functions, in a notation where the depth of embedding of arguments is shown by the nesting of parentheses, and where functions, as usual, precede arguments. Thus, (6) might be replaced by (7) (p(h))(m), that is, possession-of-a-house is predicated of a man, so that house is a parameter of the function, which now has but one argument. Another alternative, even more invit-

64

JOHN FOUGHT

ing,istoomit a separate POSSESSION function altogether, and simply reinterpret the relation between its two arguments as a relation between a new function, "predicated argument", and the other argument from (6) : (8)

(h(m)),

or, a house is predicated of a man. I introduce logical notation in the same spirit as Weinreich's: to provide a neutral vehicle for syntactic representation, free from the treacherous associations of traditional grammatical terms and translations. The groupings of elements in parametric functions can be made to correspond more closely to the order of Chorti constituents than those of other equivalent notations, and so it is preferable for use here. The next examples show the parallelism between Chorti "transitive verb" and "possessed noun", and their linking with a pronominal form, | haax | : (9)

/ + . "ha?ax 'io?o"tot + / "That is the house.' (o) (h)

(10)

I + . "ha?ax 'u'io"tot 'e'ui"nik + / 'That is the house of the man.' (o(u)) (h)

(11)

f + . "haTax 'u'io"9pi 'e'ui"nik + / 'His striking the man.' (i(u)) (h)

Two conventions should be noted here. First, the variables in the logical formulae are the first letters (ignoring /?/) of the Chorti radicals, and second, the translations of Chorti thematic U expressions like (11) are intentionally neutral in tense and aspect, like the originals. The Chorti forms, unlike the translations, are free and complete constructions, rather than embedded or nominalized transforms. The possessive U prefixes, then, function as organizers of their substantive arguments into nesting relations. Their translation into logical notation is a nesting arrangement of the parentheses enclosing the variables. This semantic feature, NESTING, will be represented as ( > ) in componential configurations, in contrast to LINKING ( = ) While the logical notation, implying global or unanalyzed meanings of the variables, brings out the parallels between the transitive and possessive expressions in Chorti, there is much it does not show. First, there is more to the system of personal affixes than relational function. This area will be explored in the next section. Then, the terms represented here by the variables-the stems-will be partially analyzed and found to share certain semantic features in various combinations. For the purposes of this

CHORTÍ SEMANTICS

65

paper, at least, the notation just introduced will be a useful framework for the progressive analysis of these meanings into features and residues. After that, some of the classes of roots occurring with the various suffixes will be briefly examined.

PERSONAL AFFIXES, GRAMMATICAL CATEGORIES, AND SEMANTIC COMPONENTS

Besides the set of prefixes whose third-person marker is |u&| inChorti (/u/ or /r/ or a sibilant in all but a few of the other languages) and the personal suffixes found in the other Mayan languages as well, Chorti has another set of personal prefixes whose third-person form is |a|. To my knowledge, this set does not occur in any other Mayan language, though it may be found in Chontal. The two prefix sets function very differently in organizing the discourse. To revert briefly to traditional terms the U set marks the possessors of nouns and the subjects of transitive verbs, while the A set marks the subjects of intransitive verbs in the imperfective aspect. As in the other languages, the suffix set marks the objects of transitive verbs and the subjects of both intransitive perfectives and so-called 'stative verbs'. Traditional grammatical categories, however, are not appropriate to Mayan structures : they can be applied only with violence to their common usage or to the structural features they are intended to fit. I take it to be self-evident that greater economy and elegance can be achieved by a grammar whose elements and categories are languagespecific than by one whose terms are language-independent, and hence a priori. The relevance of the traditional grammatical categories, even conceived as formally defined by their participation in particular rules or relations, should not be taken for granted. The current prestige of Chomskian transformational grammar, with its own universalisai, is doubtless the source of the renewal of naïve universalism in ethnolinguistics. Within Chomskian grammars, however, universal categories have an equivocal role: the traditional labels, like noun, verb, etc., appear to retain all their traditional associations and 'intuitive' correctness, i.e., familiarity, but within a particular grammar they are merely abstract nonterminal symbols whose application is precisely delimited by the particular rules in which they appear. Properly speaking they have no associations, except when it is advantageous to treat them as if they were notionally defined. If the pattern of formal equivalences and differences of a language cuts across the categorial distinctions as they are usually interpreted, the result of using the traditional categories will be a confusing description, despite careful redefinition of the familiar terms to suit the unfamiliar forms. I think it is fair to say that the tradition of Mayan descriptive grammars, like the larger traditions of structuralist and transformational descriptive grammar, contains many examples of this kind. The reason, as I see it, is that the associations of the traditional categories with the usual terminology are too strong to be easily unlearned as one studies a descriptive grammar. It is

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better, then, to cut loose from them entirely, as I have tried to do in this study, and to seek elements and categories defined expressly to fit the overt formal distinctions of the language, carefully avoiding terms whose traditional connotations make them treacherous friends. One example illustrating these points is the important observation that Chorti, like the Yucatec system to be discussed next, is fundamentally ergative even in its superficial structure. The subjects of transitive expressions are concordially and syntactically distinct from the subjects of intransitive expressions, while these latter are equivalent to the objects of transitives. It is quite possible to describe an ergative system in traditional terms without bringing out the basically different status within it of the intransitive expressions : indeed, this is just what has happened in the case of Yucatec, at least. Traditional terms, in fact, provide a means of doing without such insights, by constituting a kind of grammatical "broad transcription" in place of an "emic" analysis of the data. A priori category networks, whether of phonetics, syntax, or semantics, naturally have an indispensable role in structural description as etic systems, but the objective is always a system whose terms all have contrastive (and hence language-specific) relevance. In some of the better early work on Mayan there is an implicit recognition of the inappropriateness of traditional terminology, although no alternative was available. Two passages from Eduard Seler's dissertation stand out: Die Maya-Sprachen besitzen also transitive aktive Verben in unserem Sinne nicht. Sie kennen nur Nomina und absolute Verba [ . . . ] die als Prädikate zu einem Personalpronomen oder einer dritten Person als Subjekt konstruirt werden aber kein direktes Objekt zu sich nehmen können (Seier, 1887:89). . . . nur die absoluten, eines direkten Objekts entbehrenden Verbalausdrücke durch Prädikatskonstruktion mit dem Personalpronomen gebildet; die transitiven Verba dagegen sind wurzelhafte oder abgeleitete Nomina, die als solche mit dem Possessivpräfix verbunder werden (Seier, 1887:76).

There are echoes of these passages in Tozzer, who had read Seler carefully, and wrote of Yucatec that The essentially nominal character of the Maya is seen not only in the verbal stems made directly from nouns but also in words denoting action or state and the effect of this action or state on the subject (Class I). This class of verbs are really predicated nouns (Tozzer, 1921:35). The nominal pronoun is really a possessive and is naturally used to express possession. There is little doubt that the possessive idea is uppermost even in the use of this nominal pronoun with a finite verb (Tozzer, 1921:49).

To say that a verbal stem is made "directly" (that is, without a derivational affix) from a noun, and to note that such a verbal stem takes the possessive prefixes is to deny any but a notional distinction between the two stems. Tozzer goes farther, remarking that

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67

There is no real adjective in Maya. Words which have usually been considered as adjectives are really intransitive verbs (1921:95).

There are excellent reasons for making this last claim about Chorti too : many "adjectives" are transparently related to the roots of thematic formations (/ 'u'xe"re / 'his cutting it in two', / 'in"xehr / 'split', / 'a'txa"mai / 'he dies', / 'txa"men / 'dead', etc.). At first it seems possible to retain the noun-verb distinction by appealing to the difference in environments: the "noun" and "verb" stems appear in very different environments, so we know which is which distributionally. But this is merely an attempt to justify our familiar pattern of thought, for one does not distinguish between two forms which have the same sound and meaning because they occur in different environments-on the contrary, this is the classic case of noncontrastive complementary distribution. Starting from the forms and their meanings, then, one is not led to a distinction between nouns and verbs in Chorti; if other Mayan systems are different, they would naturally call for different solutions. In order to understand the functions of the pronominals, each set must be seen in its syntactic and semantic relation to the others. The familiar kind of contrastive analysis long practiced by structuralists will permit this ; in fact it is nothing more than the examination of the more revealing portions of the enormous paradigms generated by taking the person markers as constants and the remainder of their environments -the utterances-as the variables. Nida and Romero (1950), for instance, examined the Yucatec pronominals in this way, and reached some useful conclusions. Surveying forms with a prefixed pronominal (their set A) in contrast with those having a pronominal suffix (their set B), they observe that the forms within I of set A indicate that the subject actively participates in the action. The forms within I of set Β indicate that the subject is in a state of having performed an action (Nida and Romero, 1950:194).

They took as basic this distinction between active participation in an action and one's relationship to a state of having completed an action (1950:195). But, while "active participation" may be an acceptable formulation of the role of the U prefixes in some expressions, it does not do justice to their use as markers of possession, without regard to a time or act of acquisition. Rather, as in Chorti, the indication of a nesting relation between a simple or complex predicate and its parametric argument appears to be an important part of the semantic content of the set of U prefixes, together of course with the indication of the person and number of their antecedents. So much can be said of both Yucatec and Chorti, but the presence of the A prefixes of Chorti implies important differences in the function of each set and, therefore, in their componential structures. As for the suffixes, it seems clear that the "state" of "completed action" is nothing but the familiar notion of perfective aspect, whose equivalence to a notion of transition to a given state has long been recognized, at least in Indo-European studies (see Lyons, 1968:314).

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Even without the evidence of Chorti in favor of a reinterpretation possibly suitable for all the Mayan pronominal systems, their distinction would call for reformulation. Through "active participation" in an action one achieves a "state of having completed" an action. They are not distinct roles or distinct events, but the same role in the same event viewed from two different temporal vantage-points. The opposition between imperfective and perfective aspects captures this without requiring delicate decisions about what counts as "active participation" (or "action"). Remarking on the timelessness of expressions having the suffixed pronominale, Nida and Romero (1950:195) note further that the state of being a man, as expressed in winiken, is completed, and in this respect pinen I went and winiken I am a man are essentially parallel despite the difference in the translations.

The same parallelism is to be found in Chorti, where it can easily be extended to account for the use of the suffixes as object markers. The antecedent of an object suffix is in the state resulting from the performance of some act by another; with respect to the object pronominal, the act is completed. The suffixes occur in most of the environments filled by substantives and are syntactically equivalent to them. In the light of this, the lack of any third-person suffix calls for an analysis of e.g. ~'vi"ni"ken Ί (have become a) man' and 'ui"mk '(someone has become a) man' as equally "stative" in the traditional term, or equally perfective in my terms. In fact, athematics rarely occur alone : they usually occur with a U prefix or with the impersonal "definite article" |e|, whose chief function might then be described as the neutralization of aspect. In these expressions, the first (morphophonemic) letters of each root, as explained, are used in the formulae : (12)

/ + .'ui'ni"ken+/ |uinik|en| 'I'm a man.' (u) (e) (13) / + . Ί ο " ?kue?en + / |lo?k|vi|en| 'I've left.' (1) (e) (14) / + .'e'ui"nik'u'io"?pie?en + / |e|uinik|u&|io*?p|i|en| 'The man's striking me.' (i(e)) (u) (15) / + .'e'ui"nik'u'iah"?kue?en'e'txum"pi?i + / |e|uinik|u&|ah9k|u|en|e|txumpii| 'The man's giving me the turkey.' ((a(t))(e))(u)

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Here again, the logical notation reflects only a part of the meaning differences at this stage; a portion is reserved for the componential configurations. In contrast to the suffixes, the A prefixes mark imperfective aspect. This may be seen most clearly in Chorti narratives, which are organized into tableaux or scenes, such that within each, a distinction between completed and incomplete acts (relative to a point of reference) is marked by the use of one or another set of personal affixes. The point of reference (see Reichenbach, 1947:288-94) is shifted by the use of one of the particles or enclitics specialized for this purpose ( / 'en"ton'ses, "pues, 'ha?ax"to/, etc.) or by a lexical item designating the time of the action. In the absence: of a specified time marker, the aspect distinction is as these examples show it: (16)

/ + .'im'?pih"nu 'ke'ma?a"txi 'a'?ku"xun + / Ί think that he isn't feeling pain.' (17) / + .'im'?pih"nu 'ke'ma?a"txi 'a"na?a '?ku"xun + / Ί think that he wasn't feeling pain.' (18) / + ,'im'9pih"nu 'ke'ma?a"txi '*?ku"xun + / Ί think that he felt no pain.' The reference to past time in the second example is made explicit by the past progressive particle |ani| (cf. /"hen 'te'a"ni / 'they used to be people'). The other two examples designate episodes which are incomplete and complete at the unspecified time of reference. So far, then, the contrastive study of the Chorti pronominale has led to the abstraction of features of aspect, viz., PERFECTIVE (P) and IMPERFECTIVE (I) and of relation, viz., LINKAGE ( = ) and NESTING ( > ) . The analysis of person and number into features of speaker and hearer with minimal or nonminimal membership and positive and negative values of these features, as proposed by Berlin (1963) for Tzeltal appears to be motivated chiefly by the distinction in that language between inclusive and exclusive first-person forms. Since there is no such distinction in Chorti, a similar analysis would be less economical. Instead,, components for SPEAKER (1), HEARER (2) and OTHER (3) are employed. Within each set of pronominals, the contrastive forms lead to extraction of features of number, viz., PLURAL ( + ) and SINGULAR (0) in the first and second person forms. Here are the three sets of forms, with their componential definitions : (19) (1) (2) (3)

U prefixes ( > )

A prefixes (1=)

Suffixes (P)

(0) |vn&| |a&|

(0) |vn| |i|

(0) |en| |et|

(+) |ka&| |i&| |u&|

(+) |ka| |ix| la|

Plural suffix (with (3)): |οτρ| ( + )

(+) |on| |ox|

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Perhaps this passage, from a prayer to the earth-spirit, will help make the functions of the various a Sixes and particles clearer: (20) / + 'ie?e - 'ko"txa?a - ,"ne?et + ,"uar + , 'a'uah"?kuo?on + |i|e| - |kotxa| - |na|et| + |ua|r| + |a&|ah?k|u|on 'And the - as - you are your giving to us + . 'tu"?ka 'ka'?ku"xi + , 'i'ta"ra + , "uar 'ka'io?o"pa + ,'ka + [tu?ka|ka&|9kux[i| + |i|tar|a| + |ua|r|ka|ioop|a| + |ka&| what

our eating

and there are we arriving our

'tur"9pa "to?oit + . 'lo'ke"no?on 'ka'?kam"pes 'ma"kui9ir |tur|?pa|ta|a&|hut| + |lo|ke|na|on|ka&|?kan|p|es|maku|ir| putting down before you that which we use inside 'ko?o"tot -I- / ka&|otot| + our house.' 'As you give us what we eat, so we come to present to you what we use in our houses.' The lone A prefix, in / 'ka'io?o"pa / 'we arrive', together with the two occurrences of /"uar/, mark the entire passage as imperfective. The use of |ua|r|, a cursive formation on a root meaning 'stand', is analogous to that of Spanish estar, but the Chorti form is optional; if it were deleted, the passage would remain the same in meaning. If / "uar/ were absent, then, and if instead of the imperfective form we found / 'io?o "po?on / 'we arrived', the entire passage would be transposed into the perfective aspect, and the translation might become 'As you gave us what we ate (or eat), so we came to present to you what we used (or use) in our houses.' Summing up the syntactic functions of the person-markers, the U prefixes imply the nesting of one substantive and another, calling for one interpretation with thematic roots and another with athematic roots. The A prefixes mark imperfective aspect and linking of the predicate with an adjoining substantive, and the suffixes are 'pronominals'-stand-ins for substantives-marking perfective aspect. In Chorti, there is a consistently maintained formal distinction between the subjects of transitive and of intransitive expressions, on the one hand, and an equally consistent equivalence of the subjects of intransitives and the objects of transitive expressions, these latter occupying the same positions and having the same pronominal substitutes. It is, therefore, an ergative system, although the distinction between the ergative and objective categories is not marked by case inflection, as in the classic examples (cf. Lyons, 1968:350-9). Nevertheless, the distinction is overtly marked by concord and position together, so that the status of ergatives as agents must be carefully attended to.

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The usual sentence type in Chorti is a linking construction, composed of "two things said about each other" in Weinreich's felicitous phrase (1963/6:170). Substantives not bearing a U prefix and attributives are in a linking relation. Examples (9), (10), and (11) all have a linking relation between |haax| and the following constituent. Many Chorti discourses show two or more constituents linked to a single element, or nesting with a single element: (21) / + [ . . . 'ha?a"xir...] 'a'xa"na 'u'pah"ni - . 'e'lu"?kum 'u'?ku"xi +1 'He [the armadillo] . . . walks, digging and eating worms.' In traditional terms, this expression has a subject (|haax|ir| = h), an intransitive verb (|xan| = x), and two transitive verbs (|pahn| = p, |?kux| = k) sharing a direct object (|lu?kum| = 1). In other words, it is made up of three linking constructions, two of them sharing a nesting argument: (22)

(x)(h).(p(l))(h).(k(l))(h),

where the raised dot signifies conjunction. ROOTS AND THEMATIC AFFIXES: THE ACT FEATURE

The key to the syntactic and semantic interpretation of a Chorti construction is in the classification of roots according to their occurrence with U or A prefixes or both, and with one or more of the dozen or so thematic suffixes. A Chorti morph is an affix or a root; if a root, it is thematic when it occurs with one of the thematic suffixes and athematic otherwise. Some athematic roots never occur with personal affixes (the particles) ; others are sometimes found with U prefixes (substantives) or with A prefixes (attributives). Thematic roots with U prefixes are predicated substantives ; those with A prefixes are predicated attributives, these last categories corresponding, once more, to the traditional transitive and intransitive verbs. Many Chorti roots occur with both U and A prefixes, some having the same thematic suffix in either case, like |at| 'bathe', and others, like |kan| 'learn' or |io?p| 'strike', 'give a blow' having different suffixes : (23) / 'u'ia"ti / |u&|at|i| 'His bathing it'. I 'a?a"ti I |a|at|i| 'He bathes'.

/'u'ka"ni / |u&|kan|i| 'His learning it'. / 'a'ka"no / |a|kan|o| 'He learns'.

/'u'io"?pi / |u&|io7p|i| 'His striking it'. / 'a'io"9pon / |a|io?p|onl 'He strikes'.

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/ 'a"ti / Mil 'He bathed'.

I 'ka"no / |kan|o| 'He learned'.

/' io"?pon / |io?p|on| 'He struck'.

The roots in (23) belong to the largest category of Chorti roots, the |u&|\/- |i| class. Though only a fraction of the class has been collected so far, it seems clear that all share a feature of meaning. All have to do with an ACT or process carried out by the subject upon the object. (It may be worthwhile to mention here Orwell's reminder that truisms are true.) This component, ACT, abstracted from the meanings of the roots, leaves a rather strikingly substantive residue. An example like (11) would be further analyzed in this way as (24) (i (u ) ) ( act ( h ) ) with underscoring indicating the residual character of 'striking-minus-act', or 'a blow', so that the reading becomes 'a blow is predicated of a man and an act is predicated of hoax and the blow and the act are linked'. The uniting of the two parts of the predicate into a parametric function is strikingly paralleled by a Chorti syntactic option, little used but seemingly freely available, whereby the two roots of the predicate are compounded into a single stem with a single thematic suffix and an A prefix. Except for the presence of the aspect feature, these are equivalent: (25)

/ + . 'e'ui"nik 'u'xu"ri 'e"lau + / 'The man's cutting of the banana-leaves.' (26) / + .'e'ui"nik'a'xur'la"ui+/ 'The man banana-leaf-cuts.' Although the particular feature, ACT, may seem an arbitrary choice, it is not; the usual 'agent' construction with Chorti 'passives' of various forms is as follows : (27) / + ,'e'ui"nik 'u'io"?pi 'e"?puhr "/ 'The man's striking of the jar.' ( ' ( Ρ ) ) ( act ( u ) ) (28) / + . 'e"?puhr 'io?p"tsa 'u"me 'ne'ui"nik + / 'The jar was struck by the man.' (t(p)) ( act ( u ) ) This athematic root |men|, whose Yucatec cognate is apparently a "verb" meaning 'do', is translated as 'act' when it can be translated at all in Chorti expressions. It is invariably found in predications, as above. The agentive construction is not obligatory with passives :

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(29) / + . 'e"?puhr 'io9p"*?tsa + / 'The jar was struck.' (O (Ρ) Thus, the semantically equivalent active and passive-with-agent have the same semantic interpretation. Ultimately, of course, the "foregrounding" of one element in the active (the subject) and another element in the passive (the object) must be formally acknowledged. A notational convention could easily be established to reflect the foregrounded element's added prominence. Bendix (1966:63-6) uses CAUSE about the same way ACT is used here, but Chorti has a productive causative suffix which makes it necessary to distinguish between events post hoc and propter hoc: (30) / + . 'u'ka"ni 'e'ko"rom + / 'His learning to fish.' (31) / + ,'u'kan"se?en'e'ko"rom+/ 'His causing me to learn fishing.' (32) / + . V k a " n i 'e'ko"rom 'ta"mar + / ' I learning fishing from him.' For ordinary purposes, of course, (31) would be tranlated 'He teaches me to fish.' While (32) could be interpreted in the same way, it might also be interpreted as a noncausative: Ί learned fishing [just] from [watching] him', or the like. With some |u&|\/"|i| roots, it must be admitted, it seems to make little difference whether a causative or an active interpretation is made: (33) / + . V'txih 'u'io"9pi 'e'ui"nik + / 'The horse's kicking of the man.' (34) I + . V'txih 'u'io9p"se 'e'ui"nik + / 'The horse's causing a kicking of (a blow to) the man.' More basic than any of these as a justification for the act feature is the importance of the actor in ergative systems. Attending to the formally marked distinctions of Chorti, then, leads to a factoring of the meaning of thematic U expressions into an act predicated of one argument (the 'subject') and an event or property or thing predicated of the other argument (the 'object'). There is another construction type besides the agentive discussed earlier, which tends to support this analysis. The adaptation of foreign (chiefly Spanish) roots into the predication system of Chorti is done principally through the |txe| 'do' root, with personal affix, followed by the loan root, as in this frequent variant of an introductory formula for folktales :

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(35) / + ,'oka"nin 'txe'kon"tar + . 'o'tron"te?e 'o'hro"ner + / Ί will tell another story.' Here, as in the agentive construction, the act feature is separately matched with a morpheme, whereas in the thematic U expressions, it is a feature of the meaning of the root.

SOME DERIVED ACTIVE EXPRESSIONS

Among the derivational suffixes (besides |?tsa|) which occur in contrast with |i| are two others, |pa| and |?ka| ; all three are usually translated by a Spanish reflexive. Since there is virtually no overlapping of the three root classes, the contrasts among the suffixes must be established by comparing the meanings of the derived forms with the corresponding thematics of each root which is attested in both forms. The root-class of |?ka| is the smallest. Here are the forms, with the best glosses of the |i| and V" l9ka[ combinations for each. (36)

V |hit| |?pix| |9pu?t| I pus I |ue?tx| |uai|

+ |i| 'break apart' 'be alive' 'fill, crowd' 'drop' 'disperse' 'lay flat'

+ |?ka| 'burst' 'live' 'fill, crowd' 'pour out' 'disperse' 'dream'

This suffix, which I called MIDDLE in Fought, 1967, is obviously indicative of an act done BY the subject but not ΤΟ the subject. One fills a container (/ 'u'?pu"?ti /) for instance, but something, e.g., money, is said to fill a container also (/ 'a'?pu't"?ka /). Here are other examples : (37)

(+/.'sut"pa?a'?pix"?ka+/ 'He came back to life.' (38) I + . '°pu?t"?ka 'e"hen 'te'ta'meV'ri 'ia'e"ha