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From enclitic to prefix: diachrony of personal absolutive markers in Q’eqchi’

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Abstract

Q’eqchi’ (Mayan stock, K’ichean subgroup) is an ergative language; a finite verb form obligatorily carries information on the person and number of the absolutive participant, i.e., the unique argument of an intransitive verb or the direct object of a transitive one. The set of personal absolutive markers includes five morphemes; the third person singular has no overt marker. These morphemes in Modern Q’eqchi’ are prefixes in a finite verbal predication and enclitics in a non-finite predication. In a finite verb form, the place of an absolutive prefix is between the tense-aspect prefix and personal ergative prefix (in a transitive predication) or verb root (in an intransitive one). This paper argues that during Colonial Q’eqchi’ (used in the second half of the 16th century and slightly later) the general structure of a verbal complex was completely different, and all personal absolutive markers were in fact enclitics. They were enclitisized to tense-aspect morphemes that functioned syntactically as main predicates of a complex construction. Further diachronic change consolidated a verbal complex, conditioning the transition to affixation.

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Notes

  1. Land titles are indigenous documents that were prepared (or used) primarily for legal and political purposes in disputes over rights to land.

  2. Caz Cho (2007:53) and Stewart (1980:24) present similar figures. These authors label this set of markers “set B”, following the tradition of Mayan language descriptions. This notation is concerned with the fact that some Mayan languages exhibit mixed ergative-absolutive and nominative-accusative patterns of alignment, and the same set of personal markers can be used for different types of arguments. Q’eqchi’ is a purely ergative language, so I prefer to use more informative terms: ergative and absolutive. The ergative markers also function as possessives in a nominal phrase.

  3. There are two sets of ergative prefixes, depending on the following sound. The prevocalic set: w- ‘1sg’, aaw- ‘2sg’, r- ‘3sg’, q- ‘1pl’, eer- ‘2pl’, e’r- ‘3pl’; the preconsonantic set: in- ‘1sg’, aa- ‘2sg’, x- ‘3sg’, qa- ‘1pl’, ee- ‘2pl’, e’x- ‘3pl’. The shortening of the vocal often occurs in the second person singular and plural (?Caz2007:47, 50).

  4. Mó Isém (2006:161–162) proposes the same analysis of morphologically similar preverbal and post-verbal absolutive sets as two different paradigms in Poqomchi’.

  5. Double absolutive marking was reported, for example, in the Huixtán dialect of Tzotzil, another Mayan language. Robertson (1992:185–186) views that phenomenon as an intermediate stage of the diachronic development from prefixation (in the Zinacantán dialect of Tzotzil) to suffixation (in Tzeltal).

  6. Stewart (1979:189; 1980:61–62) postulates a zero-allomorph of the optative/imperative marker. For more details on tense-aspect omission, see also Vinogradov (2015).

  7. The third person pronouns do not make use of this pattern. The singular form is similar to the demonstrative pronoun a’an ‘this’. The morpheme eb’ can be added to indicate a plural number.

  8. Note that the transcategorial uses may also be interpreted as manifestation of syntactic autonomy of an agglutinative affix, as opposed to a flective one (Plungian 2001).

  9. It can also be noted that the absolutive marker of the first person plural is reconstructed as *o’ŋ for Proto-Mayan (Kaufman 1990:72, Robertson 1992:53).

  10. The colonial -c (as well as -ℰ) can refer to both -k and -q, because of the inconsistent orthography.

  11. Robertson (1980:240–245) discusses differences in the formal structures of embedded clauses in different Eastern Mayan languages, including colonial K’iche’ and Kaqchikel.

  12. In Modern Q’eqchi’, this particle has changed its meaning. Now, it is used mainly in negative contexts, a fact that enabled Kockelman (2006) to label it “counterfactive”.

  13. Following Lehmann (1985; 2015b:157), by “coalescence” I mean any increase in boundedness; see also Haspelmath (2011a).

  14. Lehmann (1985) labels the loss of syntagmatic variability as “fixation”.

  15. Harris and Faarlund (2006) and Harris (2008) apply this metaphor to similar phenomena.

  16. Berendt used his own orthography, elaborated especially for Mesoamerican indigenous languages; see Berendt (1869). This orthography is quite complicated and involves many diacritical marks and modified symbols of Latin script. In the examples given here, I have slightly simplified this orthography.

  17. The colonial sources on K’iche’ and Kaqchikel, the dominant languages of Guatemalan highlands at the time of the conquest, are more extensive than those for other K’ichean languages (Sachse 2009:10).

  18. Kaufman (1976:108) and Campbell (1977:72) argue that Q’eqchi’ was the first language to branch off the rest of the K’ichean subgroup, in approximately 600 B.C.

  19. Note that some authors do not allow for the clitic/affix status of pronominal markers.

Abbreviations

abs :

absolutive

agn :

agentive

caus :

causative

cf :

counterfactual

def :

definite article

dv :

derived status

erg :

ergative

fut :

future tense

irr :

irrealis status

nmlz :

nominalization

opt :

optative

pass :

passive

past :

past tense

perf :

perfect participle

pl :

plural

poss :

possessive

prep :

preposition

pres :

present tense

proh :

prohibitive

quot :

quotative

real :

realis status

sg :

singular

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges support by the Program of postdoctoral fellowships at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. I am also grateful to Vladimir Plungian for his comments on the initial version of this paper. I gratefully acknowledge the collaboration of Guillermo Saquil and Alejandro Quib Coc, native speakers of Q’eqchi’. My profound gratitude goes to the three anonymous reviewers whose criticism helped to refine the analysis.

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  1. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico

    Igor Vinogradov

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Vinogradov, I. From enclitic to prefix: diachrony of personal absolutive markers in Q’eqchi’. Morphology 27, 105–122 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-016-9293-4

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