Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

96 4. AKATEK, A `TYPICAL' MAYAN LANGUAGE
nouns and adjectives, and locative and dative adpositions are su xed,
while verbal predicates are pre xed. The transitive verb can alternatively
also be su xed by set B.
(13)
Pre x Head Su x Dependent
NVP -B NP/PRO/;
LOC/DAT -B NP/PRO/;
B- Vintr NP/PRO/;
B- A-Vtr NP/PRO/;
A-Vtr -B NP/PRO/;
The structure and function of pronouns, nouns and verbs in Akatek
is presented in the next section. While pronouns and nouns are optional
constituents of a sentence in Akatek, the verbal complex is the only
obligatory constituent of the clause.
1.2. Pronouns, nouns and verbs. Historically, the pronominal
a xes of set A and set B in Mayan languages developed from a xation
of independent pronouns to the verb (Robertson, 1992). As
a result of this a xation, there are no independent pronouns in the
Mayan language family with the exception of some of the Kanjobalan
languages, i.e. Jakaltek, Akatek, Chuj and Kanjobal (Craig, 1986).
The syntax of these languages shows that they innovated third person
independent pronouns from noun classi ers. These pronouns can replace
any lexical NP that has the ability to take a noun classi er. A
noun classi er is a free morpheme preceding a noun that belongs to
one of the classes listed under the heading `Meaning' in Table 3. As
shown in Table 3, the noun classi ers in Akatek are clearly derived
from nouns (Zavala, 1992b). The third person pronouns are morphologically
identical to the corresponding noun classi ers, e.g. the
independent pronoun for an animal is no' `it (animal)'. Semantically
these pronouns encode third person as well as semantic features such
as gender, material and consistency. In Akatek, the presence of third
person pronouns is optional. The example below illustrates the NCL
no' in pronoun function. As a pronoun no' replaces the possessor NP,
an animal that occurred in the preceding discourse, and follows the
possessed NP smul `his/her/its sin'.
(14) tol ey-; s-mul no'
COMP EX-B3 A3-crime PRO:animal
`Because of his (the animal's) crime.'
Penalosa & Say (1992)