Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

120 4. AKATEK, A `TYPICAL' MAYAN LANGUAGE
Possessive marking is identical to the marking of transitive subjects.
Both types of marking are referred to as set A. Section
2.4 elaborates on the connection between possessive and ergative
marking in Mayan languages.
9. Relative clauses always present the head noun to the left of the
restricting clause.
This characteristicum also holds for Akatek. The head noun
jun winaj `a man' appears in front of the relative clause:
(70) x-;-w-il jun winaj x-;-kam el an
PERF-B3-A1-see a man PERF-B3-die DIR CL1s
'I saw a man who died.' Zavala (1992b), 109
10. VOS languages do not have relative pronouns.
As illustrated in example (70), Akatek does not use relative
pronouns.
11. All VOS languages possess articles, with more than chance frequency
de nite articles.
In Akatek, noun classi ers (NCL) function as de nite articles
and the numeral jun `one' as inde nite article:
(71) a. te' kaxha
b.
NCL box
`the box'
hun sab'eal
one gift
`a gift'
ti'
DEM
12. With much greater than chance frequency numerical expressions
precede the nouns they modify.
In Akatek, this property also applies. For example, the numerical
expressions kaawan `two' and oxwan `three' precede the
noun they modify, i.e. wuxhtaj `my cousin':
(72) y-etoj eb' naj kaa-wan ox-wan
A3-with PL NCL two-NUMCL three-NUMCL
w-uxhtaj an
A1-cousin CL1s
`with my two or three cousins' Franco (1993)
13. With much greater than chance frequency articles precede nouns.
Inde nite as well as de nite articles in Akatek precede nouns
as can be seen in examples (71-a) and (71-b) above.