Perception verb complements in Akatek, a Mayan language

190 5. PERCEPTION VERB COMPLEMENTS IN AKATEK
b. x-;-a-chaak tzok'-o
PERF-B3-A2-begin cut-TNF
`You began to cut rewood.'
si'
rewood
For third person agents, the complement can also precede the lexically
instantiated subject, e.g. ix Mikin `Micaela' in examples (151-a) and
(151-b). In these two construction, the meaning di erence is one between
describing the event with a type2 complement as in (151-a) and
naming it as in the type3 complement in (151-b). The type3 complement
can be used for example in a context where the woodcutting had
been scheduled for a certain time, while the type2 complement simply
describes the event.
(151) a. x-;-s-chaak ;-s-tzok'-on si' ix
PERF-B3-A2-begin B3-A3-cut-SUF
Mikin
Micaela
rewood NCL
`Micaela becan to cut rewood.'
b. x-;-s-chaak tzok'-o si' ix Mikin
PERF-B3-A2-begin cut-TNF rewood NCL Micaela
`Micaela began the cutting of the rewood.'
A concluding observation is taken from the closely related dialect of
Chuj spoken in San Sebastian Coatan. In Chuj, there are two di erent
progressive markers, wan and wal, which also take type2 constructions,
see (152-a) and (152-b). In this variety ofChuj, even the future aspect
marker oj embeds type2 complements as shown in (152-c).
(152) a. wan s-b'ey-i
PROG A3-walk-ITV
`He was walking.'
b. wal s-b'ey-i
PROG A3-walk-ITV
`He is walking.'
c. oj a-b'ey-i
FUT A2-walk-ITV
`You will walk.' Maxwell (1978), 135
These examples illustrate that aspectual auxiliaries functioning as matrix
predicates for type2 complements is a common but not uniform
phenomenon in Mayan languages.