Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs - Wayeb

Kettunen & Helmke 2011
Appendices
TRANSITIVE VERBS: (CVC)
(1) ACTIVE: ERG-CVC-V1w-ABS
In the active voice, the agent is the subject of the verb, whereas the patient is the object of the verb.
u-chu-ku-wa
uchukuw
u-chuk-uw-Ø
“he/she seized…”
Example:
uchukuw Aj Ukul? Yaxuun Bahlam
“Yaxuun Bahlam seized Aj Ukul”
In the active voice of transitive verbs the root is preceded by the third-person pronoun u- (“he/she/it”), and
followed by the syllabic sign wa which points to the -Vw thematic suffix for active transitive constructions. The -
Vw represents a vowel resonating the vowel of the verbal root; examples: u-chok-ow (“he/she threw it”); u-tz’apaw
(“he/she inserted/planted it”); and u-but’-uw (“he/she buried it”). However, in the Maya script the graphemic
suffix of transitive verbs in active voice is constantly marked with a wa syllabogram regardless of the vowel of
the verbal root 68 .
(2) PASSIVE: CVhC-aj-ABS 69
In the passive voice, the patient becomes the subject of the verb and the agent is either completely removed or
hidden in an oblique (indirect) phrase/clause.
tzu-tza-ja tz’a-pa-ja chu-ka-ja
tzu[h]tzaj tz’a[h]paj chu[h]kaj
tzu[h]tz-aj-Ø tz’a[h]p-aj-Ø chu[h]k-aj-Ø
“(it) was finished” “(it) was planted” “(he/she/it) was seized”
Example:
chuhkaj Aj Ukul? (ukabjiiy Yaxuun? Bahlam)
“Aj Ukul? was seized (by the doing of Yaxuun? Bahlam)”
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It seems reasonable to argue that the thematic suffix for active transitive constructions is –Vw rather than –V’w, although Lacadena and
Wichmann (2005: 32) state that “[t]he glottal is not straightforwardly reconstructible, but we do note that Chontal has a glottal in its corresponding
morpheme –e’. This suffix could have developed from –V1’w by a replacement of the harmonic vowel with e and by a loss of the w. Even if a glottal
stop in the thematic suffix is not reconstructed for proto-Mayan there is still a possibility that it could have been present in proto-Ch’olan as an
innovation in this group.” In the current volume the thematic suffix for active transitive constructions is marked as –Vw and thus contradicting
the harmony rules by Lacadena and Wichmann (see Appendix J). It should be noted here that these harmony rules do not seem to apply
uniformly to all verbal cases, along with several other parts of speech. Ancient scribes were – and modern epigraphers are – faced with a challenge
in the absence of the wu syllabogram which is needed if a word ending in –uw is to be rendered (based on harmony rules by Lacadena and
Wichmann). Consequently, these harmony rules are far from being seamless. It appears as if the Maya scribes only employed a limited set of final
syllabograms without specifically indicating complexity in the root vowel (or any preceding vowel). Statistically, these final syllabograms tend to
take primarily /a/, /i/, or /e/ vowels (–Va, –Vi , and –Ve), and particularly the first two, with /o/ and /u/ (–Vo and –Vu), being infrequent.
Consequently, it seems that disharmonic spelling by itself does not necessarily denote vowel complexity, and nor does synharmonic spelling
always indicate short vowels. The Maya writing system in general is not a sterile and mechanical apparatus (no more than any other writing
system in the world) and it should not be forced to fit a fixed pattern of linguistic theory (Kettunen 2009, 2010).
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Note that the (reconstructed) infixed -h- is the true passivizer, and the -aj suffix is solely thematic and derivational (detransitivizer).
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