Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs - Wayeb

Kettunen & Helmke 2011
Appendices
(3) MEDIOPASSIVE: CVC-Vy-ABS
In the mediopassive voice (middle voice), the agent is completely deleted and is to be understood only in general
terms (if indeed at all). The patient becomes the subject of the verb. In other terms, the verb in the mediopassive
voice has stative meaning, and the agent (or actor) is not expressed.
TZUTZ-yi ju-bu-yi chu-ku-yi
tzutzuy jubuy chukuy
tzutz-uy-Ø jub-uy-Ø chuk-uy-Ø
“got finished” “got deposed” “got caught/seized”
Example:
chukuy Aj Ukul
“Aj Ukul got caught/seized”
(4) ANTIPASSIVE: CVC-VVw(?)-ABS (Early Classic)
CVC-Vw-ABS (Late Classic)
Antipassive voice is a voice in ergative-absolutive languages, like the Maya languages, in which a noun phrase
has absolutive case instead of the “normal” ergative case. A noun phrase normally having absolutive case is
marked as an oblique or an indirect object. The verb in antipassive constructions has formal characteristics of
intransitive verbs in Maya languages. In Maya hieroglyphic writing there are three distinct types of antipassive
constructions: (a) absolutive antipassive, (b) object-incorporating antipassive, and (c) agent-focusing
antipassive. All of them delete the patient, and therefore leave the agent as the subject of the verb. Antipassives
can only be made from transitive verbs (root transitives or derived transitives), and they are all distinguishable
morphologically by the absence of the ergative pronoun u- and the presence of characteristic suffixes.
TZUTZ-wi
tzutzuw
tzutz-uw-Ø
“he/she finished”
TRANSITIVE VERBS: (non-CVC)
ACTIVE VOICE:
ERG-VERB-V-ABS
yi-IL-a u-TZ’IB-ba
yila
utz’i[h]ba
y-il-a-Ø
u-tz’ihb-a-Ø
“he/she saw [it]”
“he/she wrote/painted [it]”
PASSIVE VOICE:
VERB-n-aj-ABS
tz’i-bi-na-ja
tz’i[h]bnaj
tz’i[h]b-n-aj-Ø
“[it] was painted”
This construction (save the reconstructed -h-) is the one to be found on innumerable texts on Maya polychrome
ceramics (note that -n- is the true passivizer of non-CVC constructions).
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