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7 Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 2 (May 2010): Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis in Indigenous Languages of the Americas, ed. by Andrea L. Berez, Jean Mulder, and Daisy Rosenblum, pp. 147-171 http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/ http://hdl.handle.net/10125/6789 Middles and reflexives in Yucatec Maya: Trusting speaker intuition 1 Israel Martínez Corripio a and Ricardo Maldonado b a Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia b Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro In this paper we provide a characterization of the middle construction in YM, and show that the apparently unpredictable distribution of middle voice in YM corresponds to a neatly identified, and quite limited, system of absolute events, i.e., events in which no energy is expended (Langacker 1987). This strategy is not exploited by other related Mayan languages, which tend to encode all absolute events as simple intransitive verbs. The semantic coherence of middle voice in YM is only discernible by combining analysis of narrative texts and direct elicitation with attention to speaker intuition in a variety of situational contrastive contexts guided by cognitive principles which are known to determine the behavior of middle voice systems in other languages. 1. INTRODUCTION. Middle voice in Yucatec Maya (YM) is well known for being a small portion of the syntax that presents aberrant and unpredictable behavior. Some uses resemble what is found in middle voice in other languages of the world, namely that the event remains in the emotional/physical/mental sphere of the subject. Yet unlike other languages with a middle system, neither the semantic nor the syntactic restrictions seem to follow any predictable pattern (Ayres & Pfeiler 1997; Bohnemeyer 2004; Briceño 2004; Bricker 1981, 1998). The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we provide a characterization of the middle construction in YM, and show that the apparently aberrant behavior of middle voice in YM corresponds to a neatly identified, and quite limited, system of absolute events, i.e., events in which no energy is expended (Langacker 1987). Such a restricted semantic area is rather uncommon among languages having a middle system. We will suggest that the middle system in YM corresponds to one specific strategy of construing absolute events from transitive active clauses, while other absolute construals follow different patterns. This strategy is not exploited by other related Mayan languages, which tend to encode all absolute events as simple intransitive verbs. Our second goal for this paper is to show that the subtle nature of middle voice in YM requires not only data derived from direct elicitation and narrative texts, but also attention 1 We want to thank Doña Consuelo Chan for her invaluable help and generous time. Thanks are also due to Professor Fidencio Briceño at the INAH, Yucatán, who patiently listened to our multiple attempts to handle middle voice in Yucatec Maya. Finally, special thanks are due to an anonymous reviewer whose comments helped us tie up important loose ends in our analysis. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License
Middles and Reflexives in Yucatec Maya 148 to a variety of situational contrastive contexts guided by cognitive principles which are known to determine the behavior of middle voice systems in other languages. Our fieldwork methodology is presented in section 1.3 below. Because middles, reflexives, and root intransitive verbs contrast in subtle ways in YM, fine-grained semantic and pragmatic information must be taken into account to provide a systematic representation of the middle system. Our data collection began with direct elicitation and the analysis of oral narrative, but these—whether alone or considered together—were not sufficient to fully illuminate the behavior of the YM middle system. As our analysis grew, we found it necessary to invent ways to investigate speaker intuition as well. 1.1. THE RESEARCH QUESTION. Let us first identify the middle construction. Middle voice is defined as a system of constructions whose main property is to portray events remaining in the dominion of the subject (Kemmer 1993, 1994). In middle voice constructions, the action is performed with special reference to the subject: the subject is, in most cases, an experiencer undergoing the action expressed by the verb. Since the action remains in the dominion of the subject, the similarity between middle and reflexive constructions is considerable. Yet in YM, neatly contrastive reflexive-middle pairs are common, as in (1): (1) a. Reflexive t-u-ts’ak-(aj)-ø u=ba Perf.trs-a3s-heal-comP.trs-b3s P3s=ref 2 ‘He cured himself’ (ConChan: 05/2005) b. Middle ø-ts’áak-ø-i(j) Perf.intr-heal.mid-comP.intr-b3s ‘He got better (he became cured)’ (ConChan: 05/2005) Both middles and reflexives develop from active transitive constructions. Reflexive constructions are formed by the possessive marker inflected for person and number, plus a reflexive marker -ba, which imposes a coreferential reading on a (root or derived) transitive verb, like ts’ak ‘heal’ in (1a). Middle voice constructions have a CV ́ VC pattern, obtained by lengthening the vowel of a transitive active CVC verb stem (e.g., ts’ak) and imposing a high tone on the first vocalic segment (ts’áak) (Ayres & Pfeiler 1997, Briceño 2004, Bricker 1981, Bohnemeyer 2004), as in (1b). In the most transparent cases, the reflexive/middle contrast coincides with well-known cross-linguistic patterns: in reflexive constructions, the 2 In this paper we use the following abbreviations; a=‘A series (ergative)’; aP=‘antipassive’; aPl=‘applicative’; b=‘B series (absolutive)’; caus=‘causative’; cl=‘classifier’; comP=‘completive’; dem=‘demonstrative’; dur=‘durative’; fem=‘feminine’; hab=‘habitual’; imm.fut=‘immediate future’; incomP=‘incompletive’; intr=‘intransitive’; masc=‘masculine’; mid=‘middle’, neg=‘negative’; obl=‘oblique’; P=‘possessive’; Pasv=‘passive’; Pe=‘emphatic pronoun’; Perf=‘perfective’; Pl=‘plural’; ref=‘reflexive’; s=‘singular’; sub=‘subjunctive’; toP=‘topic’; trs=‘transitive’; = = bound morpheme; 1=‘1 st person’; 2=‘2 nd person’; 3=‘3 rd person’. fieldwork and linguistic analysis in indigenous languages of the americas
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Fieldwork and Linguistic Analysis i
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Contents Foreword iii Marianne Mith
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Another fading boundary is that bet
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languages: Akawaio (Kapóng), Akuri
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Acknowledgments The editors are dee
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Introduction 2 COMMUNITY COLLABORAT
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Introduction 4 confined themselves
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Introduction 6 Often, what turns ou
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Introduction 8 references boas, fra
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The Discourse Marker vet in Ixil Ma
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fieldwork and linguistic analysis i
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Classifying Clitics in Sm’algyax
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Noun Class and Number in Kiowa-Tano
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fieldwork and linguistic analysis i
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The Story of *ȏ in the Cariban Fam
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The Story of *ȏ in the Cariban Fam
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Dena’ina Discourse Markers 198 co
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Dena’ina Discourse Markers 200 RE
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Dena’ina Discourse Markers 202 Pe
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Gemination and Tonal Feet in Welede
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Dependent Verbs in Sierra Popoluca
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