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Yucatec Maya phrases, by meaning
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Common questions about Yucatec Maya
What's covered on this Yucatec Maya page?
Twenty-two functional categories with Yucatec Maya examples: aspect (incompletive táan, completive t-, perfective ts'-, terminative ts'oka'an), modality (páajtal for can, k'a'abet for must, taak for want), negation (ma'), questions (máax, ba'ax, tu'ux, ba'axten), the discontinuous le...o' article, possession via Set A markers, comparison, and 14 others. Glossed in standard Yucatec orthography.
What does 'split ergativity' actually mean for Yucatec Maya?
The same person can be marked two different ways depending on the aspect. In incompletive aspect, Set A markers (in-, a-, u-, k-, a-...-e'ex, u-...-o'ob) flag the subject of any verb. In completive aspect, the same Set A flags transitive subjects but Set B suffixes (-en, -ech, ø, -o'on, -e'ex, -o'ob) flag intransitive subjects and all objects. Examples on the page show the same pronoun appearing in both shapes.
How does Yucatec Maya mark time without tense?
Through aspect particles in front of the verb. Táan in jaantik 'I am eating' (incompletive). T-in jaantaj 'I ate' (completive). Ts'-in jaantaj 'I have already eaten' (perfective/terminative). Tense per se isn't grammaticalized — when the action happened in time is left to context or time-of-day words (sáamal 'tomorrow', ho'olyak 'yesterday').
What's the deal with the le...o' article?
The standard definite article is discontinuous: le wraps before the noun, -o' attaches after. Le wíinik-o' 'the man'. Other determiners similarly wrap (le...a' for proximal, le...e' for medial). The wrapping makes definiteness unambiguous and visible. Most learners struggle at first because no European language does this.
Is this Yucatec Maya or another Mayan language?
Yucatec Maya (Maya', Yukateko), spoken across the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico and parts of northern Belize and Guatemala. It's one of about 30 Mayan languages — others include K'iche', Q'eqchi', Mam, Tzotzil, and Tz'utujil — and they share a deep grammatical core (head-marking, aspect-not-tense, ergative alignment) but differ substantially in pronoun shapes, verb morphology, and lexicon. The structures here are Yucatec-specific.
Sources for Yucatec Maya
The grammatical descriptions on this page are informed by the following published reference and descriptive grammars. Grammatical facts themselves are not subject to copyright; the scholars who documented them deserve attribution.
- Bohnemeyer, Jürgen (2002). The Grammar of Time Reference in Yukatek Maya. LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 44. München: LINCOM Europa. [PRIMARY for AM markers and status inflection: F16/F17 p.86 (Set A / Set B paradigms); F21 p.103 (preverbal AM marker inventory); F26 p.147 (status inflection by verb stem class); F31 p.220 (status-assignment matrix); §6.1.1 p.221 (completive); §6.2.1.1 pp.242-260 (perfective t-/h-); §6.2.1.2 pp.260-268 (imperfective k-); §6.2.2.1.1 pp.269-279 (progressive táan); §6.2.2.1.2 pp.279-289 (terminative ts'o'k, INCOMPATIBLE with negation p.283); §6.2.2.1.3 pp.289-296 (prospective mukah); §6.2.2.2.1 pp.305-310 (obligative yan); E197a/b p.231 (perfective vs subjunctive negation); §5.1.2 p.170 (verb class inventory).]
- Bricker, Victoria, Eleuterio Po'ot Yah, and Ofelia Dzul de Po'ot (1998). A Dictionary of the Maya Language as Spoken in Hocabá, Yucatán. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
- Bohnemeyer, Jürgen (1998). "Temporal Reference without Tense? — The Role of Aspect and Deictic Expressions in Yucatec Maya." In: Semantics of Tense, Aspect and Modality. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
- Tonhauser, Judith (2015). "Cross-linguistic temporal reference." Annual Review of Linguistics 1:129–154. [On split-ergativity and aspect systems in Mayan languages.]
- Lehmann, Christian (2005). "Yucatec Maya Relative Constructions." In: Typological Studies in Language 68.
- Law, Danny (2014). Language Contact, Inherited Similarity and Social Difference: The Story of Linguistic Interaction in the Maya Lowlands. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Yoshida, Shigeto (2014). Guía gramatical de la lengua maya yucateca para hispanohablantes. 3rd corrected ed. Tohoku University. [Ch. 9 §9.2: VOS base structure with attested narrative examples; §6.1: verb phrase structure.]
- Gutiérrez-Bravo, Rodrigo & Jorge Monforte (2010). "On the nature of word order in Yucatec Maya." [Split word order analysis: SVO frequent with two overt DPs; VOS for thetic/event-presentational clauses.]
- Akademia de la Lengua Maya de Yucatán (ALMY) — standard orthography reference used throughout.