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Yucatec Maya grammar wheels
Grammar Wheels
"I gave my three books to her at the market." — Change any wheels to see how Yucatec Maya encodes each shift.
Common questions about Yucatec Maya
What can I toggle on the Yucatec Maya wheel?
Subject (1SG in-, 2SG a-, 3SG u-, 1PL k-, 2PL a-…=e'ex, 3PL u-…=o'ob), status (eleven categories from táan progressive to úuch remote past), mood, polarity, voice, and recipient. Each spin rebuilds the verb with the right Set A or Set B agreement.
Why does the wheel call it 'status' instead of tense?
Yucatec doesn't grammaticalize tense the way English does. What looks like tense is split between aspect (completed, ongoing, habitual), mood (predictive bíin, obligative yan, desiderative táak), and time-distance markers (sáam recent past, úuch remote past). The wheel uses 'status' as the cover term.
What are Set A and Set B?
Set A is the ergative / possessive series of agreement clitics that prefix to the verb (in-, a-, u-, k-). Set B is the absolutive series that suffixes to the verb (-en, -ech, -∅, -o'on). Which set marks the subject vs the object depends on the status and the transitivity, and the wheel handles the switch.
How is plural shown?
Plurals are added as enclitic pieces of the agreement morphology: 2PL is a-…=e'ex (Set A wraps around the verb with =e'ex at the end) and 3PL is u-…=o'ob. The wheel inserts the matching enclitic when you switch number.
Can I follow the wheel without studying Yucatec Maya first?
Each generated sentence shows Yucatec in the standard practical orthography, a word-by-word gloss separating prefixes, root, and enclitics, and an English translation. The gloss makes the agreement pattern visible.
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.