Browsing by Subject "Mayan languages"
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Item An analysis and reconstruction of transitive nominalization in Ch’olan languages(2020-08-11) Walters, Mackenzie Cheyenne; Law, Danny, 1980-This paper reconstructs the transitive nominalizing suffix *-yaj (IPA */-jax/) in the Ch’olan branch of Mayan languages. I consider data from modern Chol, Chontal, and Ch’orti’ as well as colonial Ch’olti’ to reconstruct the phonological form and syntactic function of this morpheme. This suffix has been called nominalizing antipassive (e.g., Robertson et al. 2010:186-7), although it does not eliminate the object in all cases. Rather, I analyze it as a more general valency-reducing suffix. Each of the languages has undergone small phonological changes, and all of them allow truncation of the suffix to -aj in certain phonological contexts and in fast speech. This paper argues that the glide is underlying, rather than epenthetic, and that the final consonant reconstructs to the velar fricative /x/ rather than the glottal /h/. It also considers the distribution of these nominalizations in each of the languages, and the additional morphology that can appear on them. In particular, there has been a shift between colonial Ch’olti’ and modern Ch’orti’ in the preferred method for marking the thematic roles of the nominalized verb. Ch’olti’ requires a prepositional phrase to reference the patient or stimulus of the verb if it has been derived into an agentive, while Ch’orti’ uses the Set A possessor for the same function. When there is no agentive prefix in Ch'olti', the Set A proclitic can appear before the nominalization, as in Ch’orti’. Chol and Chontal use the *-yaj suffix very similarly to each other. Although there is some debate about the role of nominalizations in split-ergative languages like these, these particular forms act as syntactic nouns, taking nominal morphology including possessors and being incorporated into verbs like any other noun. Further fieldwork on the distribution of the allomorphs in these languages would be particularly useful, as would a closer study focused on the syntactic distributionItem Diachrony of the perfect paradigm in Mayan languages(2023-08) Tandy, James Brenden; Law, Danny, 1980-; Pat-El, Na'ama; Epps, Patience L; Deo, Ashwini SThe purpose of this dissertation is to reconstruct the history of perfect aspect morphology in the Mayan language family of Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. Using data from descriptive grammars, I reconstruct the form of the proto-Mayan perfect suffix for transitive and intransitive verbs, and I show how this paradigm changed in the descendant languages as suffixes were innovated, lost, or changed function. In doing this, I highlight how language contact has affected the picture of Mayan perfect marking. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of Mayan linguistic prehistory and, more broadly, provides a case study of reconstructing derivational morphology by comparing language-specific contexts of use. A major claim of this dissertation is that the proto-Mayan perfect was not a canonical inflectional category and instead had derivational characteristics. I argue that the proto-Mayan active and passive transitive perfect constructions were both synchronically based on a patient nominalization, marked with the suffix *(-o)-’m. The widespread perfect suffix -b’il, which Kaufman (2015: 319) reconstructed as the proto-Mayan passive perfect participle, I take to be a Western Mayan innovation that spread to other Mayan languages by contact. Among other specific claims, this dissertation accounts for the areal spread of the Eastern Mayan -maj perfect suffix, which I argue was innovated in Poqom and spread to other Eastern Mayan languages by way of a previously unrecognized contact zone, the Sacapulas Corridor. I also discuss the proto-Central Mayan *-ooj/-uuj derivational suffix, which has infinitival reflexes in most Mayan languages but marks perfect aspect in Poqom, Tseltalan, and Tojol-ab’al; I reconstruct it as an infinitive and account for its development into a perfect suffix in these subgroups.Item Identity-Based Revitalization in the Maya Communities of Guatemala: A Focus on Dress and Language(2020-05) McChesney, HannahThe Maya people have lived in Central America since as early as 250 A.D. and speak 22 officially recognized languages, inhabiting what is now present-day Guatemala. These communities have for centuries been the target of subversive socioeconomic and political policies imposed by Spanish colonizers, then later the national government, and most recently were the victims of a State-led genocide in the early 1980s. However, these communities have continued to fight for the recognition of their rights and the freedom to peacefully express their culture through traditional practices of dress, language, religion, and other customs that vary geographically and between distinct ethnic groups. This work focuses primarily on revitalization efforts in dress and language since the mid-twentieth century that have sought to reverse cultural repression tactics implemented by the State and overturn social prejudices. The research is based on information from historical studies, primary sources, and a cultural anthropological study done with Maya people in Guatemala. Detailed in this work is the essence of the Maya cultural identity, the history of its suppression, and the three fronts on which the revitalization movement has been based: political mobilization, works of the Pan-Maya Movement and Maya scholars, and community-based efforts centered around education.Item Linguistic inheritance, social difference, and the last two thousand years of contact among Lowland Mayan languages(2011-05) Law, Danny, 1980-; Stross, Brian; England, Nora C.; Epps, Patience; Stuart, David; Hanks, William; Woodbury, AnthonyThe analysis of language contact phenomena, as with many types of linguistic analysis, starts from the similarity and difference of linguistic systems. This dissertation will examine the consequences of linguistic similarity and the social construction of difference in the ‘Lowland Mayan linguistic area’, a region spanning parts of Guatemala, Southern Mexico, Belize and Honduras, in which related languages, all belonging to the Mayan language family, have been in intensive contact with each other over at least the past two millennia. The linguistic outcomes of this contact are described in detail in the dissertation. They include contact-induced changes in the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the languages involved of a type and degree that seems to contravene otherwise robust cross-linguistic tendencies. I propose that these cross-linguistically unusual outcomes of language contact in the Maya Lowlands result, in part, from an awareness of the inherited similarities between these languages, and in part from the role that linguistic features, but not languages as whole systems, appear to have played in the formation of community or other identities. This dissertation investigates two complementary questions about language contact phenomena that can be ideally explored through the study of languages with a high level of inherited similarity in contact with one another. The first is how historically specific, dynamic strategies and processes of constructing and asserting group identity and difference, as well as the role that language plays in these, can condition the outcomes of language contact. The second is more language internal: what role does (formal, structural) inherited similarity play in conditioning the outcome of language contact between related languages? These two questions are connected in the following hypothesis: that inherited linguistic similarity can itself be an important resource in the construction of identity and difference in particular social settings, and that the awareness of similarity between languages (mediated, as it is, by these processes of identity construction) facilitates contact-induced changes that are unlikely, or even unavailable without that perception of sameness. This proposal carries with it a call for more research on contact between related languages as related languages, and not as utterly separate systems.Item The phonetics, phonology, and morphology of Chajul Ixil (Mayan)(2019-06-20) Adell, Eric James; England, Nora C.; Law, Danny, 1980-; Woodbury, Anthony C; Epps, Patience L; Beavers, John T; Zavala Maldonado, RobertoThis dissertation presents a systematic analysis and description of the phonetics, phonology, and morphology of the Chajul dialect of Ixil, an indigenous Mayan language of Guatemala. Following an introduction to the language and speakers, and the methods and presentation of this study, the phonetics and phonology are treated together, with the remainder of the work dedicated to morphology. The treatment of the phonetics of Chajul Ixil includes descriptions of the physical characteristics of sounds utilized by the language, and of the acoustic correlates of both segmental and suprasegmental phenomena. Phonetic topics are interwoven throughout the phonological description. Major phonological topics include the phonology of the segmental inventory, syllable structure and phonotactics, phonological processes, issues in morphophonology, and an overview of the prosodic structures of Chajul Ixil. Issues of the history of phonological developments are discussed at times as well. The morphological chapters begin with an overview of morphological structure, followed by a description of the morphology of verbs and elements of the verb phrase, then a treatment of nouns, pronouns, and demonstratives, and then the morphology of modification within the noun phrase. After this, other root and word classes are described before finishing the work with an overview of aspect, temporality, and modality. One of the highlights of the work is a description of a previously unattested phonological contrast, namely, the alveo-postalveolar sibilants, which are a series of phonologically unitary segments in which the primary place of articulation shifts from alveolar to postalveolar during their production. Other major contributions include the presentation of a systematic and coherent analysis of the prosodic system and its relation to the general morphophonological structure of the language, and an in-depth treatment of the rich system of temporal and modal contrasts in Chajul Ixil.