Chuj voice

Chuj (Q'anjob'alan Mayan) forms the stems of a transitive root with five suffixes, which Coon tabulates: a null suffix for the transitive stem; -w, the incorporation antipassive, whose object is a bare noun that takes no preposition, as in ixintek'wi pelota 'I ball-kicked'; -waj, the absolutive antipassive, whose patient is an oblique introduced by t'a, as in ixintek'waj t'a nok' pelota 'I did kicking to the ball'; -j, the agentless passive, with no thematic agent, an -u'uj-phrase naming a cause of the event; and -chaj, the passive, whose implicit agent may be expressed in an -u'uj-phrase and licenses agent-oriented adverbs. Each stem is built from the root and its suffix, so the alternations are read from the transitive construction. The decomposition of -waj and -chaj into -w and -ch with a suffix -aj is Coon's analysis and lives in her study.

Main definitions

• Chuj.transitive, incorporationAntipassive, absolutiveAntipassive, agentlessPassive, passive — the five stems of a transitive root as voices
• Chuj.voices — the inventory

Main results

• Chuj.agentFate — the agent is kept by -w and -waj, demoted but present under -chaj, and absent under -j

Implementation notes

The incorporated bare noun of a -w stem is entered as an implicit position, the frame vocabulary having no expressed non-argument.

References

• [Coo19]

def Chuj.transitive : Voice

The transitive stem, with a null suffix: the active.

Equations

• Chuj.transitive = Voice.active

def Chuj.incorporationAntipassive : Voice

-w: the incorporation antipassive, the object a bare noun.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def Chuj.absolutiveAntipassive : Voice

-waj: the absolutive antipassive, the patient an oblique.

Equations

• Chuj.absolutiveAntipassive = Voice.antipassive.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "waj"]

def Chuj.agentlessPassive : Voice

-j: the agentless passive, with no agent in participant structure.

Equations

• Chuj.agentlessPassive = Voice.anticausative.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "j"]

def Chuj.passive : Voice

-chaj: the passive, the agent implicit or an oblique.

Equations

• Chuj.passive = Voice.passive.marked [Morphology.Morph.suff "chaj"]

def Chuj.voices : Finset Voice

The five stems of a transitive root.

Equations

• Chuj.voices = {Chuj.transitive, Chuj.incorporationAntipassive, Chuj.absolutiveAntipassive, Chuj.agentlessPassive, Chuj.passive}

theorem Chuj.agentFate : incorporationAntipassive.fateOfRole Voice.TermRole.A = Voice.ParticipantFate.maintained ∧ absolutiveAntipassive.fateOfRole Voice.TermRole.A = Voice.ParticipantFate.maintained ∧ passive.fateOfRole Voice.TermRole.A = Voice.ParticipantFate.denucleativized ∧ agentlessPassive.fateOfRole Voice.TermRole.A = Voice.ParticipantFate.suppressed

The four intransitivizing suffixes differ in the fate of the agent: kept by -w and -waj, demoted but present under -chaj, absent under -j ([Coo19]).