Documentation

Linglib.Fragments.Mayan.Qanjobal.Agreement

Q'anjob'al Agreement and Case Fragment #

Agreement morphology and case assignment for Q'anjob'al (Q'anjob'alan, Mayan), following [MT08] and [Ima20]: a high absolutive VSO language with aspect-based split ergativity. Q'anjob'al has the same Set A (ergative) / Set B (absolutive) paradigm as other Mayan languages. Per [MT08] p. 9 it sits in the "Q'anjob'alan group, Q'anjob'alan branch, Western division" of the Mayan family (citing England 1992:21, Kaufman 1974) — sister to the Cholan-Tzeltalan branch (where Chol lives) within Western Mayan.

Main declarations #

Implementation notes #

Per [MT08] §1.3, ex. (35), the verbal predicate structure is Asp + (Particle) + Abs + (Particle) + Erg-Verb + (Particle) + (DIRs), i.e. [Asp] [Abs Erg-Verb] — the high absolutive template, against Chol's low-absolutive [Aux] [Erg-Verb-Abs] ([VA11] §3.4).

One real Cholan/Q'anjob'alan difference the shared substrate caseExtErg does not capture is aspect-marker word class: Chol markers are auxiliaries (independent words tyi perfective, mi imperfective; [VA11] §3.4), whereas Q'anjob'al markers are clitics or "grammaticized particles" ((ma)x- completive, chi/ch- incompletive, (ho)q- irrealis; [MT08] §1.1.2, Kaufman 1990:71, Robertson 1992:57). The alignment behavior is nonetheless the same — split ergativity in any clause without an overt preverbal aspect marker ([MT08] §1.1.1, citing Mateo 2004a/2007b), attributed to nominalization following Larsen & Norman 1979 — so Mayan.caseExtErg captures the alignment convergence, not the morpheme-class convergence.

The non-perfective pattern has a descriptive and an analytical framing (as in Chol). [MT08] §1.1.1 (p. 50) describes it as a "nominative-accusative system (Dixon 1994:104)" — Set A ergative morphemes mark both transitive and intransitive subjects in aspectless contexts — while the "extended ergative / Set A = GEN-from-D" framing comes from formal-syntactic analyses (Coon 2013, Imanishi 2020) where Set A is genitive licensed by D under nominalization. The substrate's extendedErgative.assignCase returns .gen (the analytical view); a descriptive-grammar implementation would return .nom.

The shared substrate works because both languages converge via independent grammaticalization. [MT08] fn. 3 (p. 50): "in Q'anjob'alan languages, split ergativity is associated with the lack of an aspect marker (that is likely to be driven by nominalization, see Larsen and Norman 1979)" — the same mechanism Coon (2013) argues for Chol. They are sister branches of Western Mayan with no common-inheritance unit, which is why the substrate is named caseExtErg (the typological convergence) rather than after one language family.

Argument positions #

source
@[reducible, inline]
abbrev Qanjobal.ArgPosition :
Type

Argument positions, aliased to the canonical Features.Prominence.ArgumentRole (S/A/P/R/T).

Equations
Instances For
    source
    @[reducible, inline]
    abbrev Qanjobal.ArgPosition.case :
    ArgPosition → Case

    Perfective case assignment, shared with Chol via Mayan.ergCaseQanjobalan (= Alignment.ergative.assignCase).

    Equations
    Instances For
      source
      @[reducible, inline]
      abbrev Qanjobal.ArgPosition.accCase :
      ArgPosition → Case

      Non-perfective case assignment, shared with Chol via Mayan.accCaseQanjobalan (= Alignment.extendedErgative.assignCase) — making the accusative-side parallel true by construction.

      Equations
      Instances For

        Absolutive position (HIGH-ABS) #

        source
        def Qanjobal.absPosition :
        Mayan.ABSPosition

        HIGH-ABS: absolutive morphemes sit on the aspect marker (pre-stem), from the morpheme order ASP-ABS-ERG-ROOT-SUFFIX.

        Equations
        Instances For

          Person-number paradigm #

          source
          def Qanjobal.setAExponentPreC :
          Mayan.ExponentTable

          Set A (ergative/possessive) markers: pre-consonantal allomorphs ([CMPP14] table (13)).

          Equations
          • One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.
          Instances For
            source
            def Qanjobal.setAExponentPreV :
            Mayan.ExponentTable

            Set A (ergative/possessive) markers: pre-vocalic allomorphs ([CMPP14] table (13)).

            Equations
            • One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.
            Instances For
              source
              @[reducible, inline]
              abbrev Qanjobal.setAExponent :
              Mayan.ExponentTable

              Canonical Set A exponent table for cross-Mayan typology. The pre-consonantal allomorph is the citation form; per-context realization uses setAExponentPreV before vowels.

              Equations
              Instances For
                source
                def Qanjobal.setBExponent :
                Mayan.ExponentTable

                Set B (absolutive) markers: suffixes ([CMPP14] table (13)).

                Equations
                • One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.
                Instances For
                  source
                  theorem Qanjobal.p3sg_abs_null :
                  Agreement.Paradigm.realize setBExponent (Agreement.Cell.pn UD.Person.third UD.Number.Sing) = some "-∅"

                  3rd person absolutive is null (∅).

                  source
                  theorem Qanjobal.p3sg_erg_allomorphy :
                  Agreement.Paradigm.realize setAExponentPreC (Agreement.Cell.pn UD.Person.third UD.Number.Sing) = some "s-" ∧ Agreement.Paradigm.realize setAExponentPreV (Agreement.Cell.pn UD.Person.third UD.Number.Sing) = some "y-"

                  3rd person ergative (pre-vocalic) is y-, pre-consonantal is s-.