“Moral irony”

In studies which reach back more than twenty years, Colette Craig described certain disjoint reference effects in Jakaltek, a Mayan language spoken in the highlands of Guatemala (Craig 1977), and one of the rigid VSO languages in the family. These effects are induced by the presence of an overt pronominal element, as in (1), where the two instances of ix can only refer to different women (the genitive follows the head in Jakaltek).

This paper presents an underdescribed way of encoding the Path component of complex motion events in South Eastern Huastec (HSF), a Mayan language spoken in Mexico. The collected data show that HSF does not have directionals (contrary to most Mayan languages), and no real adpositions. Instead, HSF has a typically Mayan general locational preposition, and some relational nouns. HSF also lacks gerunds. These properties lead this language to segment complex motion events into multiple clauses. HSF event segmentation is interesting typologically because this language is one of thefew that are knownto segment events into sub-events. From the perspective of comparative Mayan Linguistics, Huastecan languages, along with Yucatecan languages, differ from other Mayan language groups in that the grammaticalization process of directionals expressing Path did not take place.

This chapter surveys headless relative clauses in Ch’ol, a Mayan language spoken in the state of Chiapas in southern Mexico. Ch’ol is rare among Mayan languages in possessing a special morpheme found with relativized nouns, the second position clitic = bä. While this morpheme is required for relativized argument nouns, it is not present in free relatives, which suggests a different derivation for this class of construction. Maximal (definite) and existential (indefinite) free relatives are described. They both make use of a fronted wh-expression and lack the morpheme = bä. Maximal and existential free relatives in Ch’ol appear identical to one another in structure. Following existing studies on other languages, it is argued that the different interpretations of these clauses are a result of the environments in which they appear. Finally, Ch’ol has two different types of constructions in which a determiner element is followed by a headless relative: one corresponding to the = bä structure and one corresponding to the free relative structure. The former is proposed to be a regular headed relative clause with an unpronounced head, as has elsewhere been argued for Yucatec. The latter, on the other hand, corresponds to a free relative structure with an added determiner element.

Many Mayan languages show a syntactically ergative extraction asymmetry whereby the A-extraction of subjects of transitive verbs requires special verbal morphology, known as Agent Focus. In this paper I investigate the syntax of Agent Focus in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. I argue that this extraction asymmetry in Kaqchikel is the result of a particular anti-locality constraint which bans movement that is too close. Support for this claim comes from new data on the distribution of Agent Focus in Kaqchikel that show this locality-sensitivity.

This chapter provides a description and analysis of contrastive focus constructions in Yucatecan Spanish, the dialect of Spanish spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. In this variety of Spanish fronted focus constructions are notoriously common. Closer inspection, however, shows that fronted foci in Yucatecan Spanish behave in a way that is markedly different from that of any other variety of Spanish that we are aware of. We provide evidence in favor of the hypothesis that the particular Yucatecan Spanish focus fronting constructions observed in Yucatecan Spanish originate from language contact between Yucatecan Spanish and Yucatec Maya (the Mayan language spoken in Yucatán; ISO code: yua). The main reason is that the syntax of the Yucatecan Spanish focus constructions is strikingly similar to that of comparable constructions in Yucatec Maya.

1 Tojolabal is a Mayan language spoken by approximately 10,000 Indians in the southeastern part of the state of Chiapas, Mexico. Data for this article were gathered by the authors in the field during various periods from 1943-47. The phonemic material as here presented is by Supple; the morphological material is by Supple and Douglass jointly. The authors wish to express their appreciation to William Wonderly and Viola Waterhouse for their suggestions in the analysis and presentation. 2Were Spanish loan words considered, the following phonemes would be added: b, d, g. tion. Each consists of two allophones: aspirated stop in utterance final position as in k'anip [k'anip'] squash flower, nahat [nahat'] long, and unaspirated stop in utterance initial or medial position as in pakan [pak'an] setting, nupan [nupan] married, tinan [tinan] upside down, 6atat [ts'atat'] class of plant. k is at velar point of articulation. Before t, it is unaspirated as in koktik [k'oktik'] our feet but in all other positions it occurs aspirated as in kak [k'ak'] my grass, p'akal [pSak'lh] corncob, pokg ta [pok's tA] it suppurated. The voiceless aspirate affricates 0 and 6 are at alveolar and alveopalatal points of articulation. aamal [ts'amAlh] pretty, soa?a [sts'a?9] he is selecting it, Oa4 [ts'ats'] strong, 6e?e [t?' e?] cold, 6amal [tU'amalh] rotten, ?uh6um [?uhtg'iim] chills, ci? [t'i?] sweet, ?i6 [?itg'] chile. Aspirate consonant h is at glottal point of articulation. hel [helh] my debt, mohan [mohan] near, p'eh [pceh] road. Glottalic consonants are those in which an articulatory feature of glottal closure is present, with or without accompanying stop or affricate articulation. The glottalic series completely parallels the aspirate se ies.

This chapter presents the first ever description and analysis of headless relative constructions in Q’anjob’al, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. It focuses on headless relative clauses (which lack a nominal head, regardless of other material in the head domain) and briefly touches on headed relative clauses. Headless relative clauses are productive in Q’anjob’al. The language distinguishes three kinds of free relative clauses (maximal, existential, and free choice) and three other kinds of headless relative clauses: non-free headless relative clauses headed by pronouns, determiners, or nothing at all. All free relative clauses have the same morpho-syntax, but non-free headless relative clauses differ morpho-syntactically from them and from each other. Wh- interrogative clauses are compared to relative constructions due to their similarities. Relative constructions with a pronominal head are argued to be neither light-headed relative clauses nor any other kind of headless relative clause.

Purpose: Overall, seeing a speaker results in higher intelligibility than hearing speech alone because of visual speech cues. Intelligibility ratings of conversational speech samples provided by school-age bilingual children in two presentation modalities (i.e., audio only and audiovisual [AV]) were examined to determine whether there were other impacts of seeing the children. Method: Forty speech-language pathologists (SLPs) rated the intelligibility of conversational speech samples provided by 23 typically developing school-age children in three groups: bilingual Spanish–English, bilingual Mam–English (Mam is an Indigenous, Mayan language spoken in Guatemala), and monolingual English (control). In an online experiment, SLPs heard audio-only and AV recordings of individual 2-min speech samples in a randomized order. Data were analyzed using a linear mixed-effects model to determine if there were effects of presentation modality, speaker group, or accentedness on the intelligibility ratings. Results: No statistical differences were found between intelligibility ratings from the audio-only and AV presentation modalities. Accentedness was a significant factor on intelligibility ratings, whereas speaker group was not. Conclusions: SLPs rated conversational speech samples of bilingual and monolingual English-speaking children as having similar intelligibility, regardless of whether they listened to audio-only or AV recordings, even though visual speech cues should have caused a difference. Clinically, when SLPs use intelligibility ratings in their assessments of bilingual children's speech for speech sound disorders, it is vital to consider the influences of nonnative accent and linguistic bias. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.30290560

This paper contrasts two passives in Kaqchikel, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. The first passive, which we label the ‘standard passive’ is already well-attested in the literature. However, the second passive, which we label the ‘ki-passive’, has not been previously described. A verb in the ki-passive shows active morphology, with ergative agreement for a third person plural subject, as would be appropriate for a verb with an impersonal ‘they’ subject. In Kaqchikel, however, we argue that this verb form has evolved into a new passive. The paper compares the properties of the standard passive and the ki-passive, and argues that while they involve the same change of grammatical relations, the two passives differ in the discourse functions they assign to the agent and patient.

Some natural languages grammatically allow different types of changing word orders, such as object scrambling and topicalization. Scrambling and topicalization are more related to syntax and semantics/phonology, respectively. Here we hypothesized that scrambling should activate the left frontal regions, while topicalization would affect the bilateral temporal regions. To examine such distinct effects in our functional magnetic resonance imaging study, we targeted the Kaqchikel Maya language, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala. In Kaqchikel, the syntactically canonical word order is verb-object-subject (VOS), but at least three non-canonical word orders (i.e., SVO, VSO, and OVS) are also grammatically allowed. We used a sentence-picture matching task, in which the participants listened to a short Kaqchikel sentence and judged whether a picture matched the meaning of the sentence. The advantage of applying this experimental paradigm to an understudied language such as Kaqchikel is that it will allow us to validate the universality of linguistic computation in the brain. We found that the conditions with scrambled sentences [+scrambling] elicited significant activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus and lateral premotor cortex, both of which have been proposed as grammar centers, indicating the effects of syntactic loads. In contrast, the conditions without topicalization [-topicalization] resulted in significant activation in bilateral Heschl’s gyrus and superior temporal gyrus, demonstrating that the syntactic and phonological processes were clearly dissociated within the language areas. Moreover, the pre-supplementary motor area and left superior/middle temporal gyri were activated under relatively demanding conditions, suggesting their supportive roles in syntactic or semantic processing. To exclude any semantic/phonological effects of the object-subject word orders, we performed direct comparisons while making the factor of topicalization constant, and observed localized activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus and lateral premotor cortex. These results establish that the types of scrambling and topicalization have different impacts on the specified language areas. These findings further indicate that the functional roles of these left frontal and temporal regions involve linguistic aspects themselves, namely syntax versus semantics/phonology, rather than output/input aspects of speech processing.

This paper presents an analysis and description of the syntax of free relative clauses in Yucatec Maya, the Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The description and analysis focus on two structural properties of these free relative clauses; a) the internal nature of the relative pronoun, and, b) the absence of matching effects observed in Yucatec free relatives when a prepositional phrase is relativized. I show that these two phenomena receive a unified description in an analysis where Yucatec, in contrast with a language like English, allows the head of the noun phrase to be null.

Many Indigenous Latinx students in Spanish/English dual language programs in the US speak languages that are often not valued or taken advantage of in the process of learning Spanish and English. This participatory critical (collective) autoethnography explores the possibilities of handwriting lessons as a vehicle for the incorporation of K’iche’ (a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala) into the classroom. Findings reveal ways in which the activities helped to elevate the status of K’iche’ in the school and make students/families feel more valued, but also ways to improve the activities so that Indigenous Latinx families have a more central role.

In this paper we discuss changes in possession marking in Tének (also Teenek, Huastec), a Mayan language spoken in Mexico. While traditionally only alienable possession is marked overtly with the suffix -ilattached to the possessed noun, the marker of alienable possession is being extended in the speech of young and socially mobile Tének speakers to contexts traditionally lacking overt possession marking. We attribute this extension to changes in social and cultural patterns in Tének communities. Thus, we show that the choice of possession marking in modern Tének is sensitive to both semantic factors and the socio-cultural background of Tének speakers, including such factors as age as well as the degree of social mobility and exposure to Spanish. In addition, we interpret these developments in terms of ongoing simplification in Tének morphology. We thus take a more general view of grammatical categories as shaped not only by internal developments but also changing cultural and social patterns.

This analysis shows how the Government and Binding (GB) framework of Chomsky may be extended to the focus antipassive construction in K'iche', a Mayan language spoken in the central highland region of Guatemala. The GB model previously has teen successfully extended to a number of Romance languages and has shown that a wide range of differences among the languages may be due to variation among a limited set of parameters. At first sight, an antipassive construction appears co contradict the GB account of passives because it affects an internal rather than an external verb argument. It is shown that the GB framework can be extended naturally to account for the focus antipassive in K'iche'. The analysis leaves the ergative nature of the syntactic operation firmly in place; it applies only to the subjects of transitive verbs. Contains 14 references. (LB) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *************,********A************************************************ PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY c.c.x.rkw47=7.1Nsvcs4TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)

In Uspanteko, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, certain possessive prefixes lead to variation in stress and pitch accent and can sometimes trigger vowel length alternations or consonant deletion in roots. We argue that this complex pattern of stem allomorphy can be successfully analyzed within a morpheme-based model of morphology given two assumptions: i. underlying representations can contain metrical templates (e.g. Saba Kirchner 2013, Iosad 2016, Köhnlein 2016, 2019 for recent proposals); ii. pitch-accent contrasts in Uspanteko are a surface exponent of a difference between trochaic (falling tone) and iambic feet (level tone), as proposed in Köhnlein (2019). We claim that our analysis is more restrictive than an earlier account by Bennett & Henderson (2013; henceforth B&H), who divide relevant items into several nominal cophonologies. In analyzing non-concatenative exponence as an epiphenomenon of metrical affixation, our approach is in line with principles of Generalized Non-Linear Affixation (e.g. Bermúdez-Otero 2012, Trommer & Zimmermann 2014).