Abstract
En maya yucateco (maya, México) se observa un conjunto de construcciones de foco en las que los constituyentes focalizados aparecen a la izquierda del verbo, de manera similar a como se ha observado en otras lenguas como el húngaro. Tanto para el maya yucateco en específico, como para las lenguas mayas en general, existe un intenso debate respecto a si estas construcciones son oraciones escindidas. Este trabajo contribuye al debate en cuestión presentando cuatro nuevos tipos de evidencia que apuntan a que las construcciones de foco en maya yucateco no son oraciones escindidas. La evidencia que aquí se presenta muestra que las construcciones de foco monoclausales y las oraciones escindidas son diferentes en cuanto a (i) el carácter obligatorio de la morfología de foco de agente; (ii) la posibilidad de mostrar inversión; (iii) la posibilidad de que un pronombre negativo funcione como foco y, (iv) la posibilidad de mostrar construcciones de foco de verbo. Original recibido: 2016/01/29Dictamen enviado al autor: 2016/03/28Aceptado: 2016/11/21
Highlights
Yucatec Maya, like other Mayan languages, shows movement of a focused constituent to the left edge of the clause, as illustrated in the following examples:1(1) [FOC Leti’ ] kíin-s-ej-ø. 3.sg die.af-caus-irr-abs.3sg ‘He killed him.’(2) [FOC Leti’] k-u 3.sg hab-erg.3 y-awat. ep-shout ‘He is the one that screams.’It has been widely debated in the literature on focus in Mayan languages whether these constructions are monoclausal focus constructions or clefts
Along with the diagnostics originally identified in Verhoeven & Skopeteas (2015), the ones I propose here add up to a considerable battery of tests that can be applied to focus constructions in other Mayan languages in order to determine whether they constitute ordinary monoclausal focus constructions or clefts
Taking the central idea in Verhoeven & Skopeteas (2015) as a starting point, in this paper I appeal to the same methodology, i.e. constructions that are uncontroversially biclausal cleft constructions are compared with ordinary focus constructions to see if they display other differences apart from those already identified by these authors
Summary
Yucatec Maya (the Mayan language spoken in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, and parts of Belize; iso code: yua), like other Mayan languages, shows movement of a focused constituent to the left edge of the clause, as illustrated in the following examples:. Ep-shout ‘He is the one that screams.’ (mdg-b: 65) It has been widely debated in the literature on focus in Mayan languages whether these constructions are monoclausal focus constructions (like those of Hungarian, for instance: Kiss 1998) or clefts. Future research will be necessary to determine whether the term pseudo-cleft is an appropriate label or not for the Yucatec wh-cleft constructions analyzed in this paper Having made this terminological clarification, the remainder of the paper is organized as follows: in section §2, I describe the basic properties of focus constructions in Yucatec, and I present a brief outline of their two possible analyses (i.e. as monoclausal constructions or as biclausal cleft constructions). Between cleft constructions and ordinary focus constructions, which points to the conclusion that ordinary focus constructions are not cleft constructions, and in section §5, I present my conclusions
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