Reconstruction of the Proto‐Ch’olan demonstrative pronouns, deictic enclitics, and definite articles1

Abstract

AbstractThis paper reconstructs the independent pronouns of Proto‐Ch’olan (Mayan), and traces the changes that took place in the descendant languages – Ch’ol, Chontal, Ch’olti’, Ch’orti’. The evidence points to three subsets of pronouns for Proto‐Ch’olan: *ha7‐, *ha7in‐, *nats’‐. The first is a descendant of the Proto‐Mayan pronoun base *ha7‐. The second is an amalgamated base with a grammaticalised demonstrative enclitic *+in. And the third is a grammaticalised positional root *nats’‘nearby’. Proto‐Western Ch’olan (Ch’ol‐Chontal) innovated the pronoun base *hin‐, attested in Classic Mayan texts as a possible diagnostic of Western Ch’olan vernacular speech, through contraction of Proto‐Ch’olan *ha7in‐, while Ch’orti’ innovated the pronoun base ha7ax through amalgamation and contraction of a deictic frame involving the pronoun base ha7 and the demonstrative ya7x‘there’ (ha7... ya7x>ha7+ya7x>ha7ax). Chontal exhibits the most change in its independent pronoun system, through its use of ergative person‐agreement markers instead of absolutive ones to inflect the pronoun base. And finally, in addition to providing support for the reconstruction of deictic enclitics (*+a‘here’, *+i‘there’, *+e‘over.there’), the paper proposes the origin of the Ch’olan definite articles in the Proto‐Ch’olan pronoun base *ha7in, and shows that these serve as yet another trait that distinguishes Eastern Ch’olan (*ha7ine) from Western Ch’olan (*hini).