Tracing the Ch’orti’ Antipassive System: A Comparative/Historical View

Abstract

The Ch’orti’ antipassive system is more conservative than that of the other Ch’olan languages, thus challenging the claim of direct Ch’orti’-to-Ch’olti’ descent. Except for the innovative suffix -ma, the suffixes are reflexes of historical Mayan antipassives *-(V)n and *-(V)w. Four antipassive suffixes (-ma, -on, -o, and -yan) are used in Ch’orti’ to form absolutive antipassives without patients, and some of the suffixes are used in related verbal structures, e.g., incorporatives. While the other Ch’olan languages show some evidence of having verbal absolutive antipassives, they have innovated by creating related structures with required embedded nominalized antipassives. The Ch’orti’ system, like other non-Ch’olan Mayan languages, allows embedded nominalized antipassives, but never requires them. Additionally, Ch’orti’ has preserved the final fricative in the nominalized antipassive [-(y)ax] suffix (in contrast to the intransitive suffix [-ah]), while the corresponding Ch’olti’ suffix [-ya] has lost the fricative.