Positional Roots in Kaqchikel Maya

Abstract

This work is the first in-depth investigation of the class of positional words in Kaqchikel (Mayan). Based on original fieldwork, I first establish the existence of a special class of positional roots in Kaqchikel. I show that these roots are clearly distinct from root classes of more common syntactic types like nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Membership in the class is defined by the fact that members cannot appear underived and can take four derivational suffixes unique to the class. Since these facts are completely general, the result is that positional roots in Kaqchikel can be defined as all and only those CVC morphemes that have these five properties. Moreover, since these five properties are equally definitional, I correct a bias in the literature to identify the positional roots with the derived positional stative predicate. With the definition of positional root in hand, I then consider the full range of derivations available to positional roots and stems. The work concludes with a discussion of the semantics of positional roots and their derivations, especially the systematic and thus far unexamined differences between stative positional predicates and adjectival positional predicates, where the latter have an emphatic interpretation.