Verb agreement in the K'iche' agentive voice appears to deviate from the ergative/absolutive system of other Mayan languages, leading some to treat agreement in the agentive as falling outside the regular agreement system as well as to differing views regarding appropriate syntactic representation of the agentive construction with respect to final…

A phrase-structural analysis of preverbal word orders in three Mayan languages (Tzotzil, Jakaltek, Tz'utujil) is presented. At the heart of the analysis is an account of intonational phrasing and the distribution of several intonational phrase clitics in Tzotzil and Jakaltek. (70 references) (Author/LB)

Examines the phenomenon of semantic change with regard to color categories in closely related Mayan languages (Tzetal and Tzotzil) associated with radically different social milieux. It is argued that, although a model of individual cognition explains how color categories change at the basic level, a social model accounts for differences between…