A ch'olti'an explanation for ch'orti'an grammar: a postlude to the language of the Classic Maya

Abstract

guage, as recorded in the 1695 grammar of Pedro Moran, is generally held to be related to but separate from the modern language of Ch’orti’ (see Kaufman’s 1976 classification, for example). Ch’olti’ is said to be extinct, having no descendent daughter languages in modern times. This paper aims to show that Ch’orti’ is «extinct» in the same way that Colonial Kaqchikel or Elizabethan English are extinct: they were spoken at an earlier time, but they are not dead, for both have continued through time and are spoken today in their descendent forms. The data presented here suggest that minimally, Ch’orti’ is the modern descendent of Ch’olti’; or, at most, that ancestral Ch’olti’ and Ch’olti’ were mere dialects of each other, as say, Southern and Standard American English are dialects of each other. The evidence supporting this assertion grows out of a careful comparison of the grammatical paradigms of Colonial Ch’olti’an and modern Ch’orti’an, which reveals that the particulars of Ch’olti’an grammar offer the best (and probably only) hypothesis by which the unique characteristics of modern Ch’orti’an grammar can be explained. It is by comparative-historical explanation that the connection between Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’ is best established. Specifically, I will first show that the appearance of a new set of Ch’orti’an pronouns can only derive from the Ch’olti’an grammatical system. I will then give evidence that the negative future marker attested in Ch’orti’ is the reflex of a future marker in Ch’olti’. Finally, I will give a series of morphemes that are unique to the two languages. These facts taken together argue persuasively that Ch’orti’ descends from Ch’olti’. CH’ORTI’ PRONOMINALS

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