When this form is a.n.a.lyzed, we discover that _in_, _a_, _u_, _c_, _a-ex_, _u-ob_, are personal possessive p.r.o.nouns, my, thy, his, our, your, their; and that _nacal_ and _cah_ are in fact verbal nouns standing in apposition. _Cah_, which is the sign of the present tense, means the doing, making, being occupied or busy at something. Hence _nacal in cah_, I ascend, is literally "the ascent, my being occupied with." The imperfect tense is merely the present with the additional verbal noun _cuchi_ added, as--
Nacal in cah cuchi, I was ascending.
Nacal a cah cuchi, Thou wast ascending.
etc.
_Cuchi_ means carrying on, bearing along, and the imperfect may thus be rendered:--
"The ascent, my being occupied with, carrying on."
This is what has been called by Friedrich Muller the "possessive conjugation," the p.r.o.noun used being not in the nominative but in the possessive form.
The aorist presents a different mode of formation:--
Nac-en, (i.e. Naci-en) I ascended.
Nac-ech, Thou ascended.
Naci, He ascended.
Nac-on, We ascended.
Nac-ex, You ascended.
Nac-ob, They ascended.
Here _en_, _ech_, _on_, _ex_, are apparently the simple personal p.r.o.nouns I, thou, we, you, and are used predicatively. The future is also conjugated in this form by the use of the verbal _bin_, _binel_, to go:
Bin nacac en, I am going to ascend.
Bin nacac ech, Thou art going to ascend.
etc.
The present of all the active verbs uses this predicative form, while their aorists and futures employ possessive forms. Thus:--
Ten cambezic, I teach him.
Tech cambezic, Thou teaches him.
Lay cambezic, He teaches him.
Here, however, I must note a difference of opinion between eminent grammatical critics. Friedrich Muller considers all such forms as--
Nac-en, I ascended,
to exhibit "the predicative power of the true verb," basing his opinion on the a.n.a.logy of such expressions as--
Ten batab en, I (am) a chief.[31-1]
M. Lucien Adam, on the other hand, says:--"The intransitive preterit _nac-en_ may seem morphologically the same as the Aryan _as-mi_; but here again, _nac_ is a verbal noun, as is demonstrated by the plural of the third person _nac-ob_, "the ascenders." _Nac-en_ comes to mean "ascender [formerly] me.""[31-2]
I am inclined to think that the French critic is right, and that, in fact, there is no true verb in the Maya, but merely verbal nouns, _nomina actionis_, to which the p.r.o.nouns stand either in the possessive or objective relations, or, more remotely, in the possessive relation to another verbal noun in apposition, as _cah_, _cuchi_, etc. The importance of this point in estimating the structure of the language will be appreciated by those who have paid any attention to the science of linguistics.
The objective form of the conjugation is composed of the simple personal p.r.o.nouns of both persons, together with the possessive of the agent and the particle _ci_, which conveys the accessory notion of present action towards. Thus, from _moc_, to tie:--
Ten c in moc ech, I tie thee, literally, I my present tying thee.
These refinements of a.n.a.lysis have, of course, nothing to do with the convenience of the language for practical purposes. As it has no dual, no inclusive and exclusive plurals, no articles nor substantive verb, no transitions, and few irregular verbs, its forms are quickly learned. It is not polysynthetic, at any rate, not more so than French, and its words undergo no such alteration by agglutination as in Aztec and Algonkin. Syncopated forms are indeed common, but to no greater extent than in colloquial English. The unit of the tongue remains the word, not the sentence, and we find no immeasurable words, expressing in themselves a whole paragraph, such as grammarians like to quote from the Eskimo, Aztec, Qquichua and other highly synthetic languages.
The position of words in a sentence is not dissimilar from that in English. The adjective precedes the noun it qualifies, and sentences usually follow the formula, subject--verbal--object. Thus:--
_Hemac cu yac.u.n.tic Diose, utz uinic._ He who loves G.o.d, [is] good man.
But transposition is allowable, as--
_Taachili u tzicic u yum uinic._ Generally obeys his father, a man.
As shown in this last example, the genitive relation is indicated by the possessive p.r.o.noun, as it sometimes was in English, "John, his book;"
but the Maya is "his book John," _u huun Juan_.
Another method which is used for indicating the genitive and ablative relations is the termination _il_. This is called "the determinative ending," and denotes whose is the object named, or of what. It is occasionally varied to _al_ and _el_, to correspond to the last preceding vowel, but this "vocalic echo" is not common in Maya. While it denotes use, it does not convey the idea of ownership. Thus, _u cheen in yum_, my father"s well, means the well that belongs to my father; but _chenel in yum_, my father"s well, means the well from which he obtains water, but in which he has no proprietorship. Material used is indicated by this ending, as _xanil na_, a house of straw (_xan_, straw, _na_, house).
Compound words are frequent, but except occasional syncope, the members of the compound undergo no change. There is little resembling the incapsulation (_emboitement_) that one sees in most American languages.
Thus, midnight, _chumucakab_, is merely a union of _chumuc_, middle, and _akab_, night; dawn, _ahalcab_, is _ahal_, to awaken, _cab_, the world.
While from the above brief sketch it will be seen that the Maya is free from many of the difficulties which present themselves in most American tongues, it is by no means devoid of others.
In its _phonetics_, it possesses six elements which to the Spaniards were new. They are represented by the signs:
ch, k, pp, th, tz, ?.
Of these the ch resembles dch, p.r.o.nounced forcibly; the ? is as dz; the pp is a forcible double p; and in the th the two letters are to be p.r.o.nounced separately and forcibly. There remains the _k_ which is the most difficult of all. It is a sort of palato-guttural, the only one in the language, and its sound can only be acquired by long practice.
The _particles_ are very numerous, and make up the life of the language.
By them are expressed the relations of s.p.a.ce and time, and all the finer shades of meaning. Probably no one not to the manor born could render correctly their full force. Buenaventura, in his Grammar, enumerates sixteen different significations of the particle _il_.[35-1]
The elliptical and obscure style adopted by most native writers, partly from ignorance of the art of composition, partly because they imitated the mystery in expression affected by their priests, forms a serious obstacle even to those fairly acquainted with the current language.
Moreover, the older ma.n.u.scripts contain both words and forms unfamiliar to a cultivated Yucatecan of to-day.
I must, however, not omit to contradict formally an a.s.sertion made by the traveler Waldeck, and often repeated, that the language has undergone such extensive changes that what was written a century ago is unintelligible to a native of to-day. So far is this from the truth that, except for a few obsolete words, the narrative of the Conquest, written more than three hundred years ago, by the chief Pech, which I print in this volume, could be read without much difficulty by any educated native.
Again, as in all languages largely monosyllabic, there are many significations attached to one word, and these often widely different.
Thus _kab_ means, a hand; a handle; a branch; sap; an offence; while _cab_ means the world; a country; strength; honey; a hive; sting of an insect; juice of a plant; and, in composition, promptness. It will be readily understood that cases will occur where the context leaves it doubtful which of these meanings is to be chosen.
These _h.o.m.onyms_ and _paronyms_, as they are called by grammarians, offer a fine field for sciolists in philology, wherein to discover a.n.a.logies between the Maya and other tongues, and they have been vigorously culled out for that purpose. All such efforts are inconsistent with correct methods in linguistics. The folly of the procedure may be ill.u.s.trated by comparing the English and the Maya. I suppose no one will pretend that these languages, at any rate in their present modern forms, are related. Yet the following are but a few of the many verbal similarities that could be pointed out:--
MAYA. ENGLISH.
bateel, battle.
chab, to grab, to take.
hol, hole.
hun, one.
lum, loam.
pol, poll (head).
potum, a pot.
pul, to pull, carry.
tun, stone.
So with the Latin we could find such similarities as _volah_=volo, _?a_=dare, etc.