The Maya Chronicles | Page 6

expressions as he-bear,
she-bear. The plural particle is ob, which can be suffixed to animate
nouns, but is in fact the third person plural of the personal pronoun.
The conjugations of the verbs are four in number. All passives and
neuters end in l, and also a certain number of active verbs; these form
the first conjugation, while the remaining three are of active verbs only.
The time-forms of the verb are three, the present, the aorist, and the
future. Taking the verb nacal, to ascend, these forms are nacal, naci,
nacac. The present indicative is:--
Nacal in cah, I ascend. Nacal á cah, thou ascendest. Nacal ú cah, he
ascends. Nacal c cah, we ascend. Nacal a cah ex, you ascend. Nacal u
cah ob, they ascend.
When this form is analyzed, we discover that in, á, ú, c, a-ex, u-ob, are
personal possessive pronouns, 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 á 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 Müller the "possessive
conjugation," the pronoun 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 pronouns 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 Müller considers all such forms as--
Nac-en, I ascended,
to exhibit "the predicative power of the true verb," basing his opinion
on the analogy 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 ás-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 pronouns 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 pronouns 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 analysis 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 yacuntic Diose, utz uinic. He who loves God, [is] good man.
But transposition is allowable, as--
Taachili u tzicic