Talk: Adverbial focus constructions in Yucatec Maya

In this talk, I provide a paradigmatic overview and interrelation of focus constructions in Yucatec Maya with special attention to adverbial focus. Based on information compiled from the literature and elicitations conducted with a native speaker, I argue that structural parallels between different argument and adverbial focus constructions correspond to natural positional classes within syntax.

Special changes to Yucatec verbal morphology can occur in certain combinations of aspect-mood inflection and focus-fronting: When an adverbial of time is focused in a completive or subjunctive sentence, otherwise obligatory preverbal aspect markers can be elided. The same may happen with focused manner adverbials in incompletive sentences. Further, when manner adverbials are focused in completive sentences, either a special suffix or an auxiliary marks the clause, as in example (a) (Bohnemeyer 2002, Vapnarsky 2013). Focused locations, on the other hand, may cause a special clitic marker to appear, but incite no change to verbal inflection (Verhoeven 2007).
Descriptions of the exact form and use of some of these constructions are in disagreement, and they have not been related systematically to the more well-described system of argument focus.
As part of my Master’s thesis, I elicited judgments on these constructions from a native speaker. The data corroborate previous reports, but also suggest that all dedicated verbal marking for adverbial focus in Yucatec is optional to some degree. This is to say that in all contexts where a verbal form specific to the semantic category of the focus (i.e. time, manner) was accepted, an unspecific one (b) was judged as acceptable as well.
I sketch an analysis in which the available focus constructions for a given target depend on its argumenthood as well as its hierarchical position within syntax as informed by semantics (following Ernst 2004), instead of its semantics directly.

(a) the unique „manner focus“ construction – no preverbal perfective marker, focus suffix
ma’lóob wèen-Ø-ik-en
well sleep-compl-mfoc-1sg
‘I slept WELL.’

(b) the equally acceptable generic construction – preverbal perfective marker, no focus suffix
utsil h wèen-Ø-en
well pfv sleep-compl-1sg
‘I slept WELL.’

References
Bohnemeyer, Jürgen. 2002. The grammar of time reference in Yukatek Maya. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Ernst, Thomas. 2004. The syntax of adjuncts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vapnarsky, Valentina. 2013. Is Yucatec Maya an omnipredicative language? Predication, the copula and focus constructions. STUF-Language Typology and Universals 66(1). 40–86.
Verhoeven, Elisabeth. 2007. Experiential constructions in Yucatec Maya: A typologically based analysis of a functional domain in a Mayan language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Info

Day: 2025-05-17
Start time: 11:50
Duration: 00:30
Room: GWZ 2.216
Track: Syntax
Language: en

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