Incorporación nominal, posesión y participación en el maya yucateco

Abstract

In this article the author investigates the function of noun incorporation within the functional domain of participation, with a focus on the accommodation of peripheral participants by incorporation. Like most other languages, in Yucatec Maya the verb incorporates with preference participants at the lower end of the control hierarchy, such as the patient, the instrument, and, less frequently, the location. This yields an intransitive verb which is normally not used as such, but immediately re-transitivized in order to accommodate another, more peripheral participant. The latter may be an adjunct, a possessive complement, or a participant that did not even appear in the base situation. The analysis of syntactic relations in these constructions reveals an advanced degree of lexicalization of many incorporative verbs, which renders a purely syntactic analysis insufficient. On the other hand, noun incorporation in Yucatec covers a rather large area between verbal syntax and lexicon, which confers it a central position in the linguistic system.