Chapter 10: Intransitive Verbs in the Incompletive

Starting point#

A short original text: ma Kawoq describes his ordinary day. Read it aloud, then check the translation.

Rin Kawoq nub'i'. K'o wawän pa juyu'. Pa taq nimaq'a' yib'e pa juyu' rik'in ri nutz'i'. Nel ri q'ij, yeb'ixan ri tz'ikina', yikiköt. Yisamäj jantape': nk'iy ri awän wakami. Tiqaq'ij yitzolin pa wochoch, yinatin. Nsamäj ri wixjayil, te Ixk'at, pa jay. Toq'a' yojwa', yojtzijon, yojtze'en. Yikos q'ij q'ij: yiwär jukumaj, pa waqxaqi' ramaj.

My name is Kawoq. I have a cornfield in the hills. In the mornings I go to the hills with my dog. The sun comes out, the birds sing, I am happy. I always work: the milpa is growing now. In the afternoon I return to my house and bathe. My wife, te Ixk'at, works in the house. In the evening we eat, we chat, we laugh. I get tired every day: I sleep early, at eight o'clock.

Every verb in this text is intransitive (except the fixed phrases with nub'i' and k'o, which you know from earlier chapters): yib'e "I go", nel "it comes out", yeb'ixan "they sing", yikiköt "I am happy", yisamäj "I work", nk'iy "it grows", yitzolin "I return", yinatin "I bathe", nsamäj "she works", yojwa' "we eat", yojtzijon "we chat", yojtze'en "we laugh", yikos "I get tired", yiwär "I sleep". Notice the little pieces at the front: yi- for "I", n- for "she/he/it", yoj- for "we", ye- for "they". Those are what this chapter is about.

How it works#

10.1 What "intransitive" and "incompletive" mean#

An intransitive verb is one that has a subject but no object: the action does not pass on to anything. "I sleep", "she arrives", "we laugh" are intransitive; nothing is slept, arrived, or laughed. Compare "I see it" or "she buys corn", which have an object and are transitive (Chapter 11). Kaqchikel keeps the two kinds sharply apart, and it marks their subjects with two different sets of pronouns. This split is called the ergative pattern: the subject of an intransitive verb takes Set B (the absolutive set), the same set that marks the object of a transitive verb. The other set, Set A (ergative), marks transitive subjects and possessors; you met it on nouns in Chapter 4 and will meet it on verbs in Chapter 11.

Some English verbs that go both ways ("I eat" / "I eat it") are two different roots in Kaqchikel: -wa' is the intransitive "eat" (no object), -tij is the transitive "eat it" (Chapter 11). Keep that pair in mind; it is a classic learner trap.

Incompletive is an aspect, not a tense. Aspect is about whether an action is viewed as finished or not; the incompletive views it as not-completed, ongoing or open. Because English speakers think in tenses, it helps to know that the incompletive does the work of the English present ("I sleep", "I am sleeping"), the habitual ("I sleep early every day"), and often the near future ("tomorrow I go to the market"). We will call it the incompletive (present) on first mention and just the incompletive after that. The other aspects, completive (past) and potential (future), come in Chapter 12.

10.2 The Set B subject prefixes#

The subject of an intransitive verb is a Set B pronoun, prefixed to the verb. Set B has two shapes, one used before a consonant and one before a vowel:

The most important entry is the third-person singular: it is zero, written Ø, no prefix at all. There simply is no sound there. This single fact drives the whole shape of the paradigm, as the next section shows.

10.3 The incompletive marker: why n- and y-#

The incompletive is marked by a prefix that comes before the Set B subject. It has two shapes:

• n- appears before the zero third-person singular (Ø).
• y- appears everywhere else (before i-, a-, oj-, ix-, e-).

The reason is purely about sound. The marker wants a vowel next to it. In front of the real prefixes (i-, a-, oj-, ix-, e-) there is a vowel to lean on, and the marker surfaces as y-: yi-, ya-, yoj-, yix-, ye-. But the third-person singular subject is zero, no vowel, so the marker instead surfaces as n- attached straight to the stem: n- + wär gives niwär (with a helping vowel, see below). Think of it as one prefix with two faces: y when it has a vowel to hold onto, n when it is left alone with the stem.

So the template for an intransitive incompletive verb is:

INCOMPLETIVE + Set B (subject) + stem

10.4 The full paradigm: consonant-initial stems#

Take -wär "sleep". The stem begins with a consonant, so the Set B prefixes take their pre-consonant shapes. Here is one form taken apart completely:

y-i-wär
INCOMPL-1sB-sleep
"I sleep, I am sleeping"

And the third person, where the subject slot is empty:

n-Ø-wär
INCOMPL-3sB-sleep
"s/he sleeps"  (pronounced niwär)

Here is the pattern across two verbs, one consonant-initial and one vowel-initial in its stem vowel:

The full model paradigm every learner memorizes:

Two points about niwär. First, the third person has no ya-/yi- vowel because the subject is zero; the marker is n-. Second, that n- would sit awkwardly right against the w, so a helping vowel i (an "epenthetic" vowel, one inserted just to make the word pronounceable) slips in: n-wär becomes niwär. In careful writing you sometimes see nwär, but in speech it is niwär. In many towns speakers go further and insert a dental stop (a t or d sound) after the n in one-syllable verbs; that is a regional pronunciation, not a different spelling, and we do not write it.

Here is the same paradigm for three more consonant-initial verbs, so the pattern sinks in:

For very short stems the third person may or may not show the helping vowel: nb'e or nib'e "s/he goes", both are heard.

10.5 The full paradigm: vowel-initial stems#

When the stem begins with a vowel, the Set B prefixes switch to their pre-vowel shapes (in-, at-, Ø, oj-, ix-, e'-). Take -oq' "cry":

y-in-oq'
INCOMPL-1sB-cry
"I cry"

Compare this carefully with the consonant paradigm. In the singular, "I" and "you" now end in a consonant (yin-, yat-) that joins straight to the vowel stem: yinoq', yatoq'. The third person is just noq', the n- marker plus the bare stem, no helping vowel needed because oq' already starts with a vowel. The third plural is ye'- with a glottal stop before the vowel: ye'oq'.

Here are three more vowel-initial verbs:

(The standard spelling, which the source follows, writes yinatin, yatatin without an apostrophe; there is a light catch in the voice between prefix and stem, but it is not written. The third plural ye'- does keep its glottal stop in writing: ye'atin.)

The whole system on one page. Put the two verbs side by side and the logic is clear: the incompletive marker is y- with a subject prefix and n- with the zero third singular; the Set B prefix picks its pre-consonant or pre-vowel shape according to the stem.

10.6 Why the third person is everywhere in real texts#

The zero third-person singular is not just one cell in a table; it dominates connected speech. In a typical narrative, the great majority of intransitive verbs have a third-person singular subject (someone or something already introduced), so the great majority of aspect markers you actually hear are n-, not y-. When you read a Kaqchikel story and it seems full of words starting with n-, this is why: n- before a zero subject is the default texture of the language. The y- forms jump out precisely because they signal a first- or second-person or plural subject.

This also tells you how to parse a verb quickly. See n- at the front: expect a third-person singular subject and look for the noun it refers to elsewhere in the sentence. See yi-, ya-, yoj-, yix-, ye-: the subject is built right in, and there is no separate subject noun to hunt for.

10.7 The independent pronouns: for emphasis, not obligation#

Because the subject is already inside the verb, you do not need a separate pronoun. Yiwär by itself is a complete sentence, "I sleep." The independent pronouns (rin, rat, rija', röj, rix, rije') are added only for emphasis, contrast, or to answer "who?":

A subject noun, when present, normally comes after the verb (Kaqchikel puts the predicate first, Chapter 3). The verb still carries the matching third-person marker:

Nsamäj ri ma Kawoq.
Ma Kawoq works. (literally "works the ma Kawoq")

Yekikot ri ak'wala'. The children are happy.

Ye'oq' ri ne'y.
The babies cry.

Notice the last two: with a plural subject noun the verb takes the plural ye-/ye'- prefix. Kaqchikel agrees with the plurality of its subject.

10.8 What the incompletive means, with examples#

One form covers a range of English translations. Let the context choose.

Right now (present progressive).

Yinuxlan. I am resting.

Natin ri xta Ixchel.
Ixchel is bathing.

Habitually (repeated action).

Q'ij q'ij yinatin jukumaj.
Every day I bathe early.

Toq'a' yojtzijon.
In the evenings we chat.

General truth.

Ri tz'ikina' yexik'an.
Birds fly.

Near or scheduled future.

Chwa'q yojb'e pa k'ayb'äl.
Tomorrow we go to the market.

Kab'ij yipe chik.
The day after tomorrow I come again.

Time words from Chapter 9 (wakami, q'ij q'ij, jantape', chwa'q, jun b'ey) tell the listener which reading is meant. Without a time word, present or habitual is the default.

10.9 A stock of high-frequency intransitive verbs#

Group them by meaning; this is the vocabulary you will use constantly. All are given in the citation form (the bare stem with a leading hyphen), followed by the third-person singular incompletive so you can hear the n- shape.

Motion.

Body and daily routine.

Speaking, sound, and play.

Feeling and state.

Two spelling reminders from Chapter 1. First, the lax vowel (ä, ë, etc.) in a final syllable tenses when a suffix follows; that is why -samäj "work" keeps its ä in yisamäj (nothing added) but you will see it tense in derived forms later. Second, verbs ending in a glottal-final vowel (-b'e, -pe, -tz'uye', -pa'e', -kotz'e') keep that ending in every person.

10.10 The -e' verbs: a preview of positionals#

You will have noticed a family of verbs ending in -e': -tz'uye' "sit down", -pa'e' "stand up", -kotz'e' "lie down", -jote' "go up", -xule' "come down", -k'oje' "be (in a place), dwell". Many of these are the "process" (getting-into-position) half of a pair whose other half is a stative describing the position once reached: yitz'uye' "I sit down" (the act) versus in tz'uyül "I am seated" (the state). The stative forms are the subject of Chapter 18 (Positionals). For now, just use the -e' verbs as ordinary intransitives with the incompletive; the pairing is something to file away.

10.11 The -an verbs: a preview of antipassives#

Another family ends in -an or -on: -b'ixan "sing", -tz'ib'an "write", -ch'ajon "wash", -etz'an "play", -loq'on "shop", -k'ayin "sell", -tzijon "chat". Some of these are intransitive by nature; others are transitive verbs that have had their object removed, a process called the antipassive. -tz'ib'aj is "write it" (transitive, Chapter 11); -tz'ib'an is "write" with no object stated (intransitive). Compare -tij "eat it" with -wa' "eat", and -löq' "buy it" with -loq'on "shop". You use the -an/-on intransitive when you want to name the activity without naming what it acts on:

Ntz'ib'an ri a Tz'ikin.
Tz'ikin writes / is writing.

The full machinery of the antipassive, including its role in questions and relative clauses, waits in Chapter 17.

10.12 The versive verbs: -är / -ir "become X"#

A small, handy group turns an adjective or noun into a verb meaning "become that thing". The suffix is -är or -ir. These are intransitive and conjugate exactly like the verbs above.

(-q'ab'är is built on a root that no longer stands alone as a word. The familiar noun q'ab'arel "drunkard" is derived from the verb, with the agent suffix -el, not the other way around.)

Nnimär ri awän.
The milpa grows.

Xtewär ri ya'.
The water got cold. (completive; Chapter 12)

Noyowär ri tijonel.
The teacher is getting angry.

The greeting xseqër "good morning" is the completive of -seqër: "it has dawned."

10.13 Intransitives with a place: locatives and wi#

An intransitive verb has room for only one participant, the subject. Anything else, including where the action happens, sits in a separate phrase after the verb, introduced by a preposition (pa, chi) or a relational noun (Chapter 5). The verb does not change to agree with a place.

Yinok pa jay. I go into the house.

Napon ri ma Kawoq pa juyu'. Ma Kawoq arrives at the fields.

Ye'oqa ri tijoxela' pa tijob'äl.
The students arrive at the school.

Nqa ri jöb' pa ruwi' ri juyu'.
The rain falls on the hilltop.

When you ask where an intransitive action happens, or front the place for focus, Kaqchikel drops the trace particle wi (Chapter 5) right after the verb. Wi marks that a locative (or other adjunct) has been questioned or moved. Think of it as a placeholder saying "the place goes here":

¿Akuchi' yab'e wi?
Where are you going?

¿Akuchi' natin wi ri a Tojil? Where does Tojil bathe?

Pa Chiq'a'l yisamäj wi.
It is in Comalapa that I work.

Without wi, ¿Akuchi' yab'e? is still understood, but standard Kaqchikel wants the wi when a place is questioned or focused. You will meet wi again with relational nouns in Chapter 21 and with "whether" in Chapter 20.

10.14 Intransitives with company: rik'in#

To say who someone does something with, use the relational noun rik'in "with (him/her)" plus a noun. The source grammar notes that such an accompaniment phrase can optionally trigger verb agreement: it may be counted as part of the subject or not, which is why the verb is sometimes singular and sometimes plural. (Elsewhere the same grammar observes that -ik'in has been pressed into service as a plain "and" between nouns.) Both of these are correct:

Nb'e ri ma Kawoq pa k'ayb'äl rik'in ri rume'al.
Ma Kawoq goes to the market with his daughter. (verb singular: only Kawoq is the grammatical subject)

Yeb'e ri ma Kawoq pa k'ayb'äl rik'in ri rume'al.
Ma Kawoq and his daughter go to the market. (verb plural: the pair is counted together as the subject, and rik'in reads like "and")

The plural version treats "with his daughter" as part of a joint "they".

10.15 "Going to do something": yib'e + verb#

To express "I am going to (do something)", one natural pattern is the verb -b'e "go" followed by another verb, the two simply placed side by side (the source dialogues have, for instance, yib'e ninkanoj "I am going to look for it"):

Yib'e yinatin.
I am going to bathe. (literally "I go, I bathe")

Nb'e ntz'uye'.
He is going to sit down.

Yojb'e yojwa'.
We are going to eat.

Both verbs carry their own subject prefix, and they must match. This is the everyday way to talk about an intended action. (A tighter construction, where "go" fuses onto the second verb as b'e-, "go and do", belongs to Chapter 14 on directionals; you do not need it yet.)

10.16 Negation#

To negate an intransitive verb, wrap it in the frame man ... ta: man before the verb, ta after it (Chapter 3 introduced this for non-verbal predicates; it works the same on verbs).

Man yiwär ta. I do not sleep. / I am not sleeping.

Man nsamäj ta ri xta Ixchel wakami.
Ixchel is not working today.

Man ye'oqa ta ri wachib'il.
My friends are not arriving.

The verb itself keeps its normal shape inside the frame. Chapter 19 goes deeper into negation.

10.17 A second text: a Tojil's day#

Read this short text.

Ri a Tojil jun tijoxel. Aj Tz'olöj Ya' rija', po k'o pa Iximche' roma ri tijob'äl. Q'ij q'ij nyakatäj pa waqi' ramaj, natin, k'a ri' niwa'. Pa wuqu' ramaj nel pa rochoch; nb'iyin pa b'ey, man nb'e ta pa ch'ich'. Pa waqxaqi' ramaj nok pa tijob'äl. Pa tijob'äl ntz'ib'an, ntzijon kik'in ri rachib'il, jujun b'ey netz'an. Tiqaq'ij ntzolin pa rochoch. Jujun b'ey nuxlan, jujun b'ey nsamäj pa juyu'. Toq'a' nb'ixan; yalan nkikot töq nb'ixan. Man niwär ta jukumaj: pa julajuj ramaj niwär.

Tojil is a student. He is from Sololá, but he is in Tecpán because of school. Every day he gets up at six o'clock, bathes, then eats. At seven he leaves his house; he walks along the road, he does not go by car. At eight he enters the school. At school he writes, he chats with his friends, sometimes he plays. In the afternoon he returns to his house. Sometimes he rests, sometimes he works in the fields. In the evening he sings; he is very happy when he sings. He does not sleep early: at eleven o'clock he sleeps.

(Kik'in is rik'in with a plural possessor, "with them"; töq "when" is explained in Chapter 22.)

Patterns at a glance#

The intransitive incompletive template

INCOMPLETIVE (y- / n-) + Set B subject + stem

Set B before a consonant stem, and the marker

Set B before a vowel stem

Rule of thumb: y- everywhere except the zero 3s, where the marker is n-. Before a vowel stem the 1s/2s add -n/-t (yin-, yat-) and the 3p adds a glottal (ye'-).

Negation: man + verb + ta.

Place: after the verb, with pa / chi / a relational noun; question or focus a place with wi right after the verb.

Vocabulary#

These are the chapter's core verbs, the ones the corpus shows you will meet most often and the ones the exercises drill. Learn these first.

Reference: more intransitive verbs#

You met these in the sections above; they are here to browse and to look up, not to drill yet. Pick them up as you meet them in later chapters.

Usage and dialect notes#

• The dental stop in short verbs. The standard spelling is niwär, nib'e, but in speech many central speakers insert a t or d sound after the n in one-syllable verbs. Write the standard form; recognize the spoken one.
• The epenthetic i. Between n- and a consonant stem, a helping i appears in speech (niwär, nisamäj). In some printed texts it is omitted (nwär, nsamäj), especially before easy clusters. Both refer to the same form; we write the third person with n- and let the vowel be understood, except where clarity helps.
• yinatin: no apostrophe. The standard orthography writes yinatin, yatatin, yinok without an apostrophe between prefix and stem, and that is what this book does. Some texts write yin'atin; it is the same form. Only the third plural ye'- keeps a written glottal stop (ye'atin, ye'ok).
• -b'e versus -b'iyin versus -b'iyaj. -b'e is the plain "go (somewhere)"; -b'iyin is "walk, go on foot, function" (also said of a watch working); -b'iyaj is "go about, stroll, travel". For "I'm going to the market", use -b'e.
• -oqa versus -apon. Both mean "arrive", but -oqa is arriving here (toward the speaker) and -apon is arriving there (away from the speaker). The same here/there split runs through -pe / -b'e (come / go) and the directionals of Chapter 14.
• kikot or kiköt? The stem has a lax ö that tenses to o when nothing follows and in some inflected forms; you will see both -kikot and -kiköt in dictionaries. Either spelling of the verb is understood.
• A rapidity suffix in Comalapa and Poaquil. In Chiq'a'l (Comalapa, where a Tz'ikin teaches) and Pwaqil (San José Poaquil), verbs often carry a suffix -xta- "quickly". On an intransitive verb it is followed by -n: Xelxtan ri xtän "The girl left quickly" (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 216; the x- is the completive of Chapter 12, and the suffix combines with any of the three aspects). On a transitive verb (Chapter 11) the same suffix takes -j instead: xuloqxtaj "she quickly bought it". Outside these towns the suffix is much less common; recognize it, but you do not need to produce it.
• Set B is not just for verbs. The same Set B prefixes mark the subject of a non-verbal predicate (in tijonel "I am a teacher", Chapter 3) and the object of a transitive verb (yinatz'ët "you see me", Chapter 11). Recognizing them here will pay off in both those places.

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. Do not add a pronoun to every verb. Yiwär already means "I sleep"; rin yiwär is emphatic ("I sleep").
2. Do not put y- on the third singular: "yiwär" is "I sleep", never "she sleeps". The third singular is niwär / nwär, with no vowel prefix of its own.
3. Do not carry the pre-consonant shapes onto vowel stems: "yi-atin" is wrong; it is yinatin. Before a vowel, 1s and 2s are yin- and yat-.
4. Do not use the transitive root for "eat" when there is no object: "I eat" is yiwa', not a form of -tij.
5. Do not forget wi in a "where" question about an action: ¿Akuchi' yab'e wi?
6. Do not translate "I am going to bathe" with a word for "to"; just chain the verbs: yib'e yinatin.
7. Keep man and ta on either side of the verb, never together: man yiwär ta.

Looking back and ahead#

You have now met the engine of Kaqchikel verbs: the incompletive marker (y- with a subject prefix, n- with the zero third singular) and the Set B subject prefixes from Chapter 3 (Pronouns and "Being"). Chapter 11 (Transitive Verbs in the Incompletive) adds a second pronoun slot, the Set A subject, and shows the full object-subject matrix, but the aspect marker and the Set B slot you learned here carry straight over, now doing duty for the object. Chapter 12 (Talking About the Past and the Future) swaps the incompletive marker for the completive x- and the potential xt-/xk-, keeping everything else the same. And the -e' verbs previewed in 10.10 come back as the statives of Chapter 18 (Positionals), while the -an/-on verbs of 10.11 return as the antipassives of Chapter 17 (Voice).