Chapter 4: Possession

Starting point#

Ana is visiting te Ixk'at in Tecpán. On the wall there is a family photograph.

Look at what happened to words you already knew. B'i' became rub'i', po't became rupo't, samaj became nusamaj, tz'i' became itz'i' and then qatz'i'. No separate word for "my" or "her" appeared; a prefix went on the front, and that prefix is the subject of this chapter. Four words are new: achib'äl "photograph", wachijil "my husband", nuk'ajol "my son" and wochoch "my house". Watch the last one, because "house" on its own is jay.

How it works#

4.1 Set A: the possessive prefixes#

Kaqchikel has no separate words for "my", "your", "his". Instead a prefix from Set A (the ergative set) is attached to the front of the noun. Each prefix has two shapes: one used before a consonant, one before a vowel.

Here is one possessed noun taken apart. The gloss 1sA means first person singular, Set A:

nu-wuj
1sA-book
"my book"

The full set:

(-ochoch is the possessed form of "house"; the unpossessed word is jay. See 4.3, behavior 6.)

Why two shapes? The prevocalic column, w-, aw-, r-, q-, iw-, k-, holds the core consonants of the prefixes, and before a vowel they attach directly. Before a consonant a bare w- or k- would make an awkward cluster (wwuj, kwuj), so a vowel is supplied, and in the first person w becomes n (nu-). The practical rule: a noun starting with a consonant takes the left column, a noun starting with a vowel the right.

Two more vowel-initial nouns to practise with: awän "cornfield" (wawän, awawän, rawän, qawän, iwawän, kawän) and ach'alal "family, relative" (wach'alal, awach'alal, rach'alal, qach'alal, iwach'alal, kach'alal). The 3s prefix is the one you will see most, because "the X of the Y" uses it (4.2), so get used to its two shapes: rutata' "his father" but rati't "his grandmother".

Possessed nouns, like any noun, can be subjects or predicates:

4.2 "The X of the Y": possessed noun first#

English says "the teacher's house" or "the house of the teacher". Kaqchikel has one order only: the possessed noun, carrying the 3rd person prefix, followed by the possessor.

r-ochoch ri tijonel
3sA-house the teacher
"the teacher's house"

The prefix agrees with the possessor, ru-/r- for one and ki-/k- for several, and it never drops, even with the possessor named right after it. Kaqchikel has no prefixless "teacher's", and ri tijonel rochoch, in English order, is simply wrong: the possessed thing comes first.

Chains work the same way, possessed noun after possessed noun, each pointing back to the next:

Read them from right to left to get the English: Tojil > his father > his house.

When the possessor is a pronoun you want to stress, put the independent pronoun after the noun: nupo't rin "my blouse (mine, not yours)", rochoch rija' "his house", qawän röj "our cornfield". The pronoun is optional; the prefix alone is the normal way.

The article ri usually introduces the possessor when it is a noun or a titled name (ri tijonel, ri ma Kawoq, ri xta Ixchel); when the possessor is a bare name, ri is frequently dropped: rochoch Tojil.

4.3 What possession does to the noun: six behaviors#

Most nouns simply take the prefix and nothing else happens, but a sizable group change shape. Grammarians sort nouns into classes by what possession does to them; the six behaviors below are what matter, because you will meet all of them in the first weeks.

Behavior 1: no change. The noun takes its prefix, full stop. This is the biggest class and the one new words join.

Notice the last one. Ch'ab'äl has a lax ä and keeps it, and so does achib'äl "picture": rachib'äl "his picture". Having a lax vowel does not by itself make a noun change; the next behavior is a matter of which words, not a rule of sound.

Behavior 2: lax vowel becomes tense. Some nouns with a lax vowel in the last syllable (ä ë ï ö ü) turn it tense (a e i o u) when possessed.

Which nouns do this has to be learned word by word, with two fully regular groups:

• Every instrument or place noun built with -b'äl (Chapter 7) tenses its vowel: tijob'äl "school" > qatijob'al "our school"; k'ayb'äl "market" > ruk'ayb'al. Words that merely happen to end in -b'äl, like ch'ab'äl, do not.
• Every action noun in -ik tenses: b'ixik "saying, pronunciation" > rub'ixik "its pronunciation".

The prefix is not what changes the vowel; the vowel is still final, where lax vowels are allowed. This tensing belongs to particular words and to these two suffixes. It is not the automatic tensing a suffix triggers (Chapter 1).

Behavior 3: the noun drops a suffix. This is the class that will surprise you most, and it is the class of the most intimate nouns: body parts and close kin. These words almost always occur possessed (you rarely talk about "a mother" or "a head" in the abstract; you talk about someone's). When they are cited alone, they carry a suffix, most often -aj, which marks them as detached from any owner. Possess them, and the suffix disappears.

te'-ej   >   nu-te'
mother-UNPOSS   1sA-mother
"a mother"   >   "my mother"

Body parts:

B'i'aj "name" belongs here too (nub'i' "my name"), and so do the kin terms of 4.4, though their detaching suffix is not always -aj: te'ej > nute' "my mother", but also -laxel, -lonel, -om and -ätz (nimalaxel > nunimal, achijilonel > wachijil). What they share is the behavior: the suffix is there when nobody owns the thing, and gone as soon as a Set A prefix arrives.

Behavior 4: the noun adds a suffix. A small group of nouns, mainly internal body parts, add -Vl (a vowel plus l) when the thing is possessed as an inherent part of the owner.

The same nouns can be possessed without the suffix, and then the meaning shifts to something you merely have: nub'aq "my bone" (one I found in the soup), nukik' "my blood" (a sample in a jar). So this is less a class of nouns than a way of possessing: the -Vl form says "intimately, definitionally mine". Other nouns borrow the pattern for a special sense: nuwuj "my book" but nuwujil "my papers, my ID document"; ruya' "his water" but ruya'al "its juice". Chapter 7 shows the same suffix making abstract nouns from adjectives.

Behavior 5: always possessed. Some nouns never appear without a prefix because their whole meaning is a relationship. These are the relational nouns: wichin "mine" (4.6), roma "because of him", rik'in "with her", ronojel "all of it", ruyon "by himself". Chapters 5 and 21 treat them.

Behavior 6: the root changes. Two or three everyday nouns have a different root when possessed:

Jay is the one you will use every day: "my house" is wochoch, never nujay.

4.4 The kinship system#

Kaqchikel kin terms sort relatives by criteria that English ignores: the sex of the speaker, relative age, and whether the link goes through a man or a woman. All of them are behavior-3 nouns (suffix dropped) or plain nouns, and all are normally possessed. Here is the core system, shown with "my", with the unpossessed form where there is one.

The logic, in three rules:

1. Siblings of your own sex are ranked by age: older -nimal, younger -chaq'. Siblings of the other sex are not ranked by age: a woman's brother is -xib'al whatever his age; a man's sister is -ana'.
2. Children are named by the parent's sex. A father says nuk'ajol "my son" and nume'al "my daughter". A mother says wal "my child" for either, adding ala' or xtän if she needs to say which.
3. Grandchildren likewise: a grandfather's -mam, a grandmother's -iy.

Applied to our family:

That last line shows possession chains doing real work: rutata' nutata' "my father's father", then the whole phrase is the subject of the predicate numama'.

The question "Who is he to you?" is ¿Achike rija'? or more pointedly ¿Achike awach'alal rija'? "What relative of yours is he?"; the answer is a possessed kin term: Nuxib'al. "My brother."

The "same-sex sibling" terms reflect households where several generations live close together and siblings grow up doing the same work side by side: older sisters teach younger sisters at the loom, older brothers take younger brothers to the milpa. Many people today also use Spanish terms at home; the Kaqchikel terms remain the ones used with elders and in formal speech.

4.5 Body parts in use#

Body parts are possessed whenever they are someone's. "Head" in a sentence is almost always nujolom, ajolom, rujolom, not jolomaj:

Height is said with -aqän "leg": nim raqän "he is tall" (literally "his leg is big"), ko'öl raqän "she is short". Body-part words also name other things, as in ruchi' jay "door", literally "the mouth of the house" (Chapter 7 shows the pattern), and several have turned into place words: ruwi' "its top", rij "its back", rupam "its inside", ruwäch "its front". With pa and chi they mean "on top of", "behind", "inside", "in front of"; that is Chapter 5.

4.6 "It belongs to me": -ichin#

To say that something is someone's without naming the thing again, Kaqchikel uses the relational noun -ichin "belonging to". It is a behavior-5 noun: it never appears without a Set A prefix. Because it begins with a vowel, the prefixes are the prevocalic ones.

The word is itself a predicate, so it takes the usual zero 3s subject and the usual negation:

The question word achojichin "whose?" is the question particle achoj- sitting in the Set A slot of -ichin.

Two ways to say the same thing, then:

-ichin also means "for (the benefit of)"; Chapter 21 takes that up.

4.7 Reading: Tz'ikin's family#

Read the text once for meaning, then a second time marking every Set A prefix and deciding whether it is before a consonant or a vowel. Two lines say "I have" the Kaqchikel way, by saying the thing exists: K'o jun wana' "I have a sister", literally "there is a my-sister", and Majun wati't "I have no grandmother". Chapter 5 teaches this pattern.

Rin Tz'ikin nub'i'. Rin in aj Iximche', po in tijonel pa Chiq'a'l. Nutata' Kawoq rub'i'; rija' tikonel. Nute' Ixk'at rub'i'; rija' ajkem. K'o jun wana', Ixchel rub'i'. Rija' k'ayinel pa k'ayb'äl. Jeb'ël rupo't; rusamaj nute'. Numama' rijiläj achin; k'o pa qochoch. Majun wati't. Ri a Tojil wachib'il; rija' aj Tz'olöj Ya'. Rutata' ri a Tojil chuqa' tikonel. Nim rochoch ri a Tojil; qochoch röj ko'öl. Re wuj re' wichin; la wuj la' richin ri a Tojil.

My name is Tz'ikin. I am from Tecpán, but I am a teacher in Comalapa. My father's name is Kawoq; he is a farmer. My mother's name is Ixk'at; she is a weaver. I have a sister; her name is Ixchel. She is a vendor at the market. Her blouse is beautiful; it is my mother's work. My grandfather is an old man; he is at our house. I have no grandmother. Tojil is my friend; he is from Sololá. Tojil's father is also a farmer. Tojil's house is big; our house is small. This book is mine; that book is Tojil's.

Patterns at a glance#

Set A prefixes (full table in 4.1 and Appendix A): nu-/w-, a-/aw-, ru-/r-, qa-/q-, i-/iw-, ki-/k-, the first shape before a consonant, the second before a vowel.

What happens to the noun

Word order

Kin terms (1s): nute', nutata', wati't, numama', nunimal, nuchaq', nuxib'al (woman's brother), wana' (man's sister), nuk'ajol, nume'al (man's children), wal (woman's child), wixjayil, wachijil, wali', nuji', numam, wiy, nuch'ititata', nuch'itite', wach'alal.

Vocabulary#

Usage and dialect notes#

• Nasal endings. Possessed forms ending in m (nupam, nutza'm, nutele'm) are pronounced with n in many towns (San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Santa María de Jesús) and with a velar nasal in Tecpán and Comalapa. Write m and say what you hear locally; the spelling pronunciation is itself spreading from the classroom (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, p. 245).
• Wex and ana'. The suffixed forms wexaj "pants" and ana'laxel "man's sister" survive in some towns and in older speech; most people now use wex and ana' as the bare words, so wex is moving to behavior 1 (nuwex). Where the old form survives it can carry real meaning: in communities that still weave pants at home, hand-woven pants remain wexaj while store-bought ones are plain wex, and around Lake Atitlán a young woman weaves a wexaj for her intended; by accepting it, and calling it nuwex from then on, he accepts the engagement (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft, pp. 250-251).
• Plural of kin. A plural possessor takes ki-/k-: kite' "their mother", kach'alal "their family". A plural possessed kin noun usually takes no plural suffix: in e k'o oxi' nuchaq' "I have three younger siblings" the numeral carries the plurality.
• Me'al / mi'al. "Daughter (of a man)" is nume'al in some towns and numi'al in others.
• Set A or Set B on a vowel-initial word. Wachib'il "my friend" (Set A w-) is not in achib'il "I am a friend" (Set B in). Decide which one you mean before you speak.

Looking back and ahead#

Chapter 3 gave you Set B, the markers for "who is"; this chapter gave you Set A, the markers for "whose". Chapter 5 puts k'o together with possessed nouns to say "there is", "is at" and "has", and in Chapter 11 the same Set A prefixes return on transitive verbs as subject markers.