Chapter 21: Relational Nouns in Depth

Starting point#

In the kitchen (rute' q'aq', literally "the fire's mother") of te Ixk'at's house. Ana is helping to prepare the midday meal.

IXK'AT: Ana, tak'ama' pe ri xot. K'o chi ruxe' ri ch'atal.
Ana, bring the griddle. It's under the table.

ANA: ¿Chi ruxe' ri ch'atal? Majun xot chi ri'. Xa xe ri b'ojo'y k'o.
Under the table? There's no griddle there. Only the pot is there.

IXK'AT: Tatzu' chrij ri b'ojo'y.
Look behind the pot.

ANA: ¡Ja'! Wawe' k'o. ¿Akuchi' ninya' wi?
Yes! Here it is. Where do I put it?

IXK'AT: Taya' pa ruwi' ri q'aq'. K'a ri' taya' ri kinäq' chupam ri b'ojo'y.
Put it on the fire. Then put the beans in the pot.

ANA: ¿La ninb'än ri wäy awik'in?
Shall I make the tortillas with you?

IXK'AT: Ja'. Xtink'üt chawe, roma man awetaman ta. Katz'uye' chi nuxikin.
Yes. I'll show you, because you don't know how. Sit beside me.

ANA: Matyöx chawe. Chwa'q ninb'än ta nuway nuyon.
Thank you. Tomorrow I would like to make my tortillas by myself.

IXK'AT: Ütz k'a. Ri a Tz'ikin xub'ij chwe chi nqa chawäch ri wäy.
Good. Tz'ikin told me that you like tortillas.

Underline the small words that tell you where and for whom: chi ruxe' "under it", chrij "behind it", pa ruwi' "on top of it", chupam "inside it", awik'in "with you", chawe "to you", chi nuxikin "beside me", chwe "to me", chawäch "before your face", nuyon "by myself", roma "because". Every one of them contains a Set A (ergative) prefix, the same prefix that marks possession on nupo't "my blouse". That is the whole secret of this chapter.

How it works#

What a relational noun is#

English has prepositions, small invariable words that sit before a noun: with me, behind the house, for you. Kaqchikel has only two words that behave that way, pa "in, at, on, to" and chi "at, to, by". Everything else that English does with a preposition, Kaqchikel does with a relational noun: a noun that is always possessed and whose possessor is the thing you would put after the English preposition.

Take "on top of the table". The Kaqchikel is pa ruwi' ri ch'atal, word for word "in its-top the table". The noun -wi' means "top, head, hair"; ru- is the third-person Set A prefix "its"; ri ch'atal "the table" is the possessor, placed after the possessed noun exactly as in rochoch ri tijonel "the house of the teacher" (Chapter 4). English actually does this too, in a few fossilized phrases: on behalf of, in front of, by means of, for the sake of all have a noun in the middle. Kaqchikel simply does it everywhere, and marks the "of" by possession instead of a separate word.

pa ru-wi' ri ch'atal
in 3sA-top the table
"on top of the table"

Because they are nouns, relational nouns inflect like nouns. Three consequences follow:

1. They take the full set of Set A prefixes: wik'in "with me", awik'in "with you", rik'in "with him/her/it", qik'in "with us", iwik'in "with you all", kik'in "with them". There is no separate word "with"; the person is built in.
2. When the possessor is a full noun phrase, it follows: rik'in ri nute' "with my mother", literally "with-her my mother". The third-person prefix stays even though the noun is present, just as in rochoch ri tijonel.
3. They can be questioned with the interrogative prefix achoj/achoq in place of Set A (achoj ik'in "with whom?", Chapter 20), negated inside the man ... ta frame (Chapter 19), and fronted for focus, in which case the verb takes the trace particle wi (Chapter 5).

Some relational nouns are "pure": -ichin, -oma, -ik'in, -e, -i' never occur without a prefix and have no other life as ordinary nouns. Others are body-part or location nouns that double as relational nouns: -wi' "top, hair", -pam "stomach, inside", -ij "back", -wäch "face", -xikin "ear, side", -chi' "mouth, edge", -xe' "base, root", -tza'n / -tza'm "nose, tip", -aqän "leg, foot". Think of "the stomach of the pot" for "inside the pot" and the system becomes memorable.

The two prepositions, pa and chi, and how they fuse#

Pa means "in, at, on, to" in a general way and takes a plain noun: pa jay "in the house, at home", pa k'ayb'äl "at/to the market", pa Iximche' "in Tecpán", pa b'ey "on the road". Chi means "at, to, by" and is used with place names and set phrases (chi ri' "there", chi la' "over there") and, above all, in front of relational nouns. Which preposition a given relational noun prefers is a matter of habit: pa ruwi' "on top of" but chi ruxe' "under", chi rij "behind", chi rupam "inside".

When chi stands before a relational noun beginning with a Set A prefix, the two usually fuse in speech and often in writing. The vowel of chi drops before a vowel-initial prefix, and chi + ru- becomes chu-:

The unfused spellings (chi re, chi ruwäch, chi rij, chi rupam, chi ruxe', chi ruxikin) are equally correct and are common in teaching materials; our main source writes most of them as two words. In this book you will see both; learn to recognize them as the same thing. Before a consonant-initial prefix with a full vowel (nu-, qa-, ki-) the preposition normally stays separate: chi nuwäch "in front of me", chi qawäch "in front of us", chi kiwäch "in front of them", chi nuxikin "beside me".

Fused spellings such as chuxe' "under it", chuxkin "beside it", and chirij "behind it" circulate in other materials; they follow the same rule and mean the same as chi ruxe', chi ruxikin, chrij. You will also meet xuxe' "under it, before it" in texts, another contracted spelling of the same phrase.

One more small preposition appears in a single very common phrase: xe "at the base of, down at", in xe ruxikin or xe ruxkin "beside it" (literally "at its ear/side"), as in Katz'uye' xe nuxikin "Sit beside me." Treat xe ruxikin and chi ruxikin as synonyms.

The three grammatical workhorses: -ichin, -oma, -ik'in#

These three are the most frequent relational nouns and the most abstract. They are bound: they never appear without a Set A prefix or the question prefix achoj. Here is one form taken apart:

aw-ik'in
2sA-with
"with you"

The full set:

Notice the prefix shapes: all three begin with a vowel, so the Set A prefixes are the prevocalic ones (w-, aw-, r-, q-, iw-, k-), the same as on wochoch "my house".

-ichin marks possession and benefit. It answers "whose?" and "for whom?":

Two further jobs of -ichin. It re-introduces the object of an antipassive verb (Chapter 17), since the antipassive has no room for an object in the verb word: Jantape' nto'on kichin ri rutijoxela' ri a Tz'ikin. "Tz'ikin is always helping his students." And richin links clauses as "so that, in order to": Yiwa' richin man yikäm ta. "I eat so that I won't die." With the irrealis ta it expresses a hoped-for purpose: Xinlöq' jun xajab' richin ta nakusaj pa tijob'äl. "I bought sandals for you to wear at school."

-oma marks cause, reason, motivation, the person for whose sake something is done, and the agent of a passive verb. Its third-person form roma is the ordinary word "because":

The phrase roma ri' "because of that, therefore" is a common sentence opener in narrative.

-ik'in marks accompaniment, "with", and by extension the instrument and the place "at someone's (house, stall)":

A small grammatical point: a companion phrase with -ik'in may or may not be counted into the verb's subject. You can say Xib'e rik'in nute' "I went with my mother" (singular subject) or Xojb'e rik'in nute' "We went, (I) with my mother" (plural subject). Both are heard. And because "X with Y" is so close to "X and Y", rik'in is one of the ways Kaqchikel joins nouns; Chapter 22 returns to this.

-e: to and for a recipient#

The relational noun -e marks the person to whom something is given, said, shown, or sent. It always fuses with chi. Because the stem is a single vowel, the forms are short and must be learned as a set:

Verbs of giving, saying, showing, asking and thanking take their recipient with -e: -ya' chre "give to", -b'ij chre "tell", -k'üt chre "show", -sipaj chre "give as a gift to", -tzijoj chre "tell (a story) to", -k'utuj chre "ask (someone)", -matyoxij chre "thank (someone)". "Please" in everyday speech is tab'ana' utzil and the full request "do me a favor" is tab'ana' jun utzil chwe.

Do not confuse chre "to him" with richin "for him / his". Xinya' ri wuj chre "I gave him the book" (he received it); xinlöq' ri wuj richin "I bought the book for him" (for his benefit) or "I bought his book".

The locatives: body parts that became places#

Here is the inventory of location relational nouns. Each row shows the ordinary noun the relational noun comes from; seeing the body part helps you remember the preposition.

Examples:

The extended meanings are where learners get the most value:

In all of these the possessor of the relational noun is the thing you would put after the English preposition: chi nuwäch "before MY face", chrij ri jay "behind THE HOUSE". When the possessor is a pronoun, it is simply the prefix (chi awäch "in front of you", chwij "behind me", pa qawi' "on top of us").

-i': myself, yourself, each other#

The relational noun -i' means "self". A transitive verb whose object is the same person as its subject takes a third-person singular object (zero) in the verb and -i' with the matching Set A prefix after it. That is how Kaqchikel builds reflexives ("I see myself") and reciprocals ("they see each other"):

n-Ø-in-tz'ët w-i'
INCOMPL-3sB-1sA-see 1sA-self
"I see myself"

Look at the verb: it is always n-Ø-A-tz'ët, with a zero third-person object, even when the subject is "I". The reflexive meaning lives in wi'/awi'/ri'/qi'/iwi'/ki', not in the verb.

Several common verbs are built with -i' and would be translated by an English intransitive:

With plural subjects, context decides between "ourselves" and "each other"; xkitz'ët ki' can be "they saw themselves (in the mirror)" or "they saw each other".

One thing -i' cannot do is turn a noun into a verb: there is no verb "to sibling" or "to friend". To say "we are siblings, we are kin", use a noun as the predicate, exactly as Chapter 3 taught: Öj ach'alal. "We are family."

-onojel "all of" and -yon "alone, by oneself"#

Two more nouns take Set A and behave like the relational nouns, though their meaning is quantity rather than relation.

Note that -onojel is vowel-initial and takes w-, aw-, r-, while -yon begins with a consonant and takes nu-, a-, ru-, exactly as the possession rule predicts.

Relational nouns in the sentence#

Position. A relational noun phrase normally follows the verb and its core arguments: Xinya' ri wuj chre. "I gave him the book." Xib'e pa k'ayb'äl rik'in nute'. "I went to the market with my mother." Two of them can co-occur: Xinlöq' jun po't richin nute' rik'in ri xta Ixchel. "I bought a blouse for my mother from Ixchel."

Fronting and wi. When a location or companion phrase is moved to the front for emphasis, the verb takes the trace particle wi:

The same wi appears in questions with akuchi' and achoj ik'in (Chapter 20).

Negation. The man ... ta frame may close around the relational noun alone or around the whole phrase (Chapter 19): man pa ruwi' ta ri ch'atal / man pa ruwi' ri ch'atal ta "not on the table".

Clause linking. Three relational nouns have grown into conjunctions:

The -uma and -uk'in variants: a note on history and spelling#

In many towns, especially around Lake Atitlán, you will hear ruma for roma and ruk'in, awuk'in for rik'in, awik'in. The u forms are the older ones; K'iche' keeps them, and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Kaqchikel documents show both spellings, sometimes in the same text. In the 1990s a proposal was made to adopt the u forms as the written standard, partly to align Kaqchikel writing with K'iche', and for some years official publications used them. In the early 2000s the policy shifted toward writing as people speak, and -oma / -ik'in, the forms of the central towns this book follows, have predominated in print since. Read both without blinking; write the o/i forms unless you are in an u community.

Reading: Pa rute' q'aq'#

A short text describing the kitchen after the dialogue.

Pa rute' q'aq' ri te Ixk'at k'o jun ch'atal chuqa' ka'i' ch'akät. Pa ruwi' ri ch'atal k'o ixim chuqa' jun chakäch. Chupam ri chakäch k'o ichaj. Ri xot k'o pa ruwi' ri q'aq', chuqa' ri b'ojo'y k'o chi ruxikin ri xot. Chi ruxe' ri ch'atal k'o jun mes; nwär. Ri Ana tz'uyül chi ruxikin ri te Ixk'at, chuqa' ri te Ixk'at nuk'üt chre achike rub'eyal nb'an ri wäy. Ri Ana nub'än ri wäy rik'in ri te Ixk'at, man ruyon ta. Chwa'q xtub'än ruyon, richin ta nqa chi kiwäch ri ma Kawoq chuqa' ri a Tz'ikin.

In Ixk'at's kitchen there is a table and two chairs. On the table there is corn and a basket. Inside the basket there are greens. The griddle is on the fire, and the pot is beside the griddle. Under the table there is a cat; it is sleeping. Ana is sitting beside Ixk'at, and Ixk'at is showing her how tortillas are made. Ana makes the tortillas with Ixk'at, not by herself. Tomorrow she will make them by herself, so that (hopefully) Kawoq and Tz'ikin like them.

Patterns at a glance#

The pure relational nouns

The locatives (third person singular)

With other persons

Quantity words with Set A

Fusion of chi

Vocabulary#

Usage and dialect notes#

• Two spellings, one word. Chi re and chre, chi ruwäch and chuwäch/chwäch, chi rij and chrij, chi rupam and chupam are the same forms written with or without fusion. Texts from different towns and decades vary. When you write, be consistent within a text.
• chi rupan with final n is how the central dialects often say chi rupam; it is the same word (the final m of pam becomes n at the end of a word in these towns, as in nutza'n for nutza'm "my nose").
• chike ~ chke ~ chi ke. "To them" is written all three ways; the authors' newer companion volume (Kik'aslemal ri Kaqchikela', draft) writes the contracted chke or two-word chi ke almost everywhere. This book standardizes on chike; read all three as the same word.
• -oma vs -uma, -ik'in vs -uk'in. Lake Atitlán towns and K'iche'-influenced speech keep the u; Tecpán, Comalapa, Patzún and most of the central area use o/i. Both are correct; follow your community.
• xe ruxkin ~ xe ruxikin ~ chi ruxikin all mean "beside". The shortened ruxkin is a spoken reduction.
• "with" is not "and", quite. Rik'in can join nouns ("Kawoq with Ixk'at went"), and agreement may be singular or plural; Chapter 22 discusses the alternatives (chuqa', plain juxtaposition).
• chwe is not "for me". Use chwe for a recipient (give, say, show, ask), wichin for a beneficiary or owner, woma for a cause ("because of me, thanks to me").

Pitfalls for English speakers

1. Leaving out the Set A prefix: ik'in or oma on their own do not exist. Even when the possessor noun follows, the prefix stays: rik'in ri nute', not ik'in nute'.
2. Using pa for everything: pa is fine with bare place nouns (pa jay, pa tinamit), but "on the table", "under the chair", "behind the house" need the relational noun (pa ruwi' ri ch'atal, chi ruxe' ri ch'akät, chrij ri jay).
3. Making the reflexive verb intransitive: the verb keeps its Set A subject prefix and a zero object; the "self" is the following wi'/awi'/ri'. So "I was afraid" is xinxib'ij wi', not xixib'ij.
4. Confusing chwe (recipient) with wichin (beneficiary/owner): "give it to me" is taya' chwe; "buy it for me" is taloq'o' wichin.
5. Forgetting the trace wi when a relational phrase is fronted: Pa ruwi' ri ch'atal k'o wi, not Pa ruwi' ri ch'atal k'o.
6. Translating "because" with anything but roma: "because I'm hungry" is roma yinüm; the English word order "I'm hungry, that's why" is yinüm, roma ri' ....

Looking back and ahead#

This chapter rests on the possessive prefixes of Chapter 4 and the location statements of Chapter 5, and it fills in the grammar behind the achoj questions of Chapter 20 and the negation scope of Chapter 19. The reflexive -i' builds on the transitive verb template of Chapter 11, and roma as the agent of a passive looks back to Chapter 17. Chapter 22 takes roma, richin, and rik'in the rest of the way into their lives as conjunctions and sets them beside chi, toq, and wi.