Code: Select all
Presentative
He’ … =a’ Here it is
He’ … =o’ There it is
He’l … -be’ There it comes (audible), Right here/there
Adverbial
Te’ … =a’ Here
Te’ … =o’ There
Ti’ … =i’ There (anaphoric)
Way … =e’ (In) here
Tol … =o’ (Out) there
Determiner / adnominal
Le … =a’ This
Le … =o’ That
Le … =e’ As for that one, topical
(Note that le seems to be more or less a definite article, so any common unpossessed definite NP triggers one of these clause final particles)
He’l hun-p’iit ts’aak=a’!
Presentative one-bit cure=deictic1
“Here’s some medicine!”
Kaa=h-ook le=x-chuup chak u=nook=o’
kaa=PRV-enter(B3SG) DET=F-female red(B3SG) 3=garment=deictic2
“And then the woman dressed in red entered…”
It also seems to be true, although it’s hard to find a detailed description of this phenomenon, that these clause final clitics don’t stack, so if multiple triggers for a deictic particle are present in the clause then only one will control the deictic clausal enclitic. E.g. in the following there is only one enclitic, not two:
Ts’a’ le=ba’l te’l=o’!
Give/put(B3SG) DET=thing there=deictic2
Both the determiner le and the adverbial te’/te’l are triggers for clause final deictics, but only one =o’ surfaces. The domain for this one deictic rule includes the pre-verbal focus, if applicable, and all post-verbal material, but excludes a dislocated/fronted topic NP, which takes its own deictic enclitic. Some languages have a special enclitic mostly used to mark fronted topics, like =e' in Yucatec.
Some sources, e.g. Routledge’s The Mayan Languages, briefly describe this as a kind of circumfixal NP definite marking, but this is clearly wrong from descriptions elsewhere (e.g. Demonstratives in Cross-Linguistic Perspective) which make clear that (i) the second element is always placed clause finally even if that doesn’t coincide with the end of the NP, and (ii) elements other definite articles trigger and require the final deictic enclitics.
Anyway, I just thought this was interestingly different enough that others might want to make use of it.