Transitivity and Voice in Itzaj Maya: Minor Voices

Two minor detransitive voices are described in Itzaj Maya, a Yucatecan Mayan language of Guatemala: the agentless passive (AP) & the celeritive. Major voice categories of active (transitive), mediopassive (intransitive), antipassive, & passive are outlined to establish a continuum based on a grading of agent & patient properties of the grammatical subject in association with discourse highlighting. The formally similar AP & celeritive, marked by suffixes in the first voice slot of mediopassive formations, indicate loss of agent salience. The AP, which may occur with causatives, implies an irrelevant agent; whereas the celeritive, which does not occur with causatives, signals the noteworthiness of an agentless or inadvertent event. It is claimed that the celeritive highlights the importance of intentionality in motion; 44 transitive verb roots having celeritive derivations are listed. 23 References. J. Hitchcock