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UD for Kʼicheʼ

Tokenisation and Word Segmentation

• In general words are split on spaces.
• Status suffixes, a characteristic feature of Mayan languages are split from their verbal or directional hosts
• Contractions of preposition and relational noun are split (e.g. chqawach = chi + qawach)

Morphology

Tags

• Kʼicheʼ uses 15 out of the 17 universal tags, unused are X and SYM.
  • ADJ ADP ADV AUX CCONJ INTJ NOUN NUM PART PRON PROPN PUNCT SCONJ VERB
• Kʼicheʼ has at minimum 2 auxiliaries, tajin for the progressive aspect and ta(j) for irrealis.
• There are are several verbal nouns, which are annotated with VerbForm=Inf and a verbal adjective -inaq annotated with VerbForm=Part.
• There are two prepositions in Kʼicheʼ, chi and pa.

Features

Nouns

• Most nouns are not inflected for number, although animate nouns can be, in this case they are annotated with Number=Plur.
• There is a subset of nouns used relationally, these are called relational nouns and are used where adpositions would be used in other languages.
  • They are marked with the feature [NounType]()=Relat.
  • The lemmas are: ech, ukʼ, umal, wach, ibʼ, onojel, wiʼ, pam, ij, xeʼ, xoʼl, tukel, tzalaj, naqaj.
  • Relational nouns are also used for:
    • Reflexive, ibʼ
    • Introducing the agent in a passive, umal

Verbs

• Transitive verbs have polypersonal agreement which is indicated through layered features Person[obj], Number[obj], Person[subj], Number[subj].
• Finite verbs have Aspect but no Tense.
  • The imperfective or incompletive is annotated with Aspect=Imp.
  • The perfective or completive is annotated with Aspect=Perf.
• Incorporated movement is indicated through the feature Movement:
  • Movement away from is marked with Movement=Abl, this is the morph -eʼ-
  • Movement towards is marked with Movement=Lat, this is the morph -l-
• There are two principle valency changing processes: Passive and antipassive. Both produce verbs with only set B agreement.
  • In the passive, annotated with Voice=Pass, the object is promoted to subject and the subject is demoted to oblique.
  • In the antipassive, annotated with Voice=Antip, the subject agreement is maintained and the object is demoted to oblique.

Adverbs

• In Kʼicheʼ there is a class of words derived from intransitive verbs called directionals. These are classified as ADV and have the feature [AdvType]()=Dir

Syntax

Kʼicheʼ has ergative-absolutive alignment and verbs have polypersonal agreement. The subject of an intransitive verb takes a set B subject marker. The subject of a transitive verb takes a set A subject marker and a set B object marker. If the verb is passivised or antipassivised then the only remaining marker is a set B marker.

There are no copulas but there is an existential word kʼo meaning something like “existent”. Another non-verbal predicate is rajawaxik “necessary”.

Language-specific relations

• dep:ss Used for status suffixes
• dep:agr Used for clitic agreement markers
• advmod:neg Used for the negative markers ma(n) and na

Treebanks

There is 1 Kʼicheʼ UD treebank:

• Kʼicheʼ-IU

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