Verbs and shapes in (Zinacantec) Tzotzil: the case of “insert”

Surface verb stems in Zinacantec Tzotzil, a Mayan language spoken in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, derive from roots which can be partitioned into formal types on the basis of derivational possibilities. These formal types, in turn, represent unmarked vehicles for expressing certain schematic semantic domains. The current work is part of an attempt to characterize the resources for describing space in Tzotzil.1 In such a project one is quickly led to verbs. Verb roots provide much of the semantic raw material for verbal virtuosity, offering up precisely the mot juste for everything from a precise locative descriptor to a scathing epithet. The semantic specificity of verb roots in Tzotzil, and neighboring Tzeltal, was a prime motivation for early studies of “native categorization,” exemplified by Berlin’s classic works on Tzeltal verbs of eating (Berlin 1967) and numeral classifiers (Berlin 1968). Tzotzil verbs that are especially rich in characterizing such apparently spatial notions as, among others, shape, relative position, contact, support, containment, and manner of motion.