Abstract

MARTINEZ CORRIPIO, Israel  and  ARAGON MENDOZA, Izumi Aiko. Pragmatic criteria that promote the agent omission of the passive voice of three Yucatec Mayan languages: Itzaj, Southern Lacandón, and Yucatecan. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2023, vol.10, e274.  Epub Sep 25, 2023. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v10i00.274.

We describe the pragmatic criteria that promote the agent omission of the passive voice of three Yucatec Mayan languages: Itzaj, Southern Lacandon, and Yucatec. The data come from various oral narratives of the Mayan languages that we analyze. We have considered the pragmatic approach of Givón (2001), that states some criteria that enable agent omission: unknown agent, anaphoric agent or cataphoric, and known agent due to specific tasks performed and by the listeners. Based on the above, we present three factors that permit agent omission in passive voice structures on Itzaj, Lacandon del sur, and Yucateco. First, the agent is a predictable and known entity by the speaker and the listener. Second, the agent has already been mentioned previously in the narrative. Finally, the agent is omitted because it will be called later in the speech.

Keywords : voice change; passive voice; agent omission; pragmatic criteria; Yucatec languages.

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