Wh -questions and predication in Mayan

Abstract

This paper examines the syntax of quantificational expressions in Chuj, a Mayan language spoken primarily in Guatemala and Mexico. Building on Royer, Buenrostro & Jenks (2026), we argue that Chuj quantifiers fall into two distinct syntactic categories. Some quantifiers function exclusively as determiners , while others belong to the well-established category of nonverbal predicates (Grinevald & Peake 2012, Coon 2016, Armstrong 2017, Mateo Toledo 2023). This syntactic split is supported by a range of diagnostics, which we systematically apply to another type of quantifier: wh -items. The results indicate that Chuj wh -items should be treated exclusively as nonverbal predicates, leading us to reanalyze wh -questions as constructions that necessarily involve pseudoclefts. Our novel approach challenges the prevailing view in the Mayanist literature, which has treated wh -items as components of the extended nominal domain, and supports a less common one instead (Zavala 1992, Tonhauser 2003, 2007). We demonstrate that our proposal also derives three (seemingly idiosyncratic) properties of Mayan wh -questions in a unified and theoretically appealing way: (i) the apparent ban on wh - in situ (Caponigro, Torrence & Zavala Maldonado 2021, Coon, Baier & Levin 2021), (ii) the ban on multiple wh -questions (Caponigro, Torrence & Zavala Maldonado 2021, Coon, Baier & Levin 2021), and (iii) the phenomenon known as pied-piping with inversion (Smith-Stark 1988, Aissen 1996).