Persian to Yucatec Maya: whose possession, and in what relationship?
Persian ownership can identify a relation without classifying it
Roberts describes Persian possession through ezafe with a personal pronoun or through attached pronominal clitics. These resources identify an owner, but a following Yucatec Maya expression may need more information about how that owner relates to the item. A Persian reference to my meal can concern what the speaker prepared, what they will eat or what they received. Ownership wording alone does not necessarily choose among those readings.
The distinction becomes visible in a story about gifts. Roberts records be yekdigar hedye dād-and, they gave each other gifts, where the reciprocal relationship belongs to the event. When the next Persian sentence refers to my gift, its intended relation may depend on whether the speaker gave or received the object. Carry that event information forward. Keeping the same person reference is insufficient if the target expression accidentally reverses the relation between that person and the item.
Yucatec classifiers can identify the owner’s particular connection
Lehmann’s fieldwork-based study contrasts in sìih chamal, the cigarette I gave away, with in matan chamal, the cigarette I received. Both identify a first-person relation, yet the classifier specifies a different history of transfer. This is a concrete reason not to translate a Persian possessive as a single reusable sequence independent of the preceding giving event. The item can be related to a person without being currently held by that person.
The study also distinguishes a meal intended for somebody’s consumption from a meal made by somebody. A compliment directed to the cook can consequently identify the cook through a different classifier from the diner’s expression. In translating a Persian meal invitation or response, establish which role the possessive highlights. Lehmann treats classifiers as expressing relationships, not merely as labels for kinds of objects. The food itself need not change for a different participant’s connection to it to become the relevant meaning.
Family terms cannot simply lose an owner marker
Andrade’s grammar, based on earlier fieldwork and presented in its own transcription, describes -tsil with kinship terms lacking a possessive pronoun. Its le kiktsiloobo’ refers to the sisters. This illustrates a separate problem from choosing the relationship of an owner to a meal: removing a person reference from a Yucatec kinship expression can involve changing the noun’s form. A Persian bare kinship term should therefore not be handled merely by deleting a target possessive element from a previously translated family phrase.
Andrade also records -tsil in words outside kinship, including expressions associated with respect and expressions where that evaluative sense is absent. Its appearance is not a universal signal that the Persian source was unusually polite. Distinguish the construction in which a family relation is named without a specified possessor from a lexical expression carrying another interpretation. Because Andrade’s transcription and fieldwork period differ from contemporary writing conventions, use the attested form to understand this structural contrast rather than treating its spelling as a universal modern production template.
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