This thesis is a heterogeneous study of the Petalcingo variant of the Tzeltal, a Mayan language. The first chapter presents a grammatical sketch of the language based on nine months of fieldwork in Petalcingo. The chapters that follow analyze some of the grammatical features of this language in more detail. The common thread uniting the diverse topics is the person marking in verbal and nominal paradigms. A nominal account of Tzeltal participles is offered, contra previous analyses which claimed that these participles are infinitive. The proposal offered herein seeks to explicate the distribution of the preposition in combination with these participles, as well as optional appearance of ergative markers that cross-reference the patient argument in a maximally non-disjunctive way. In the latter part of this thesis, a clitic theory of Set A (ergative/possessive) is advanced, and some options for explaining the identity of ergative and possessive markings are examined.
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