Complementation and the Grammaticalization of the Progressive in Ch’olti’

Like other Lowland Mayan languages, the Ch’olan languages have incompletive or progressive constructions with mostly accusative person marking that are ultimately derived from complementation constructions. Based on a review of the general complementation strategies found in Ch’olti’, this paper identifies the complementation strategies that are reflected in the progressive construction of this language and discusses differences between the progressive construction and regular complementation constructions resulting from the grammaticalization of the progressive. It is argued that with transitive lexical verbs, the progressive construction in Ch’olti’ uses a different complementation strategy than the incompletive in the Western Ch’olan languages Ch’ol and Chontal, which indicates that these constructions are not cognate and that changes concomitant with the introduction of these constructions, like the introduction of (incipient) split ergativity, thus do not date back to Proto-Ch’olan.