Ixil is a Mayan language. It is the primary language of the Ixil Community -- the three villages of San Juan Cotzal

San Juan Cotzal

San Juan Cotzal is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of El Quiché. San Juan Cotzal is part of the Ixil Community, along with Santa Maria Nebaj and San Gaspar Chajul....

, Santa Maria Nebaj

Santa Maria Nebaj

Santa Maria Nebaj is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of El Quiché. Santa Maria Nebaj is part of the Ixil Community, along with San Juan Cotzal and San Gaspar Chajul. Native residents speak the Mayan Ixil language.There is a nearby pre-Columbian archaeological site of the Maya...

, and San Gaspar Chajul -- in the highlands of Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

. Possibly it is three different languages.

Grammar

Ixil pronominal

Pronominal

Pronominal can be used either to describe something related to a pronoun or to mean a phrase that acts as a pronoun in the context of nominal. An example of the second case is, "I want that kind". The phrase "that kind" stands in for a noun phrase, or nominal, that can be deduced from context, and...

s are discerned between ergative

Ergative

The term ergative is used in grammar in three different meanings:* Ergative case* Ergative-absolutive language* Ergative verb...

 ones and absolutive ones. A notable feature of the language's grammar is its ambiguity in discerning reflexive

Reflexive pronoun

A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that is preceded by the noun, adjective, adverb or pronoun to which it refers within the same clause. In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent...

 from reciprocal pronoun

Reciprocal pronoun

The reciprocal pronouns in English are one another and each other. Together with the reflexive pronouns — myself, yourself, ourselves, yourselves, and others — they are classified as anaphors....

s.

See also

• Ergative-absolutive language
  Ergative-absolutive language
  An ergative–absolutive language is a language that treats the argument of an intransitive verb like the object of a transitive verb, but differently from the agent of a transitive verb.-Ergative vs...