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Dictionary Of The Maya Language: As Spoken in Hocaba Yucatan
... Entre las resonantes tenemos nasales, laterales y aproximantes; y entre las obstruyentes encontramos fricativas, una implosiva, oclusivas y africadas. En estas dos últimas vemos que existe un contraste entre sordas y sordas glotalizadas (Fisher 1973;Fox 1978;Bricker y Po'ot 1981;Bricker et al. 1998;Sobrino Gómez 2015a, 2015b Este idioma posee cinco timbres vocálicos que son contrastivos, aunque existen otros rasgos en las vocales que también son contrastivos entre sí, como son la duración, el estado glótico y la tonalidad, como se muestra en la tabla 2. La mayoría de las investigaciones recientes sobre esta lengua hace la distinción entre vocales breves, vocales largas y vocales rearticuladas y se muestra un acuerdo en que las vocales largas son las únicas que presentan un contraste entre tono alto y tono bajo (Fisher 1973;Fox 1978;Bricker y Po'ot 1981;Bricker et al. 1998;Bennett 2002;Frazier 2011;Sobrino Gómez 2012, 2015a, 2015b. ...
... Entre las resonantes tenemos nasales, laterales y aproximantes; y entre las obstruyentes encontramos fricativas, una implosiva, oclusivas y africadas. En estas dos últimas vemos que existe un contraste entre sordas y sordas glotalizadas (Fisher 1973;Fox 1978;Bricker y Po'ot 1981;Bricker et al. 1998;Sobrino Gómez 2015a, 2015b Este idioma posee cinco timbres vocálicos que son contrastivos, aunque existen otros rasgos en las vocales que también son contrastivos entre sí, como son la duración, el estado glótico y la tonalidad, como se muestra en la tabla 2. La mayoría de las investigaciones recientes sobre esta lengua hace la distinción entre vocales breves, vocales largas y vocales rearticuladas y se muestra un acuerdo en que las vocales largas son las únicas que presentan un contraste entre tono alto y tono bajo (Fisher 1973;Fox 1978;Bricker y Po'ot 1981;Bricker et al. 1998;Bennett 2002;Frazier 2011;Sobrino Gómez 2012, 2015a, 2015b. ...
... En maya yucateco encontramos palabras monosilábicas, bisilábicas, trisilábicas y tetrasilábicas. En general las palabras de más de dos sílabas suelen corresponder a formas compuestas y a morfología verbal compleja (Bricker y Po'ot 1981;Bricker et al. 1998). De cualquier manera, es posible determinar los tipos de sílaba frecuentes en el idioma y algunas restricciones fonotácticas. ...
This paper presents an examination of the theory of the word and lexicon as proposed in Lara (2004), and developed in Lara (2006). This theory shall be subjected to empirical verification since its criteria and methods will be applied to Yucatec Maya in order to determine the word as a linguistic unit in this language. First, the arguments of the autor about why a theory of the word is necessary are exposed, including a summary of the theory and its methods. Subsequently, criteria for determinig this linguistic unit will be applied to Yucatec Maya, according to the suggested methods of the theory. I consider this work to be a first approximation in determining this unit of analysis for this language.
... The colonial-era writing practices are described thoroughly in Shigeto (2011), and a variant of this orthographic approach is also used in Bolles and Bolles (2001). Many linguistic resources for Maya also use an orthography inspired by the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet (Bricker et al., 1998;Blair and Vermont-Salas, 1965), (e.g. using P for the glottal stop). Today, the commonly (though by no means unanimously) adopted "contemporary orthography" is laid out in the publication Normas de Escritura Para la Lengua Maya (SEP & INALI, 2014). ...
... An important linguistic property of Maya worth mentioning at the outset is that it does not have tenses, per se. Instead, it inflects verbs for aspect to reflect whether a given action has been completed, or how long ago it began (Bricker et al., 1998). Details about this system are explored in greater depth in section 4.2. ...
... These are omitted from the template above since they are typically written as separate orthographic words, and thus are treated as such in our analyzer. On the right side, there can also be a "terminal enclitic" (Bricker et al., 1998) corresponding to a previous part of the phrase, such as a negation or locative particle (-i). ...
... For example, there is geographic and temporal variation in the use of positional verb markers -wan and -laj (Hruby & Child 2004;Kaufman & Norman 1984;Lacadena & Wichmann 2006; Mora-Marín with Wiesen 2019), as well as with the prepositions ti and ta (Macri 1986(Macri , 2021, the variants of the prevocalic third person ergative markers y-and uy-(Mora-Marín with Wiesen 2019), and the variants of the abstractive suffix -(VV)l-iil/-(VV)l-aal and -(VV)l-eel (Mora-Marín with Wiesen 2019). Further, though Mayan hieroglyphic texts were primarily written in some form of Ch'olan or pre-Ch'olan, numerous scholars have noted the presence of Yucatecan language traits from Yucatecan speaking scribes (Bricker 1986;Justeson et al. 1985;Justeson & Fox 1989;Lacadena 1997;Lacadena & Wichmann 2002Vail 2000;Voss 2018;Wald 2004). ...
... Obliques could be expressed by prepositions or relational nouns (Law & Stuart 2017:135;Mora-Marín 2001, 2004a. The language of Mayan hieroglyphic writing exhibits a VOA (verb object agent) and VS (verb subject) word order, though focused or topicalized orders of AVO and OVA also occur (Bricker 1986;Law & Stuart 2017:135;Mora-Marín 2009a:124;Schele 1982). Non-verbal predicates also occur in the initial position as well (Bricker 1986;Law & Stuart 2017: 134 (Kaufman & Norman 1984). ...
... The language of Mayan hieroglyphic writing exhibits a VOA (verb object agent) and VS (verb subject) word order, though focused or topicalized orders of AVO and OVA also occur (Bricker 1986;Law & Stuart 2017:135;Mora-Marín 2009a:124;Schele 1982). Non-verbal predicates also occur in the initial position as well (Bricker 1986;Law & Stuart 2017: 134 (Kaufman & Norman 1984). A key feature of the phonemic inventory, or sound system, was a contrast between plain stops and affricatives and glottalized ones (Law & Start 2017:139) -the glottalized stops including both implosive b' and ejectives. ...
Recent research on the discursive and rhetorical forms of Mayan hieroglyphic texts has demonstrated how language and writing were used to frame, not just represent, Pre-Columbian Mayan history. Research on the role of metaphor in this framing has only just begun, and despite the well-known multimodal character of Mayan hieroglyphic texts, research on the role of metaphors in pictorial images has been even more limited. Previous research has not fully documented metaphor variation, particularly as it materializes across different modalities, media, places, and times. Doing so will allow for more subtle and elaborate interpretations of metaphor use and meaning in these texts, particularly its role in historical and political framing.
This study adopts a conceptual definition of metaphor, which views metaphor as the use of one semantic domain to provide semantic structure to another. This definition can explain continuities of meaning across different modalities, media, times, and places. This contrasts with other approaches that limit metaphor to set rhetorical forms and thus cannot capture how metaphor might vary across usages. A mixed-methods approach is used that integrates corpus linguistics to account for variation through statistical analysis, and discourse analysis to account for continuity of use through examination of the communicative context.
This study examines the political metaphor RULERS ARE TREES, which uses well-known plant symbolism to describe and depict pre-Columbian Mayan elites. It documents (1) the forms this metaphor takes when materialized in the different modalities of writing and pictorial images, (2) how these modalities affect the semantic structure of the metaphor, (3) how this single metaphor materialized across the different media of monumental architecture, portable objects, and codices, across different places or polities, and times by different historical actors, and (4) how this variation and its socio-political and historical context of use ultimately led the metaphor to change. This study focuses on variation from the Early (250 -599 A.D.) to Late Classic (600-900/1100 A.D.) periods.
This study demonstrates that metaphor materializes distinctly in the two modalities examined. In writing, the metaphor uses distinct grammatical forms, in line with other corpus research on grammar and metaphor. Particularly, the metaphor uses the abstractive suffix and noun incorporation. In pictorial images, the metaphor materializes through the superimposition or fusion of Mayan rulers’ body parts and parts of trees. In writing, the metaphor’s semantic structure is not fully elaborated, but in pictorial images its semantic structure must be elaborated because it is a compositional modality, showing precisely how a ruler was similar to a tree.
This study also shows that variation of the metaphor was encouraged by changing political climates at the end of the Late Classic period that saw an increase in political competition. This partially manifested in a proliferation of hieroglyphic texts wherein elites reinterpreted circulating political discourse in novel ways. Elites from the polity of Palenque, in Chiapas, Mexico, created novel uses of the metaphor in writing by reinterpreting nonmetaphorical language in light of pictorial instances of the metaphor on vases, and transferred the metaphor to a different media, monumental architecture. Variation of the metaphor was part of co-occurrent linguistic change where distinct social dialects were emerging. These processes led to a metaphor shift in which a particular lexical item was semantically extended to have a new metaphorical sense.
These results have significance for understanding the role of the materiality of metaphor in the construction of metaphorical meaning, something that has been underexamined due to the universalizing tendency of conceptual approaches that do not fully document metaphor variation. As a result, this study challenges some tenets of conceptual approaches and develops a more robust method for understanding metaphor variation, from a diachronic perspective. These results also highlight the importance of metaphor in understanding linguistic change in Mayan languages.
... The document continues by citing the glosses of the word included in the Bricker (1998) and Barrera Vazquez (1980) bilingual dictionaries. These citations and common usages constitute the basis of the linguistic investigation that foregrounds the university's intention to transform iknal into an educational concept. ...
... These citations and common usages constitute the basis of the linguistic investigation that foregrounds the university's intention to transform iknal into an educational concept. Bricker (1998) dfine iknal como: "delante de, con, antes, presencia." En el diccionario del Maya Cordemex (Barrera Vázquez 1980), se define iknal como: con, en compañía, en poder, en casa, o donde alguno esta". ...
... En el diccionario del Maya Cordemex (Barrera Vázquez 1980), se define iknal como: con, en compañía, en poder, en casa, o donde alguno esta". (UIMQROO 2010, 34) [ Bricker (1998) defines iknal as: "in front of, with, before, presence." The Maya Cordemex dictionary (Barrera Vázquez 1980), defines iknal as: in company, in power, in home, or where someone is (my translation).] ...
Intercultural translation is a salient feature of communicative interactions in multilingual institutional spaces. This article draws on a concept of intercultural translation that functions as a linguistically radical strategy through which other ways of knowing and being are introduced, with particular emphasis on institutions, multilingualism, and less-translated languages. It describes the modes in which indigenous actors used intercultural translation to modify Mexico’s institutional tutoring program in higher education. It focuses on the selective appropriation of words and meanings, the standardization of concepts, and the configuring of an intercultural frame of reference, whereby members of an intercultural Mexican university introduced the Yucatec Maya word iknal as a hybrid educational system. In sum, the article posits intercultural translation as a critical communicative practice ubiquitous to the dynamics of language in socio-cultural spaces.
... Tsikbal is a word in Yucatec Maya language defined in the Diccionario Maya Cordemex [6] as: "conversation, dialogue, tête-à-tête, story, chat, gab… to converse… to consider in conversation something". According to Bricker [7], it is derived from the root tsik that means: to respect, talk, tell, and chat. ...
... For further reading, see[17],[29],[42],[43].7 For more extensive discussion on the Books of the Chilam Balam, see[44]-[48].8 ...
... Maya does not have tense as such. Instead, it has a system of aspectual inflection which indicates whether an action has been completed or not, whether it is just beginning or ending or has been in progress for a while[7],[49]. ...
X-Pichil is a representative community of the rural central region of the Yucatan Peninsula. In contrast to other Mexican regions, farming in central Yucatan Peninsula still has not completely converted to conventional production. Currently, the Maya-speaking campesinos (small-scaled farmers in subsistence production) of this region are being exposed to a transformation process from traditional to conventional farming. The consequence is migration and loss of knowledge. Production in X-Pichil is characterized by traditional subsistence farming. The aim of this investigation was to diagnose the state of farming, discovering (1) the main crops and their production cycle and (2) socioeconomic aspects of agriculture with the aim of mapping out opportunities for agroecology and farming in general. The general objective of this study was to develop a reference and point of contact for further research and rural development policy. Between 2009 and 2011, a case study among all 129 public-land-using-farmers (ejidatarios) of X-Pichil was done. The study involved (1) a survey including demographical information, the biography of the farmers and their families, information concerning their fields (agrobiodiversity, farming cycle and crop management), as well as data related to the commercialization of their products; and (2) Tsikbal (dialogue among interlocutors) with selected members of the community differing in terms of gender, age and education. The most relevant data was related to demographics. The survey showed a notable aging of the active agricultural population in this community: 94 % of the ejidatarios is older than 40 years. Only one of every 30 ejidatarios' children plants to continue working in the primary sector; consequently 64% of all fields are not being cropped. Interviews showed that there are three main reasons for this tendency: (1) agriculture is seen to be too labor-intense; (2) there is a lack of food security and (3) agriculture suffers from a poor reputation within society.
... Since the majority of the realizations of /Vʔ/ by the speakers of these two K'ichean dialects is [Vʔ], the /Vʔ/ sequence should not be classified as a broken glottal vowel in K'ichee' but as England (personal communication, 2009) realization is absent. In fact, grammars of Yukatek-Maya classify it as a glottalized vowel that is in phonemic contrast with other vowels, and in the orthography it is conveyed as a glottal stop that occurs in the middle of the vowel as in cha'ak 'starch' (Bricker et al. 1998, among others). 7 Kaufman 1985, the data presented here and in Frazier (2009b) suggest that there could be some type of historical shift among Mayan languages whereby in some languages, such as Yukatek-Maya, a vowel and the following glottal stop have merged and become a single phoneme, a broken glottal vowel or glottalized vowel that is canonically realized as a vowel with creaky voice, while in other languages, like K'ichee', the sequence remains two separate phonemes, albeit with allophonic variations such as broken glottal vowels and creaky voice. ...
... Bricker et al. (1998) refer to glottalized vowels in Yukatek-Maya as being one of the four phonemically contrastive vowel shapes; short with no tone, long with low tone, long with high tone and glottalized vowels. ...
... Yucatec is a language that belongs to the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan linguistic family. Today, there are approximately 750,000 speakers of this language, mostly residing in the northern half of the Yucatan peninsula (Bricker et al., 1998 ). Yucatec makes a three-way laryngeal contrast for stop consonants: voiceless , ejective, and implosive. ...
... Second, it does not allow the co-occurrence of two non-identical ejectives (*k'Vt'). Moreover, it seems that Yucatec has a lexical constraint on the distribution of ejective sounds; i.e, ejective sounds occur in content words but not in functional words (Bricker et al., 1998). This suggests that ejective sounds are phonologically marked segments. ...
In this study, I present an acoustic analysis of contrast between pulmonic and ejective stops in the phrase final coda position in Yucatec, a Mayan language. Ejective consonants are found in about 16% of the world’s language, and there are a relatively large number of acoustic studies about these sounds. However, a significant empirical shortcoming of the previous studies is their exclusive focus on the acoustic realization of ejective consonants in the syllable onset position. This is partly due to a cross-linguistic tendency that ejective consonants are prohibited to occur in the syllable coda position. Therefore, data from Yucatec, which allows ejective consents to occur in the syllable coda position, fill the empirical gap. This study compared pulmonic stop /k/ and ejective stop /k’/ in the phrase final coda position taking a number of acoustic measurements. The results showed (1) stop release is shorter for the ejective, (2) stop closure duration is shorter for the ejective, (3) stop release noise intensity is higher for the ejective, and (4) the contrast between pulmonic and ejective stops affects the voice quality of the preceding short vowel (H1-H2 is lower for the short vowel preceding the ejective).
... It has a complex voice and aspectual system, with split ergativity [2,1,24]. Most of its lexical roots are CVC, where the vowel can have four distinct values (see below) [3]. Most clauses end by a final-clause vowel clitic, from a five-term deictic paradigm [12]. ...
... Mocho' y Akateko son los únicos que han retenido la distinción de V-VV. 2 Wasteko y los idiomas de la rama Yukateka también han preservado las vocales largas también. Aparte de mantener el contraste entre vocales largas y cortas el Yukateko también ha desarrollado un sistema de tono como se puede ver en los datos proporcionados por Bricker et al. (1998) en (1). ...
... los verbos de esta clase comparten un conjunto de propiedades, a saber: carecen de una forma antipasiva, construyen su forma completiva mediante la concatenación de la raíz y los pronombres absolutivos sin recurrir a ningún otro tipo de morfología, y en su mayoría hacen uso de un sufijo -Vl (donde V 6 el patrón general que se observa en yucateco es que los predicados intransitivos estativos no son verbos, y con frecuencia son o se asemejan más a la clase de los adjetivos. por ejemplo, los predicados posicionales muestran simultáneamente propiedades características de los verbos y los adjetivos (bricker et al. 1998(bricker et al. , briceño Chel 2006, y las construcciones que corresponden a estados psicológicos típicamente están encabezadas por un adjetivo (verhoeven 2007). reduplica la vocal de la raíz) en sus formas de indicativo/imperfectivo (straight 1976(straight , poot y bricker 1981(straight , lucy 1994(straight , Gutiérrez bravo 2002. ...
En un estudio tipológico reciente, Schmidtke-Bode (2009) reporta que a un nivel translingüístico se observa una relación especial entre las cláusulas de propósito y los verbos de movimiento. En este trabajo muestro que esta relación especial se observa también en maya yucateco, la lengua maya hablada en la península de Yucatán, México. Mi investigación corrobora muchas de las observaciones tipológicas de Schmidtke-Bode (2009), pero desarrollo dos contribuciones diferentes. La primera es que los datos del yucateco sobre verbos de movimiento y cláusulas de propósito muestran que la alternancia entre cláusulas de propósito con y sin nexo subordinador no consiste en la simple ausencia del nexo: las cláusulas de propósito sin nexo son de hecho estructuras muy diferentes que muestran un grado de integración con la cláusula matriz incluso mayor al que se observa con otros tipos de cláusulas de propósito. La segunda es que el maya yucateco proporciona evidencia de que la relación especial entre cláusulas de propósito y verbos de movimiento no se restringe a los verbos de movimiento dirigido, sino que se observa con cualquier predicado que tenga como parte de su semántica un componente de movimiento.
... el sufijo de foco -il que se observa en el verbo principal de la primera oración de este ejemplo es un sufijo que se usa sobre todo en el presente perfecto cuando se focaliza un constituyente no-argumental, como un adverbio de modo o tiempo(Bricker et al. 1998), o el verbo focalizado en este ejemplo. aunque este sufijo se menciona en casi todas las descripciones morfológicas del yucateco, las condiciones exactas en que aparece aún no se conocen con precisión. ...
En este trabajo desarrollo una descripción y análisis de las construcciones de foco de verbo en maya yucateco. Argumento que a sus propiedades se les puede dar una respuesta satisfactoria en el marco de la Teoría de Optimidad (Prince & Smolensky 2004). Concretamente, propongo que sus propiedades son resultado del requisito de que el verbo ocupe la posición de foco y que la construcción resultante sea máximamente fiel a la especificación del foco en el Input, todo esto conservando la manifestación morfológica del argumento interno del verbo transitivo.
... this concept is a philosophical principle regarding the constant presence of absence. Iknal has been defined as: " in front of, with, before, presence " (bricker et al. 1998, emphasis added). the Diccionario Maya Cordemex defines iknal as: " con, en compañía, en poder, en casa, o donde alguno está [with, in the company of, in control of, in house, or where someone is] " (barrera Vásquez 1980:265, emphasis added). ...
This is an ethnographic analysis of Maya indigenous identity politics in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The analysis builds on first hand ethnographic fieldwork as a means to analyze newspaper reports and state laws concerning the nature, authority, activities, and cultural standing of Maya dignitaries—officials created by Mexican Law as a means to revitalize and support indigenous Maya culture. These figures are not as it were “autochthonous,†but an elusive illusion created by the State in a strategy of Allusion. The anthropological discourses of identity and the interpretations of time within Mayan studies are assessed for their portraiture of Indians and of Maya Indian. These portraits are manifest manners of how Indians behave, how they should behave, as well as what and how they think. They are allusions that the State uses in strategies and practices of governing the Maya. Allusion is developed as a means to understand the hot and cold interplay or complicity between the State and Indigenous communities in Quintana Roo, Mexico. The article is a form of cultural commentary and critique in the genre of ethnography.
... K'iche' uses the status suffix /-VVj/ for the class of derived transitive verbs. Root verbs have monosyllabic verb stems, while derived verbs generally have polysyllabic verb stems, but there are T A B L E 2. Correspondences between K'iche' and Yucatec status suffix forms (parentheses indicate omission in non-clause-final contexts), 1978; Bricker et al., 1998). exceptions such as the K'iche' derived verb -aaj 'want '. ...
ABSTRACT This article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and is especially useful in drawing attention to variation in contexts of use across languages. This article uses the Comparative Method to analyze the acquisition of verb suffixes in two Mayan languages: K'iche' and Yucatec. Mayan status suffixes simultaneously mark distinctions in verb transitivity, verb class, mood, and clause position. Two-year-old children acquiring K'iche' and Yucatec Maya accurately produce the status suffixes on verbs, in marked distinction to the verbal prefixes for aspect and agreement. We find evidence that the contexts of use for the suffixes differentially promote the children's production of cognate status suffixes in K'iche' and Yucatec.
... The gloss 'is for " sweet potato " (Spanish batata or camote) is attested in Ch'olan languages (e.g., CHT iz " batata, camote " [Ringle n.d.:#417,#607], CHR is for " sweet potato " [Wisdom n.d.:485]). Colonial and Modern Yukatek has the same gloss and various terms for mixed drinks of sweet potatoes and atole (iz " batatas o camotes " (CMM:222r);'ìis " sweet potato " (Bricker et al. 1998:13); coppen " puchas o atol azedo y sabroso echo de maiz viejo con mezcla de batatas " [CMM:82v]; š 'ìisi'-sa' " gruel made from corn and sweet potatoes " (Bricker et al. 1998:13, 238); sa' is ul " atole de maíz nuevo, hecho el mismo dío con camote molido " (Barrera Vásquez 1995:702). Brown and Wichmann (2004:169) reconstruct the corresponding proto-Mayan gloss as *'iihs. ...
Many Classic Maya painted vessels feature a genre of inscriptions known as the “dedicatory formula” or the “primary standard
sequence” (PSS).These texts usually mention the vessel type, its contents, and its owner’s name. The decipherment of the PSS
on Classic Maya ceramics in the 1980s (Houston and Taube 1987; Houston et al. 1989; MacLeod 1989; Stuart 1988, 1989) opened
the first page in the Ancient Maya cook book. The two main ingredients mentioned in the contents section of the PSS were cacao
and atole (maize gruel), but the list of additives and flavors quickly expanded.
First of all, it was shown that different kinds of cacao and maize gruel beverages were in use in the Classic period. David
Stuart (1989:152) identified two kinds of cacao. The first one was spelled as tzi-te-le or ’i-tzi-te-le, and Stuart compared it to the Yukatek botanical term itzimte or itzinte (Stuart 1989:152). The second kind of cacao, read yu-ta-la, was left without translation (Stuart 1989:152). Subsequently, Nikolai Grube (1990:326; see also Stuart 2006:196) discovered
the collocation tzi-hi-li ka-wa on Chochola ceramics and suggested that tzihil was an adjective “fresh.” Another term for fresh chocolate – ’ach’ kakaw or “fresh cacao” – was identified by Marc Zender in 2002 (see Stuart 2006:199, Fig. 9.15).
... First, the middle seems to be restricted to a reduced number of verb classes. They can only be derived from transitive CVC verbs (Bricker 1981(Bricker , 1998Briceño 2004;Bohnemeyer 2004). Moreover, not all transitive situations can take the middle marker. ...
In this paper we provide a characterization of the middle construction in YM, and show that the apparently unpredictable distribution of middle voice in YM corresponds to a neatly identified, and quite limited, system of absolute events, i.e., events in which no energy is expended (Langacker 1987). This strategy is not exploited by other related Mayan languages, which tend to encode all absolute events as simple intransitive verbs. The semantic coherence of middle voice in YM is only discernible by combining analysis of narrative texts and direct elicitation with attention to speaker intuition in a variety of situational contrastive contexts guided by cognitive principles which are known to determine the behavior of middle voice systems in other languages. National Foreign Language Resource Center
"In this research I develop a description of the morphosyntactic and syntactic aspects of adverbial subordinate clauses in Yucatec Maya, a language spoken in the Yucatan Peninsula. The main propose of this research is to show that Yucatec Maya has a wide range of subordinating links, which have lexical and grammatical meaning to introduce adverbial subordinate clauses. To do this, I will present sixteen subordinating links that introduce clauses with different adverbial meanings such as time, cause, purpose, etc. Therefore, I will show that adverbial constructions contain the four types of verbal constituents proposed for independent constructions in Gutiérrez Bravo (2015a)."
In both the typological literature and literature on formal syntax and semantics, a division is drawn between nouns that are inalienably possessed such as body parts and kinship terms and nouns that are alienably possessed such as owned materials. In this paper I re-examine data from Spanish and Mayan languages and propose an analysis of it that emphasizes two important points regarding the roots and structures associated with inalienable and alienable possession. I first make the novel observation that various types of external possession in Spanish provide clear support for the idea that inalienable possession is structurally less complex than alienable possession: inalienable possessive relations are introduced within a complex n head that consists of a root and nominalizing head. I then explore attributive possession in Mayan languages and highlight data that leads to conflicting conclusions about where, precisely, inalienable relations such as part-of and kin-of are encoded: on n heads or on roots. I outline avenues for future research with the Mayan language family that may help elucidate which of these two analyses may ultimately be correct.
En este trabajo analizamos la presencia del tunk’ul en los festejos del Carnaval en Pomuch, Campeche. Además, efectuamos una descripción del ritual y un análisis del canto ceremonial en el cual el instrumento conforma un eslabón de primer orden. Nuestra aproximación, mediante fuentes etnológicas, históricas y lingüísticas, revela también la interrelación entre los diversos componentes espaciales, temporales y sociales imbricados en la ceremonia. Incluimos la transcripción y la traducción de esta plegaria, así como la grabación que permite comprender su ejecución.
“T’áalk’u’ Iknalítico: Omniausencias, Omnipresencias y Ubicuidades Mayas” es un libro que ilustra varios aspectos del pensamiento maya y su interconexión con el iknal, asociación clave para promover la difusión de la cultura maya y el pensamiento filosófico maya. La obra reúne valiosos aportes de reconocidos pensadores e investigadores de la UIMQRoo y de otras universidades de Estados Unidos, Canadá y Alemania que reflexionan sobre los fenómenos socioculturales, ecológicos, educativos, lingüísticos, históricos y literarios en un dialogo constructivo que busca implementar el respeto a la diversidad cultural, lo que constituye un buen intento para establecer una sociedad más justa y equitativa para todos.
This article studies the duplication diacritic of Epigraphic Mayan (ISO 639-3 emy) during the Classic period ( a.d. 200–900). Cataloged as grapheme 22A, it consists of two dots optionally and rarely affixed to another grapheme to command the reader, in the majority of cases, to read a syllabogram twice in sequence. This article reviews prior literature on the diacritic, elaborates a typology of four distinct but ultimately related functions, and employs a data set compiled by means of the Maya Hieroglyphic Database to determine via statistical tests whether scriptal, linguistic, media, geographic, and temporal factors were influential in its distribution, and more narrowly, its various functions. The results indicate that two lexemes, käkäw ‘cacao’ and k'ahk’ ‘fire,’ account for several of the scriptal and linguistic traits that show significant relationships with 22A, with the former, käkäw , likely serving as a major prototype in the evolution of 22A. It is also pointed out that 22A is absent from the Postclassic ( a.d. 900–1521) codices, suggesting that one of the Classic regional subtraditions with lowest frequency of use of 22A may have been a direct ancestor of the subtraditions responsible for the codices.
The Cuceb is one of the most mysterious texts in the Books of Chilam Balam written during the early Colonial Period. Previous scholars have commented that it recounts a fictitious katun and contains events from different epochs ranging from the 13th to the 17th centuries. The text itself incorporates allusions of historical and mythological stories with origins from the Postclassic and Classic Periods. In this paper I will examine some expressions and key parts of the Cuceb. I propose that these passages interconnect with other texts in the Books of Chilam Balam and Paris codex, which together point to the collapse of Mayapan, the last capital of the Northern Yucatan.
Grammaticalization research looks back on a rich history, but recent empirical findings, as well as new insights from cognitive science and psycholinguistics, entice researchers to reassess and review what we know about the process. This book presents a detailed study of the grammaticalization of motion verbs in the Mayan languages. The focus lies on variation in the parallel grammaticalization of motion verbs into auxiliaries and directionals. It is demonstrated that the genetically related and areally close languages do not always grammaticalize source items in the same way - both from a formal and meaning perspective. The empirical findings suggest that traditional theories on grammaticalization do not capture the complex nature of the phenomenon entirely. Therefore, a Network Approach to grammaticalization is introduced which emphasizes a 'meaning-first' account. The approach seeks to combine the conceptual with the discourse-pragmatic while being firmly grounded in cognitive and psychological facts. New insights into the grammaticalization behavior of the world's languages are offered, while well-established notions and assumptions within the grammaticalization research paradigm are reviewed and challenged.
This contribution shows the results obtained from the study of the texts and images of some monuments carved in the Early Puuc style from several archaeological settlements in the wester sector, in sites such as Xcalumkín, Xcochá, Xculoc and Itzimté Bolonchén, the latter belonging to the eastern sector of the area. The investigation allowed to identify that several subordinate or sajal lords, influenced by the maya of the Usumacinta represented the War Serpent and some others the God of the Maize-Cacao, in addition to several toponymic records strikingly rare in these latitudes of the Mayan area as well as hieroglyphic groups such as K’ihn Ha’, “Hot Water”, and K’ihn Ajaw, “Solar Lord”, detected in Xcalumkín, linked to the Piedras Negras region. Also, the recognition of the supernatural place Nah Ho’ Chan Bob, “The Flowery place is the First Five Heavens”, in an inscription of Itzimte Bolonchen, in addition to identifying the Building of the Carved Columns of Xculoc, with a sacred space known as Wuk Chit K’an Nal, “Place of the Seven... Precious”, associated with the cult of the God of Maize-Cacao and the flowery tree. The message we wish to present in this essay is that through art and writing, several dignitaries legitimized their social position by disseminating images, symbols and scriptural discourses not well known to this region. The study offers new political and religious episodes in the life and cultural history of the Puuc Maya during the first half of the 8th century.
In this study we analyze the importance of the presence of tunk’ul in the carnival celebrations in Pomuch, Campeche. We describe the ritual and propose an analysis of the ceremonial chant in which this instrument plays a fundamental role. We detail the interrelation between the various spatial, temporal and social components composing this ceremony using ethnological, historical and linguistic sources. We also include the transcription and translation of this ceremonial chant, as well as its recording, which allows us to understand its execution.
Resumen En este trabajo analizamos la presencia del tunk'ul en los festejos del Carnaval en Pomuch, Campeche. Además, efectuamos una descripción del ritual y un análisis del canto ceremonial en el cual el instrumento conforma un eslabón de primer orden. Nuestra aproximación, mediante fuentes etnológicas, históricas y lingüísticas, revela también la interre-lación entre los diversos componentes espaciales, temporales y sociales imbricados en la ceremonia. Incluimos la transcripción y la traducción de esta plegaria, así como la grabación que permite comprender su ejecución.
Full description of valency classes of Yucatec Maya in the framework of the Leipzig valency database
"The Only True People" is a timely and rigorous examination of ethnicity among the ancient and modern Maya, focusing on ethnogenesis and exploring the complexities of Maya identity-how it developed, where and when it emerged, and why it continues to change over time. In the volume, a multidisciplinary group of well-known scholars including archaeologists, linguists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, and epigraphers investigate ethnicity and other forms of group identity at a number of Maya sites and places, from the northern reaches of the Yucatan to the Southern Periphery, and across different time periods, from the Classic period to the modern day. Each contribution challenges the notion of ethnically homogenous "Maya peoples" for their region and chronology and explores how their work contributes to the definition of "ethnicity" for ancient Maya society. Contributors confront some of the most difficult theoretical debates concerning identity in the literature today: how different ethnic groups define themselves in relation to others; under what circumstances ethnicity is marked by overt expressions of group membership and when it is hidden from view; and the processes that transform ethnic identities and their expressions. By addressing the social constructs and conditions behind Maya ethnicity, both past and present, "The Only True People" contributes to the understanding of ethnicity as a complex set of relationships among people who lived in real and imagined communities, as well as among people separated by social boundaries. The volume will be a key resource for Mayanists and will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies as well.
Severe illnesses and sudden deaths are all too common occurrences in the lives of the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula, so it is perhaps no surprise that, as a people, they tend to be rather fatalistic. Maya fatalism finds one of its most prominent expressions in the tamax chi'—a type of omen that speaks of impending suffering, usually of a terminal nature, for a member of one's close family. In terms of components and mechanics, however, a tamax chi' is actually something more than a mere kin-doom sign; it forms part of a hybrid, if somewhat limited, cultural self, one of whose key functions seems to be helping people cope. Through recourse to Goffman (1981) speaker roles and Danziger's (2013) hearer roles and through analysis of data derived from years of research in the region, I also demonstrate its relevance to more general understandings of self and intentionality.
Un análisis morfo-sintáctico sobre el tiempo y el aspecto en la lengua maya yucateca Shigeto Yoshida Universidad de Tohoku Objetivo La conjugación de verbos en la lengua maya yu-cateca no denota en sí mismo el tiempo sino el aspecto. Por lo menos, el tiempo en la lengua maya yucateca no es explícito en el nivel morfo-lógico. Como dice Jürgen Bohnemeyer (2003), el tiempo en una oración en maya yucateco se obtiene al ordenarse icónicamente en el tiempo absoluto informaciones semánticas y anafóricas que se dan fuera del sintagma verbal y por el contexto de la oración. Sin embargo, en realidad, es posible saber o especificar el tiempo de even-to, aunque no se de ninguna información adicio-nal sobre el evento. En este artículo se intenta dar explicacón sobre el mecanismo de determi-narse el tiempo gamatical de oraciones en maya yucateco al traducirse en español. Por otro lado, la lingüística generativa postu-la que el tiempo gramatical (tense) es un cons-tituyente sintáctico 1 necesario para autorizar el 1 En este artículo se usan las siguientes siglas. 1: primera persona, 2: segunda persona, 3: tercera persona, ABS: pro-nombre absolutivo, CMP: completivo, DET: determinante, ERG: pronombre ergativo, INCM: incompletivo, N: sustan-tivo, PROG: progresivo, S: sintagma, SD: sintagma deter-otorgamiento del caso al sujeto. En este artículo se adopta esta premisa de la lingüística genera-tiva para explicar cómo se formula una oración en maya yucateco, y se analiza el modo de rela-cionarse el tiempo gramatical con el aspecto. El análisis por la lingüística generativa no contradi-ce con el mecanismo de determinarse el tiempo gramatical que se va a explicar en la primera sec-ción sino lo complementará. En este artículo, al hablar del tiempo gramatical (tense) en la lengua maya yucateca, sólo se refiere al mecanismo sin-táctico de autorizar la enunciación o spell out de oración. El tiempo gramatical que se le da al ver-bo al traducirse en español, ya desde el punto de vista de la lengua española u otras lenguas que requieren el tiempo gramatical en la conjugación verbal, es el tiempo referenciado para ubicar el evento en el tiempo absoluto. 1. El aspecto de la lengua maya yucateca Es muy extraño que no exista un acuerdo entre los lingüístas sobre el número de aspectos que minante, sg: singular, SN: sintagma nominal, SV: sintagma verbal, TRML: sufijo terminal, V: verbo, VP: voz pasiva.
This study serves as an initial inquiry regarding the early print knowledge of emergent bilingual preschool-age children living in an Indigenous community in Mexico. In this research, we examine various dimensions of print knowledge with Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children for whom one of their languages (Yucatec Maya) is seldom seen in print forms in mainstream classrooms and curricula. A total of 84 emergent bilingual children were assessed in their Yucatec Maya and Spanish on measures of alphabet knowledge (i.e., letter names and sounds), name writing, and concepts of print. Results were analyzed and compared between languages, showing that the children demonstrated modest levels of print knowledge on all measures. Whereas the emergent bilingual children in this study performed significantly better in Spanish than Yucatec Maya on all indices of print knowledge, this investigation provides insights into how these children may concurrently develop print-related skills in interrelated ways across languages. Implications of these findings are outlined.
This article presents an examination of modes of expressing and attributing agency in verbal interactions concerning master-spirits among the Yucatec Maya of Quintana Roo (Mexico). The study combines a grammatical analysis of how notions pertaining to agency structure the Yucatec Maya, with an ethnographic and discursive analysis of interactions involving spirits. Four discursive situations are compared: personal accounts of encounters with spirits, stories, comments from the ritual specialist, ritual invocation. These reveal sharp contrasts with regard to the grammatical and lexical modes of reference used to refer to spirits, making it possible, through a consideration of types of relatively typified discourse and local discursive choices, to detail certain correlations between participatory framework, linguistic mode of reference and relational system. The hypothesis put forward is that linguistic modes of reference to spirits and to their actions are jointly constitutive of the forms and gradations of agency that are assigned to them, insofar as they index, qualify or obliterate typified and contextual relationships of agency between the speaker, other participants in the speech event, and spirits.
The purpose of this study is to show the processes and strategies employed by one Yucatecan child, Sandi, in the acquisition of verb morphology leading to the building of three-member inflectional paradigms. Data presented here were gathered during a period of eight months, from Sandi's age of 1;9 to 2;4. We will trace her acquisition of the verbal complex by describing the emergence of particular verbs, specific patterns of status inflection and the use of person-marking inflectional and derivational morphology. We will identify early errors, such as the overgeneralized use of an imperative suffix, the omission of obligatory person-markers and auxiliaries, and the analogic extension of an incorrect form. This study is based on the analysis of the early verb inflection in Yucatec Maya (Pfeiler and Martín Briceño 1997). 1. Verb and person classification in Yucatec Yucatec Maya is a head-marking language: the verbal complex can function on its own as a complete sentential proposition (Lucy 1994: 627). Verbs are distinguished into classes of transitive and intransitive verbs according to their argument marking properties. " Intransitive verbs are inflected by cross-reference marking for their S-argument, [and] transitive verbs are inflected by cross-reference marking for their A-argument and their O-argument " (Bohnemeyer 1998: 155–156). In the verb complex, person, mood, and aspect are represented by sets of inflectional affixes. Person markers are expressed through bound pronominal indices on the verb. There are two sets of markers, Set-A and Set-B.
Religious rituals that are painful or highly stressful are hypothesized to be costly signs of commitment essential for the evolution of complex society. Yet few studies have investigated how such extreme ritual practices were culturally transmitted in past societies. Here, we report the first study to analyze temporal and spatial variation in bloodletting rituals recorded in Classic Maya (ca. 250-900 CE) hieroglyphic texts. We also identify the sociopolitical contexts most closely associated with these ancient recorded rituals. Sampling an extensive record of 2,480 hieroglyphic texts, this study identifies every recorded instance of the logographic sign for the word ch'ahb' that is associated with ritual bloodletting. We show that documented rituals exhibit low frequency whose occurrence cannot be predicted by spatial location. Conversely, network ties better capture the distribution of bloodletting rituals across the southern Maya region. Our results indicate that bloodletting rituals by Maya nobles were not uniformly recorded, but were typically documented in association with antagonistic statements and may have signaled royal commitments among connected polities.
A partir de la relación entre cosmovisión y etnoteorías parentales y su expresión en prácticas de crianza infantil me he aproximado a la construcción de la persona en los primeros años de vida entre los mayas de Yucatán. Centro este trabajo en la ceremonia de hetsmek’, ya que sugiero puede verse como expresión del papel que juegan las entidades anímicas y la agencia humana en las etnoteorías parentales, al tomar en cuenta la conformación de los niños. Los padres, apoyados en los padrinos, contribuyen simbólicamente a abrirle el camino al infante para que desarrolle las capacidades que definirán su entendimiento. En conjunto evocan las que caracterizan a los seres de maíz en el génesis maya. En particular, la responsabilidad y la adquisición de conciencia se relacionan con ik’, atributo que permite al individuo relacionarse con el mundo al igual que ool y cuyos significados múltiples y relaciones requieren mayor investigación para entender la construcción de la persona entre los mayas de Yucatán.
ABSTRACT
I approach the cultural construction of the idea of person in the first years of life among the Yucatec Maya through the relationship between parental ethnotheories and worldview. I focus in the hetsmek’ ceremony and suggest that it may be seen as the expression in parental ethnotheories of the role played by souls and human society in the formation of children. Parents and godparents symbolically contribute to open the infant’s road in order to develop the abilities that will define the concept of understanding. These evoke the characteristics of human beings modeled from corn as described in the Maya genesis. Among them, responsibility and awareness relate toik’. Together with ool, they refer to the attributes that allow the individual to engage in the world and which require further investigation into their multiple meanings and relations if we are to better understand the construction of the person among the Maya of Yucatan.
Split-intransitive systems of argument marking provide an excellent opportunity to study the structure of the lexical-semantic representations that underlie argument structure alternations and argument linking rules. Yukatek Maya has a typologically rare split-intransitive pattern of argument marking controlled by overt aspect-mood marking. Krämer and Wunderlich (1999) have advanced an analysis according to which the linking of thematic relations to syntactic arguments is governed by lexical aspect as the sole lexical-semantic property linking principles are sensitive to in this language. Critical evidence against this proposal comes from the transitivity alternations of three classes of intransitive verbs: "degree achievement" verbs, "non-internally-caused" process verbs, and posture verbs. Transitivity alternations emerge as being governed by the distinction of internally vs. externally-caused events. The Yukatek facts suggest that argument linking operates on a lexical information structure ("event structure") that partially determines (and thus also underspecifies) both lexical aspect and participant structure.
It has been shown by Haiman and many others within the functional-typological framework that iconicity (in particular diagrammatic iconicity) plays a significant role in the creation of complex linguistic signs in the domain of syntax and morphology. The present paper provides an answer to the question in which way and to which degree iconicity is involved in the emergence and grammaticalization of personal pronouns. In the first part, a theoretical framework for the identification of iconic structures in personal pronouns is developed. The second part shows which properties of personal pronouns and their paradigms are iconic and which properties are not. In the third part, it is argued that a functional explanation of the formal gestalt of personal pronouns and their paradigms has to assume at least two conflicting factors, iconicity (transparency of form facilitating cognitive processing) and the Empathy Hierarchy (resulting in the unmarkedness of the most salient person/number categories in discourse and the erosion of iconicity). The evidence provided leads to the conclusion that it is not possible to equate markedness with iconicity as is proposed within the framework of natural morphology.
“Through analysis of food and eating systems one can gain information about how a culture understands some of the basic categories
of its world” (Mary Douglas in Meigs 1997:100). It is through this lens of foodways analysis that I will explore the gendered
nature of Maya foodways, the gendered division of labor1 in maize production and consumption, and my hypothesized continuation of gender complementarity in Maya food practices. As
Counihan has noted, “Gender matters in food centered activities as it does in structuring human societies, their histories,
ideologies, economic systems and political structures” (1998:1). The issue of complementarity of gender roles in food practices
and in other activities attributable to cultural models is somewhat contentious in the academic world of anthropology, and
requires further investigation. I have conducted fieldwork among the living Maya during the summers of 2007 and 2008 in an
effort to shed further light on the issue, and in this paper I intend to complement field investigations of my own and of
others with conclusions about earlier Maya cultural expression derived from archaeologists, epigraphers, ethnohistorians,
and art historians. As Nash (1997) states, gender complementarity is something that continues to be expressed by the modern
Maya, no matter how contentious its form. For the confines of this paper, I agree with Fischer, who observes that:
In the Maya script an image of a “monkey’s head,” often referred to as the God C head, apparently had a phonetic value of k’u at the time of the Spanish invasion. The Yucatec Maya word k’uh ‘divine, deity’ also closely fits later interpretations of the same “monkey” head in the Classic Maya inscriptions. The fact that a monkey head represents the word meaning 'divine, deity, sacred, holy’ suggests that at some time the monkey was seen as something like divine, and/or the word for ‘monkey’ was at some time in the history of the script homophonous, or nearly so, with the word for ‘holy,’ allowing thus for a rebus usage (where an easily depicted thing is used to refer to a more abstract concept that sounds similar to it). Based on further investigation of this theme, it is concluded here that Mayan languages, elements of the Maya script, and some Mayan oral narratives, provide substantial evidence that the monkey may well have been held in high esteem, and also that near homophony could underlie use of a monkey image to mean ‘divine’ or similar meanings in the Maya script. The fact that a Mixean word maax ‘divinity, holy’ is nearly homophonous with a lowland Mayan word root (max, ma’ax, or ma’x) that means ‘(spider) monkey’ raises the possibility that a bilingual Mixean / Mayan speaker could use a picture of a monkey as a rebus to reference the concept of ‘divinity’, and therefore also the possibility that bilingual Mixean / Mayans were involved at some point in the development of the Maya script. The evidence is presented below, with reasons why the monkey might be so viewed, along with a short argument supporting earlier proposals of Mixe-Zoquean linguistic and graphic influence on the Maya script (cf. Stross 1982, 1983, 1990).
This paper focuses on the discoveries of the last decade in Maya archaeology, and assesses their impact on previous models and synthetic frameworks. Although the bibliography includes 700 items published during the last 10 years, it is not exhaustive; on the contrary, a frustratingly large number of discoveries had to be omitted. Two areas exploding with new research are (1) the elicitation of a greater variety of data from hieroglyphic texts, and (2) a series of chemical and biological breakthroughs in the analysis of human burials. The former make it easier to assess the role of elite actors or “agents” in processes of sociopolitical change. The latter hold out the hope of documenting warfare (through skeletal trauma), migration (by tracing tooth enamel isotopes to ground water), status or gender differences in diet (through bone chemistry), and biological connections of individuals to each other and to earlier populations (through DNA). By combining these new data, we are on our way to integrating humanism and science, and to treating Maya polities as case studies in primary or secondary state formation. Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44641/1/10814_2004_Article_459122.pdf
Introduction Animals are omnipresent in Mayan art. Mammals, reptiles, birds and amphibians are more common, but several insects also appear. Many of these animals, besides being identified in the iconography, have also been identified by name in the corpus of inscriptions. One of the most common insects pictured, specially in ceramic bowls, is the firefly. Despite being relatively common, occurrences of its name in the inscriptions seem non-existent. In this small essay I review the iconography of fireflies and, based on this information, propose that the name of an important deity at Tikal and Dos Pilas may in fact include a logogram for a firefly. II. The Firefly in Mayan Languages The words for firefly in lowland mayan languages are fairly similar. Checking a few sources we have the following entries: . kokay "luciernagas que relucen de noche, que son casi como moscas" -- Barrera Vasquez [1]; . kuhkay "large firefly" -- Cholti [2]; . aj kuhkay "firefly-like insect" -- Chor
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