Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs - Wayeb

Kettunen & Helmke 2011
Glossary of Linguistic Terminology
glide
A sound produced more or less like a VOWEL but with the distributional properties of a CONSONANT. Glides are
more commonly referred to as “semi-vowels” and classified also as approximants. In Classic Maya there are two
glides (or semi-vowels): [j] and [w] (written GRAPHEMICALLY as and , respectively, and pronounced very
much like the English phonemes /y/ and /w/ in words like “year” and “wine”).
gloss
A short general translation of a WORD or MORPHEME which does not take into account the context in which it
occurs.
glottal
A sound produced by a constriction in the GLOTTIS (the air passage through the larynx or voicebox between the
vocal folds). The two most common glottal sounds are the GLOTTAL stop (or glottal plosive) [’] 86 and the glottal
FRICATIVE [h]. A glottal stop involves closure, followed by release, of the vocal cords, whereas a glottal fricative
involves close approximation between the vocal cords. In a few English accents, the glottal stop can be heard in
words like “bottle” [bo’l], and they often replace syllable final plosives, as in “Scotland” [sko’lnd], but more
commonly in any initial word in a sentence starting with a vowel, and in expressions such as “uh-uh” (colloquial
phrase indicating a negative opinion or a refusal) and “oh-oh” (“oops”; colloquial expression referring to an
element of surprise).
glottis
The aperture between the vocal folds.
grammar
The habitual method in which the basic elements of a language are interconnected to create more complex
structures, thus enabling thoughts to be communicated according to clear, habitual and systematic configuration.
grapheme
A “default” letter in the alphabet or a symbol representing a syllable in a syllabary. For example, in the Maya
script the symbol for the syllable ba is a single grapheme regardless of the different forms in which it may be
written. In Latin alphabet a grapheme is any given letter (or letters) with no direct correspondence to
pronunciation. See also DIGRAPH.
homograph
A word written exactly the same way as another word with different meaning, and potentially different
pronunciation, e.g. minute [‘minit] (a unit of time and angular measurement) and minute [mī:nyüt] (of very small
size or importance).
homophone
A group of letters or (in a broad sense of the definition) a word written differently from another word with same
pronunciation, e.g. right, rite, wright, and write. Homophones can also be distinguished from homonyms in a sense
that homophones represent a group of letters representing the same speech sound, whereas homonyms are words
that have the same pronunciation as another, (usually) differently written, word.
86
The more appropriate symbol for the glottal stop is a character resembling a question mark but for typographical reasons the symbol < ’ > is
used here instead. This practice is also in keeping with the standards employed by Maya epigraphers generally as well as those formulated and
set forth by Guatemalan government accords of 1987 and 1988 (see Note on Orthography at the beginning of this handbook).
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