Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs - Wayeb

Kettunen & Helmke 2011
Glossary of Linguistic Terminology
possessive
A grammatical case indicating ownership or a relation comparable to ownership. Many Maya words (such as
body parts and kinship terms) are INALIENABLY (innately) possessed and cannot stand alone (see the dictionary).
See also PRONOUN.
predicate
A segment of a CLAUSE expressing something about the SUBJECT (excluding the subject,)
prefix
Generally a bound MORPHEME (or AFFIX) joined to a word on its left side (i.e. preceding the sign). In Maya
epigraphy prefixes indicate GRAPHEMIC signs attached to the viewer’s left of another sign.
pronoun
A word that can substitute for a NOUN or a noun phrase. Several types of pronouns are distinguished in
grammars, including: personal pronouns (e.g. I, you, he, she), possessive pronouns (e.g. your, yours), demonstrative
pronouns (e.g. this, that), interrogative pronouns (e.g. what, who), reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself, yourself), etc.
Classic Maya pronouns indicate PERSON, but not GENDER. For example, the Classic Maya 3rd person singular
ergative pronoun “u” can either mean “he”, “she”, or “it” (or “his”, “her”, “its”), and the gender can only be
detected contextually. In the Classic Maya script there are three sets of pronouns: (1) personal pronouns, (2)
POSSESSIVE pronouns, and rare occurrences of (3) demonstrative pronouns:
personal and possessive pronouns:
demonstrative pronouns:
u
u
“he, she, it, his, her, its”
(before consonants)
ha-i
ha’i’
“that”
ya 88
y-
“he, she, it, his, her, its”
(before vowels)
ha-o-ba
ha’ob
“those”
Table XXV: Examples of Classic Maya pronouns in the hieroglyphic texts
proto-
A prefixed word that suggests a supposed “ancestor” of related languages. For example, the ancestor of all the
Maya languages is referred to as Proto-Maya, and the immediate ancestor of Tzeltalan languages as Proto-
Tzeltalan. Comparative historical linguistics is a field engaged in determining what the proto-forms of a given
language family were by analyzing series of COGNATE words in attested languages. Reconstructed proto-forms are
marked with an asterisk (*) immediately before the word: e.g. *k’e’ŋ is a proposed Proto-Maya form of the Classic
Maya word ch’e’n (“cave”).
root
The base form of a word, which cannot be further analyzed without losing the word’s identity. In Maya
languages roots are monomorphemic STEMS that can either be free MORPHEMES (e.g. “sky”, “walk”, “you”) or
bound morphemes (e.g. “in-”, “pre-”, “-ness”).
88
This is only one (graphemic) example of prevocalic personal and possessive pronouns (the ya-sign is used with words starting with the vowel
/a/). Others are ye, yi, yo, and yu with corresponding initial vowels (/e/, /i/, /o/, and /u/, respectively).
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