Introduction
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Linguistic Affiliation of Epigraphic Mayan
There are some thirty known Mayan languages of which twenty-eight are still spoken in a region now divided between the modern states of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras. The language of the inscriptions, refered to here as Epigraphic Mayan (EpM), is most closely related to the Ch’olan branch of Mayan languages. The Ch’olan language family itself is composed of two major subgroups: a western branch represented by Chontal and Ch’ol, and an eastern branch composed of of Ch’orti’ and the now extinct language Ch’olti’. But did these divisions of the Ch’olan family exist two thousand years ago when the Mayan script was first innovated?
Traditionally, historical linguistic research suggests that the Ch’olan family diverged from Tzeltalan at about 100 ce (García de León 1979). Kaufman and Norman (1984:82) contend that the breakup of Ch’olan into its Eastern and Western branches had begun to occur at approximately 700 ce and that sometime prior to 800 ce the Western Ch’olan branch had started to split. The Eastern branch, they maintain, appears to have remained relatively unified for a few centuries longer, as evidenced by the greater similarity between Ch’orti’ and Ch’olti’ than that found between Ch’ol and Chontal. While the above analysis is based on the now widely discredited method of glottochronology (Dixon 1997), there is nevertheless an interesting correspondence between these dates of major linguistic change and the archaeological record. Therefore, under this scenario Epigraphic Mayan records Ch’olan prior to the fragmentation of the family, that is, a language similar to proto-Ch’ol.
Recently, however, Stephen Houston, John Robertson, and David Stuart (2000) have challenged this scenario. They see EpM as the direct ancestor of Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’, a view whose logic requires that the breakup of the Ch’olan language family to have occured prior to the Classic period. For this reason they argue that the language of the inscriptions should be termed Classic Ch’olti’an. While this suggestion has contributed greatly to the discussion of language affiliation and has focused greater attention on Ch’orti’, it is still premature to claim that EpM is the direct ancestor of Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’. This is especially true when one consideres the substantial evidence—that has not been adequately addressed—suggesting that during the Early Classic period the Ch’olan language family itself had yet to truly diverge into the modern languages known today (Kaufman and Norman 1984; Josserand and Hopkins 2004). This suggestion is based on the fact that while EpM exhibits features consistent with Eastern Ch’ol—particularly in verbal morphology, where the derivational affixes forming the passive voice (-h-aj and –naj [Lacadena 2004]) and the transitivizing suffix –b’u or –b’a (Stuart et al. 1999) for positional roots are almost identical — the language of the inscriptions also preserves grammatical patterns found only within the Western Cholan languages of Colonial Chontal and Ch’ol (see Mora-Marín 2003). Additionally, certain spellings suggest borrowings from Yucatec or preserve conservative pronunciations (the more likely interpretation). As Houston et al. (2000:114) observe, but fail to develop, script internal evidence, such as the fact that the fish fin ka syllable (derived from the word kay “fish”) is read ka instead of cha, suggests that the writing system was in part developed prior to the change from k > ch, among speakers where this change had not yet taken place, or represents the use of an archaic language.
When did the k > ch change occur? Though it is one of the features that distinguishes Greater Tzeltal (GTz) from Yucatec and Common Mayan it is difficult to know precisely when this shift occurred. For our purposes, the knowledge that the script originates in such a horizon provides a terminus ad quem for its development. A further means of pinpointing the date of the script’s development is an early spelling of the enclitic –ey (-ye) from Common Maya *–eer (Kaufman ) which are nearly identical to Tzeltal’s –ey (see Kaufman 1971: 80). The fact that –ey is used as late as 378 ce (8.[17].1.4.12) on Tikal’s El Marcador Monument, which also, interestingly, uses –ijiy, indicates that at the moment of the script’s development the change from e > i had yet to fully occur, or more likely that ancient scribes were attempting to preserve a language that was already archaic. The presence of an –ey suffix in early inscriptions ties the origin point of the script to a language that might have been quite similar to GTz since Tzeltal and Tzotzil are the only languages directly relevant to the script that now preserve the enclitic as –ey, and did not undergone a systematic e > i change as did Cholan.
The lack of a split ergative system in the EpM further argues for a date prior to or at the moment of the split of GTz. Tzeltal is the only language of the daughter languages of GTz that is purely ergative. Ch’olan and Tzotzil as well as Kanjobal and Tojolabal exbit some form of a split ergative system.
Once developed, however, the language of the script appears to be more closely aligned with Eastern Chol and evidences a complete e > i, and a nearly complete k > ch shift by the Late Classic period. The k > ch change was pervasive except in names and a few ritually important terms, which tend to be among the most conservative parts of any language. The pattern of k’s preservation again attests to the archaic nature of some of the formulas preserved in EpM literature. As an elite language, such as Latin, Classical Chinese, and Sanskrit, EpM stood in a dynamic relationship with local vernaculars (Stuart et al 1999; Lacadena and Søren), but these seem to have affected only slightly the overall character of EpM.
Table 1. Sounds preserved in archaic EpM as compared with modern languages.
EpM |
Common Maya |
Yucatec |
Tzeltal |
Chol |
Chontal |
Cholti |
Chorti |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ka-KAN, k’a-ma for kan and chan (Snake) |
|
ka’an |
chan |
chan |
ch |
Chan |
chan |
Enclitic –ey and –iy (past
time) |
–eer |
–ej1 |
–ey |
i |
–ihix |
i |
–ix |
k’o-b’a for k’o’ob’/k’ob (hearth) |
-k’ob’ |
k’óob’en |
? |
? |
? |
? |
ch’ujb’en |
Returning to issues of language affiliation and diversification, suffixes, such as the –is absolutive (Zender 2004) on nouns referring to body parts and the –w(i/a) and –n(i) antipassive suffixes, found frequently in Mayan languages normally not thought to have greatly influenced EpM, also indicate that the distinctions between languages that we find today or during the Colonial period were not so clearly defined when the first inscriptions were being written in the first centuries prior to the Common Era.
Thus, to summarize, even though there is still some degree of uncertainty over the exact familial relationships between EpM and modern Mayan languages, sign development, lexical data, and grammatical evidence suggest an overwhelming connection to the Ch’olan or perhaps even Proto-Greater Tzeltalan branch with a rather strong affiliation with Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’. For this reason here, I follow the practice of Terrence Kaufman and John Justeson to refer to the language preserved in Classic period inscriptions as Epigraphic Mayan (EpM) instead of the more specific term of Classic Ch’olti’an. The historically significant and tumultuous junctions at approximately 250 BCE and 850-950 CE attested in the archaeological record, mentioned above, correspond well with Dixon’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, wherein, simply put, social change greatly affects language diversification in ways unlike the gradual and regular change assumed by glottochronology. These would have been the two major nodes of language change. The first corresponding roughly to the Ch’olan’s split from GTz and the beginning of major Late Preclassic cultural innovations. The second is linked to the collapse of the major Lowland cities, which would seem to have initiated a period of language fragmentation. Unfortunately, to explore these important issues would take us too far from the topic at hand. However, it is worth pointing out that it is unlikely that EpM, either at the time of the script’s origin or during the Classic period, was the direct ancestor of any one of the Cholan languages to the exclusion of the others simply for the fact these languages had not diverged from each other yet. Rather, the resemblance between EpM and Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’ would suggest that Eastern Ch’olan was the more conservative branch.