Introduction
(Continued from previous page. Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4)
The Mayan Script
Logograms and syllabograms
The EpM script, like Zapotec, Epi-Olmec, and Japanese, are what historians of writing call logosyllabic systems, meaning they are composed of both logographic and phonographic signs which in glyphic studies are usually referred to as logograms and syllabograms or simply syllables. It should be stressed that logograms do not represent “ideas”; rather, “logo” here simply means “words.” Logograms, therefore, are signs that represent the specific sound of a particular word and not meaning as such. Syllabograms or syllables also represent sounds, but usually not an entire word, though there is some overlap between these two classes of signs. Each of these categories may be further subdivided into more specialized classes based on the manner in which the sign was developed or upon how it functions within the script. Of these two classes syllabograms are perhaps the most complex in terms of both their development and use.
Logogram/logograph (“word sign”)
Logograms are usually a written symbol representing an entire word without necessarily expressing its pronunciation. Arabic numerals in our script are a good example of a kind of logogram. For example, the sign 4 is read four in English, quattro in Italian, and shi or yon in Japanese (which may also be written phonetically as し or よん or logographically as 四). But the fact that 4 may be understood in a number of different, even unrelated languages should not be taken to suggest that the sign “4” is supra linguistic or some how transcends language. Logographic signs are, in fact, entirely reliant on language and should be understood as denoting words and not units of meaning. In this regard it should be noticed that logogramic signs in Chinese and Japanese are often primarily used for their phonetic value. For instance, the character 象 (elephant) is read zô. Zô is homophonous with the word “image” and for this reason the sign 象 is also used to write the word for image, 像. The first part of this character is the sign for person 人 (ren Chinese; jin, Japanese) and is often called a semantic determinate because it provides the visual information that distinguishes it from other homophonous words, such as “elephant.” Even this single example should illustrate that signs themselves do not convey “meaning” unmitigated by language, even in scripts like Chinese, which are written entirely in charaters.
Logograms in Maya, as mentioned, above rarely differ in pronunciation. The general class of logograms in EpM may be broken down into the additional categories of pictograms, rebus signs, and possibly morphosyllables. While logograms may stand alone, they are also often accompanied by syllabic signs, known as phonetic complements (PC). PC serve to clue pronunciation. In the following example, the na syllable denotes the final –n consonant of the word chan (sky) and possibly the fact that the suffix –al is the most common Vl suffix found on this word.
CHAN-na
Rebus signs are signs that use the sound value of the
thing depicted to write a word that has the same or similar pronunciation,
like the Japanese word 象 mentioned above. A familiar instance of the rebus
principle is found in the well-known example of “I saw aunt Rose” where
a representation of an eye is used to spell the homophonous but unrelated
word “I,” and so on. The meaning of the sign sometimes corresponds
to the thing that it represents but much more frequently does not and is
only a method used to record the sound. The example of the gopher head
logogram is a good example of the Maya’s use of rebus. B’ah is
the word for ‘gopher’ in many Mayan languages. However, in
ancient texts the gopher is used to write the syllable b’a and
on some occasions the word sign b’ah (self or image). A
similar situation is found with the use of a deer head to write not only
the word for deer, chij, but also the syllable chi.
b’ah/b’a (gopher) chij/chi (deer)
Pictograms are a relatively limited set of signs used for their iconic value, which nearly always references a specific word. In Chinese these signs are usually indivisible like the words for mountan, eye, sun, or moon (山、目、日、or 月). That is, they may not be broken down into the radical and phonetic element, which compose most Chinese signs. As there is no system such as this in Maya, it is probably not entirely accurate to make a distinction between different kinds of logograms at least from an emic analysis of the script. Thus, in the example below a head of a jaguar is used to write the word jaguar (b’ahlam) and is rarely used as a rebus sign to write homophonous words.
Morphosyllables, if they exist, are similar in nature to syllables in the general syllabary but function in the script as grammatical affixes that represent dependent derivational and grammatical morphemes. That is they represent meaning as opposed to sound. They seem in many cases to be read as VC instead of CV syllables or represent only the C. This, however, is a relatively new interpretation and remains to be proven. An earlier theory posited that the final vowel of CV syllables is dropped and there is a harmonic repetition of the root vowel to achieve the same results as the morphosyllable. It is quite possible that elements from both these theories are at work.
Syllabograms are signs used to write the syllables of a word. Syllabograms in the Mayan script most frequently take the form of V or CV syllables of which approximately 83 are known. CVC signs are present as well and work following the rebus principle as mentioned above.
[ADD SYLLABARY HERE] Current syllabary (From Coe and Van Stone 2001):
Reading Order
Glyphic texts are usually written vertically in double columns with the
individual glyph blocks composing these columns read from left to right
and top to bottom. When written horizontally texts are read left to right,
except in a few rare cases where glyphs are written in mirror image. As
with Zapotec, Epi-Olmec, and Middle Egyptian, one reads into the direction
of faces. In the following example from the oft-cited Yaxchilan Stela 11
the passage begins in the upper left-hand corner. The Initial Series Introductory
Glyph (ISIG) spans the space of two glyph blocks. Following the ISIG the
reading order is as indicated by the arrows.
The elements comprising individual glyph blocks are also read from left to right and from top to bottom. However, there are several regular exceptions to this pattern. The reading order of the elements within a glyph block may be read differently if the topmost sign is seen to extend behind the other lower elements, which are superimposed over it. The following are some of the most common signs of this type. In these cases the topmost sign is read last.
AJAW NAL ex. yi-chi-NAL-la
This pattern is also found with syllables:
hi ex. hi-HIX (Jaguar)