Classic Maya language

Classical Maya or simply Maya (endonym: Chʼoltiʼ) is the oldest historically attested member of the Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the pre-Columbian inscriptions of the classical period of the Maya civilization. It is also the common ancestor of the Cholan branch of the Mayan language family. Contemporary descendants of classical Maya include Chʼol and Chʼortiʼ. Speakers of these languages can understand many Classic Mayan words.

Classic Maya is quite a morphologically binding language, and most words in the language consist of multiple morphemes with relatively little irregularity. It shows some regional and temporal variations, which is completely normal considering the long period of use of the language. Even so, the texts make it clear that it is a single, uniform language. Classical Maya shows ergative alignment in its morphology, as well as syntactically in focus constructs. Although the descendant Cholan languages limit this pattern of ergative alignment to sentences in completive aspect, classical Mayan does not show evidence of split ergativity.

Its spoken form, the Chʼoltiʼ, from the Manche Chʼol region, is known from a manuscript written between 1685 and 1695, first studied by Daniel Garrison Brinton. This language has become of particular interest for the study of Mayan glyphs, since most of the glyphic texts are written in the classical variety of Chʼoltiʼ, known as Classical Maya by epigraphers, which is believed to have been spoken as a prestigious language form throughout the Maya region during the classic period.

History

During the Classic Period, the main branches of Proto-Mayan began to diversify into separate languages. The division between Proto-Yucatecan (in the north, the Yucatán Peninsula) and Proto-Cholan (in the south, the Chiapas highlands and the Petén Basin) had already occurred in the Classic, when most of the Mayan inscriptions existing were written. Both variants are attested in hieroglyphic inscriptions at Maya sites of the time, and both are commonly known as the "classical Mayan language".

Although a single prestigious language was by far the most frequently recorded in extant hieroglyphic texts, evidence of at least three different varieties of Maya has been discovered within the hieroglyphic corpus: an Eastern Ch'olan variety found in texts written in the southern Maya area and the highlands, a western Ch'olan variety spread from the Usumacinta region from the mid-7th century onwards, and a Yucatecan variety found in texts from the Yucatan Peninsula. The reason that only a few linguistic varieties are found in the glyphic texts is probably that they served as prestigious dialects throughout the Maya region; hieroglyphic texts would have been written in the language of the elite.

Stephen Houston, John Robertson, and David Stuart have suggested that the specific variety of Chʼolan found in most southern lowland glyphic texts was a language they called "classical Chʼoltiʼ," the ancestor language of the Chʼortiʼ languages and modern Chʼoltiʼ. They propose that it originated in the western and south-central basin of the Petén, and that it was used in inscriptions and perhaps also spoken by elites and priests. However, Mora-Marín has argued that the traits shared by the Classic Lowland Maya and Chʼoltian languages are retentions rather than innovations, and that the diversification of Chʼolan is indeed Post-Classical. The language of the classical lowland inscriptions would then have been Proto-Cholan.

Relationships

It is now thought that the codices and other Classic texts were written by scribes, usually members of the Maya priesthood, in a literary form of the Chʼoltiʼ language. It is possible that the Maya elite spoke this language as a lingua franca over the entire Maya-speaking area, but also that texts were written in other Mayan languages of the Petén and Yucatán, especially Yucatec. There is also some evidence that the Maya script may have been occasionally used to write Mayan languages of the Guatemalan Highlands.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

|+ Consonants

! colspan="2" |

!Labial

!Alveolar

!Palatal

!Velar

!Glottal

! colspan="2" | Nasals

! rowspan="3" | Plosives

! voiceless

| rowspan="2" |

! ejective

!implosive

! rowspan="2" | Affricates

! voiceless

! ejective

! colspan="2" | Fricatives

! colspan="2" | Approximants

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;"

|+ Vowels

! Front

! Central

! Back

! Close

| || ||

! Mid

| || ||

! Open

| || ||

The Latin alphabet of the classical Maya transliteration is: ’, a, b, ch, ch’, e, h, i, k, k’, l, m, n, o, p, p’, s, t, t’, tz, tz’, u, w, x, y. It is the romanization system currently used by epigraphers to transcribe the language. However, the first alphabet was developed by Fray Francisco Morán in his Vocabulario en lengua choltí, whose most notable difference is the transcription of /k’/ as ⟨ꜫ⟩ and /t͡ʃ’/ as ⟨ꜫh⟩.

In Classic Maya, there are five vowels: a, e, i, o, u. Long vowels are written double: aa, ee, ii, oo, uu. Furthermore, no word begins with a vowel; these actually begin with a glottal stop.

Independent pronouns stand alone in an utterance, usually to draw focus to one of the sentence's arguments; historically they were constructed from a demonstrative particle *haʔ plus a dependent pronoun of the Absolutive Series, but many of the attested forms display further unpredictable phonological developments. Dependent pronouns are affixed to their grammatical head (whether noun, adjective, or verb), and come in two separate sets. Ergative dependent pronouns--which mark the subject of a transitive verb, the possessor in a possessive construction, or the person of a relational noun (see below)--are prefixed to the root, with two allomorphs depending on whether the following root begins with a consonant (C) or with a vowel (V). Absolutive pronouns, on the other hand, are suffixed to the root; these mark the object of transitive verbs as well as the subject of both intransitive and stative verbs.

Because most major Classic Maya inscriptions take the form of narratives, first- and second-person pronouns are very rare, to the point that some forms - notably second-person plural pronouns - are not known at all. Such unattested forms are marked below with question marks.

{| class="wikitable" style="border: none; background: none;"

|+ Classic Maya pronouns

! colspan="2" rowspan="2" style="border: none; background: none;" |

! colspan="2" | Ergative

! rowspan="2" | Absolutive

! rowspan="2" | Independent

! colspan="1" | before C

! colspan="1" | before V

! rowspan="2" | 1st person

! singular

| ni-

| w-

| -een

| hiin ~ hin

! plural

| ka-

| (?)

| -oʔn

| (?)

! rowspan="2" | 2nd person

! singular

| a-

| aw-

| -at

| haʔat ~ hat

! plural

| (?)

! rowspan="2" | 3rd person

! singular

| u-

| y-

| -Ø

| haaʔ ~ haʔ

! plural

| u-

| y-

| -Ø ~ -oob’ > -ob’

| haʔoob’ ~ haʔob’

Verbs

Many verbal roots of classical Maya have been attested. Some of these are: The Maya used to draw and write on some surfaces that were not intended to be a means of graphic expression. The most abundant preserved works of this type are found within rooms of buildings whose ceilings and walls are preserved. The only place where significant effort has been made to document writing on surfaces is Tikal, Guatemala.

From the period of classical Mayan writing, which lasted from the 3rd century BC until the 13th century, the texts that have survived to the present day were painted or carved in stones, bones, resistant wood, ceramics, shells or stucco. It is possible that much more had also been written on paper, but what little has come to this day is illegible. In places dating from the Classic Period, remains of books have been found in tombs, which would have been placed in chests or next to the heads of their deceased owners. There are only four still readable books that have survived to the present time.