John S. Robertson

The Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions1

Recent decipherments of Classic Maya hieroglyphs (ca. a.d. 250 to 850) reveal phonological and morphological patterns that, through epigraphic and historical analyses, isolate a single, coherent prestige language with unique and widespread features in script. We term this language “Classic Ch’olti’an” and present the evidence for its explicable historical configuration and ancestral affiliation with Eastern Ch’olan languages (Ch’olti’ and its still‐viable descendant, Ch’orti’). We conclude by exploring the possibility that Ch’olti’an was a prestige language that was shared by elites, literati, and priests and had a profound effect on personal and group status in ancient Maya kingdoms.

Split Ergativity in the History of the Ch’olan Branch of the Mayan Language Family

An unchallenged assumption regarding the linguistic history of the Ch’olan branch of the Mayan language family is that this common language was “split ergative”—demonstrating an ergative/absolutive pattern of pronominal inflection in the completive aspect and a nominative/accusative pattern in the incompletive. Such a hypothesis is untenable in light of the data, which show that the Ch’olti’an branch of Ch’olan did not share in the split ergative innovation. To support this conclusion, the evolutionary history of tense/aspect in each of the modern Ch’olan languages is presented. From a straight ergative ancestral system, a typologically plausible series of changes can account for various systems found in the modern languages. No such account is possible if scholars assume a split ergative system for Common Ch’olan.

The Origins of the Mamean Pronominals: A Mayan/Indo-European Typological Comparison

Introduction. Previous studies have set forth the evolutionary scenario by which the pronominal system of Common Mayan times came to occupy its modern format in the majority of the daughter languagesincluding the Yucatecan and Quichean (Robertson 1984a) language families as well as the languages of Chiapas (see Robertson 1982; 1984b; 1985). However, two families-Kanjobalan and Mamean-have yet to be accounted for. In this article, my aim is to give a diachronic account of the development of the pronominal system of the Mamean languages; the Kanjobalan subgroup will be reserved for later discussion.1 The investigation of the undocumented origins of the Mamean pronouns can be built on an understanding of similar, well-documented shifts in the Western European languages. By appealing not only to such observed European changes but also to certain well-established principles of morphological change, we can methodologically account for the modern Mamean pronouns in their formal and functional configuration.

From Valency to Aspect in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan Family of Mayan

This paper traces the evolution of the Common Mayan derivational suffixes *-V-ng and *-V-j into their descendant forms in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages. Specifically, the paper outlines a remarkable but markedly consistent shift from a transitivizing, derivational morpheme to an aspectual, inflectional suffix, whose most far-reaching fate is a negative future marker in Ch’orti’. It is only by firmly focusing on the systems of grammatical relationships that one can realize an informed, historical account of the series of shifts that brought the ancestral form to the forms attested in the several daughter languages.

A Re-Reconstruction of the Ergative 1sg for Common Tzeltal-Tzotzil Based on Colonial Documents

FORTESCUE, MICHAEL. 1983. A Comparative Manual of Affixes for the Inuit Dialects of Greenland, Canada, and Alaska. Meddelelser om Gronland, Man and Society, vol. 4. Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag. RASMUSSEN, JENS ELMEGARD. 1979. Anaptyxis, Gemination, and Syncope in Eskimo. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, vol. 18. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzels Boghandel. RISCHEL, JORGEN. 1981. Greenlandic as a three-vowel language. The Language of the Inuit: Historical, Phonological and Grammatical Issues. Etudes/Inuit/Studies 5 (Supplement):7 1-80.

The Common Beginning and Evolution of the Tense-Aspect System of Tzotzil and Tzeltal Mayan

Introduction. A comparison of the tense/aspect (TA) systems of the Tzeltalan languages 1 from Common to Colonial to modern times sheds light on some rather interesting ways in which the morphology of a language can change over time. The aim of this article is to show, via certain principles that seem to govern language change, how the TA systems of Tzotzil and Tzeltal came to exist in their modern state from their common beginning. This seemingly straightforward task is complicated, however, by the fact that a certain principle, commonly known as markedness reversal, but also named in this paper PAIRED OPPOSITES, has never been fully explained in the literature. Since an understanding of this heretofore undefined principle is necessary to an understanding of a certain chain of events that took place in the evolutionary path from Common Tzeltalan to modern Tzeltal, it will be necessary to preface the specific Tzeltalan explanation with a more general discussion of the notion of paired opposites.

A Phonological Reconstruction of the Ergative Third-Person Singular Pronoun of Common Mayan

The regularity of correspondences does not exclude the existence of special treatments. In a sentence words are found in various positions and under various conditions. The regularity of treatment comes often from the fixture of a median form among those varying according to the position in the sentence. But there are particular cases where forms pronounced more rapidly or carelessly are more usual than others, and from this result special treatments of accessory words: a reduction like that of hiu tagu <<this day> to hiutu (mod-German heute) in Old High German enters into no general category.2