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FULL PHONETIC COMPLEMENTATION, SEMANTIC CLASSIFIERS, AND SEMANTIC DETERMINATIVES IN ANCIENT MAYAN HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2008

David F. Mora-Marín
David F. Mora-Marín*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, 325 Dey Hall CB #3155, Linguistics Department, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
*
E-mail correspondence to:davidmm@unc.edu
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Abstract

This paper discusses a little understood spelling practice of Mayan hieroglyphic writing, the use of full phonetic complementation of logograms, and some implications derived from this practice, particularly when compared with similar practices in other logosyllabic scripts from around the world (e.g., Egyptian and Luvian), which suggest that such practice existed in association with semantic classifiers. Also, a preliminary distinction between two types of semantograms is made: semantic classifiers and semantic determinatives. Previous discussions of both types of signs are reviewed, and it is proposed that the two are more widespread and important in Mayan writing than previously thought. The implications of these results are clear: Mayanists, particularly epigraphers, need to pay more attention to this distinction in their decipherment efforts, as well as in any future philological and paleographic endeavors. The paper concludes with a proposal for the interrelationship between the stylistic evolution of graphemes and the development of semantic classifiers and determinatives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , Fall 2008 , pp. 195 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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