Reading in Context: The Interpretation of Personal References in Ancient Maya Hieroglyphic Texts

■ Danny LawDepartment of AnthropologyVanderbilt [email protected]

■ Stephen HoustonDepartment of AnthropologyBrown [email protected]

■ Nicholas CarterDepartment of AnthropologyBrown [email protected]

■ Marc ZenderDepartment of AnthropologyTulane [email protected]

■ David StuartDepartment of AnthropologyUniversity of Texas, [email protected]

Reading in Context: The Interpretationof Personal Reference in Ancient Maya

Hieroglyphic Texts

The interpretation of deixis in language is heavily context-dependent. In spoken language, theaddressee(s) have the context of an utterance to aid in its interpretation. In writing, however,language can become separated from both its creator and the context of its creation. Thisarticle investigates the use of certain deictics—first and second person markers—in ancientMaya hieroglyphics (circa AD 250–900). The temporal and cultural gap that separatesmodern language scholars from the creators of these texts means that much of the largercultural context in which these texts would have been interpreted has been lost. An analysisof the way in which first and second person reference was framed and deployed in Mayahieroglyphs, even when identifying the intended referent proves impossible, provides insightsconcerning how people recontextualize textual language and how the authors of these textsadapted the form of their messages in response to the modality used. [person reference,textuality, Mayan languages, indexicality]

Human experience is situated. Because of this, social interaction must involve acoordinated effort to devise a common interpretive context so that commu-nication can take place. Yet that coordination itself, the establishment of a

shared ground for interpretation, is also characterized by flux, especially with respectto signs and their referents, from the perspectives of both the animator (see Goffman1981:167) and the interpreter of the sign. In spoken language, certain linguistic

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Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, Vol. 23, Issue 2, pp. E23–E47, ISSN 1055-1360, EISSN 1548-1395. © 2013by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/jola.12008.

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elements—demonstratives, locative and temporal adverbs, tense markers—are espe-cially and even essentially dynamic, so much so that the shifting referents of thesesigns cannot be determined without a clear interpretive context.

The examples par excellence of such linguistic “shifters” (Jakobson 1990[1957])—signs that “cannot be defined without a reference to the message” (131)—are themarkers used in language for the purpose of person reference. First and secondperson pronouns, in particular, only take on specific meaning in a referential contextwhere all of the relevant participants, and their relationships to the message, areunderstood. This article investigates the use of certain deictics—first and secondperson markers—in ancient Maya hieroglyphics (circa AD 250–900). These non-thirdperson references are extremely rare, limited to a few dozen in a corpus of tens ofthousands of texts.1 That rarity, coupled with the temporal and cultural gap thatseparates modern language scholars from the creators of these texts means that muchof the intertextual background and larger cultural context in which these texts wouldhave been interpreted has been lost. An analysis of the way in which first and secondperson reference was framed and deployed in Maya hieroglyphs, even when identi-fying the intended referent proves impossible, provides insights concerning howpeople recontextualize textual language and how the authors of these texts adaptedthe form of their messages in response to the modality used.

Despite their semantic instability, shifters, including person markers, do have atleast some constant referential meaning (Jakobson 1990[1957]:132). Speakers drawfrom a repertoire of “coherent schematizations of action and experience,” structures ofknowledge about the world that William Hanks (1990:78) calls frames. With regard topersonal reference, or participant deixis, frames might include information about whowould be involved in a particular type of interaction, and how persons can be clearlyindexed in a given situation. In real life, however, frames are never enacted exactly.Experience is unavoidably dynamic, and frames are simply normative resources thatcan be used to engage creatively with other humans. It is therefore useful to maintaina clear distinction between frames as an abstraction and the concrete, creative instan-tiation of frames in real interactions, which Hanks (1990) refers to as frameworks:“emergent formations that happen in the process of communication . . . [and] belongto the order of actual activity as it takes place” (Hanks 1990:79).

In a very real sense, each framework is unique and always changing. Therefore, inorder for communication to take place in a given framework, the indexical relationsbetween the referents and the code must be apparent. Participant reference is crucialin this process, since it is the “indexical zero point” (Hanks 1990:141) which providesthe orientation from which all other indexical relations can be interpreted. To com-municate that starting point successfully, however, both the speaker (or author) andthe addressee must either share a common frame of reference or be able to relate tothe same frame. Otherwise, even the most cautious employment of a frame within aframework will fail.

This paper will use the corpus of Maya hieroglyphic texts from the Classic Period(ca. AD 250–900) as a case study to explore the ways in which non-third personreference in written texts can establish and maintain indexical links to the intendedreferent, even when the original context and principal authors of the text are longgone. These texts provide an ideal context for such an investigation because of theiroften intimate intertwining with accompanying non-linguistic imagery. They are alsointeresting because the temporal and cultural separation between the context of thetexts’ creation and the present day, post-colonial context in which they are beinginterpreted means that much of the extra-textual environment in which these textswere composed is irretrievable. Maya hieroglyphic texts typically contextualize non-third person referents either by anchoring them linguistically, through quotativephrases that specify the non-third person referent, or by visually connecting non-thirdperson texts to the accompanying imagery. In some cases, however, non-third personreferents are found in contexts with no clear accompanying imagery. These texts areintriguing examples of how person reference can find anchors outside of the text.

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Pronouns as Shifters

The meanings of pronouns, like so much of language, are interwoven with the contextin which those pronouns occur and the backdrop of other texts in which they havebeen used. The same is true to some degree of all linguistic signs. Some linguistictypes have a great deal of descriptive content that is constant in every instantiation (ortoken) of the type and largely independent of the context of its expression. However,the constant, unchanging referential content of first and second person pronominalsigns is a context for the expression of the sign itself—a participant frame—in this casethe relationship between some person and the utterance or message in which thepronoun occurs. The referent of “you” in English changes depending on who isspeaking. But it will always imply a particular frame, namely, a verbal interactioninvolving at least two participants, in which someone is both speaking to and talkingabout the other. The stable meaning of “you” is not a person, but an interactivecontext (Benveniste 1971:218–222).

Roman Jakobson (1990[1957]) referred to this category of signs as “duplex”because, as Michael Silverstein (1976:33) noted, shifters have both a referential(descriptive) function and an indexical one. The descriptive content of these indexicalsigns is a particular feature of the context of the utterance, and in many cases theactual usage of these signs seems to be “the very medium through which the relevantaspect of the context is made to “exist” (Silverstein 1976:34). This is especially clear inthe case of non-third person pronouns, which delimit the “personae of the speechevent itself” (Silverstein 1976:34). The use of pronouns such as “we” or “I” instead of“you” or “they” effectively assigns the conversational roles and organizes the rela-tionships of the speech event in which those pronouns occur. The use of pronouns notonly reflects the context of their use but also helps to construct that context.

This constructive power of pronouns can include or exclude, affirm solidarity ormaintain social distance (e.g., Brown and Gilman 1968). Languages differ consider-ably in the indexical and referential properties of their formal systems of pronouns.Likewise, language speakers can vary much in terms of the frames from which theyengineer their interactions. Many languages distinguish honorific forms of pronomi-nal reference in the second person, ranging from a simple dichotomy between formaland informal (as with Spanish, German, Welsh, and other Indo-European languages)to complex and highly stratified systems of personal reference, with significant impli-cations for social interaction (see, e.g., Wallace 1983 for a discussion of pronominalusage in Indonesia).

Yet distinctions of social class or level of formality are largely secondary to theprimary function of pronouns, which is to designate person—the relationships ofvarious nominal referents to the text. Perhaps the most basic distinction here isbetween third person and non-third person. Third person pronouns can index bothextra-textual referents and intra-textual referents, or anaphors. Non-third personpronouns cannot function as anaphors. Thus, they, more than third person pronouns,always require a context outside of the immediate message. The implications of thisfact are further developed below.

Another central distinction made in person is the contrast between the speakeror author of the message, along with any other individuals included in that socialrole, and those who are not included within the boundaries of that category—aboundary, again, often drawn through pronominal usage in the act of speakingor writing. The Mayan language Mam has a novel pronominal system in whichone set of person markers, which precede the verb, are used to contrast the speaker(first person) with non-speakers (second and third person), while another set ofmorphemes, which follow the verb, serve to contrast participants in the speech act(first and second person) with those not immediately involved (third person;England 1983:56–58). This system of reference explodes the usual triadic presenta-tion of person and reveals the two binary oppositions that form the category ofperson.

Reading in Context E25

The subject of this study, the language of Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions,has a more cross-linguistically typical system of personal reference, with threepersons indicated by distinct forms for both singular and plural. A third personmarker u- (y- before vowels) was identified early on. First and second person pro-nouns eluded detection in the glyphic corpus until collaborative work by David Stuartand Stephen Houston led to the recognition of the majority of the pronominal para-digm in the 1990s (see Stuart 1993; Stuart, Houston, and Robertson 1999). Like mostMayan languages, Classic Mayan (also referred to as “Classic Ch’olti’an”; Houstonet al. 2000; cf. Mora-Marín 2009) was an ergative language, and had two different setsof pronouns, one used to reference the agent of transitive verbs, and the possessor ofnoun phrases (called “Set A” or “ergative” pronouns), and another used to referencethe patient of transitive verbs, as well as the subject of intransitive verbs and stativepredicates (called “Set B” or “absolutive” pronouns). The ergative pronouns areprefixes and have both prevocalic and preconsonantal allomorphs. Absolutive pro-nouns are suffixes, or possibly post-clitics. The forms of these two sets of pronounsare given in Table 1 (ergative) and Table 2 (absolutive). Forms preceded by an asteriskare unattested, and the form given in such cases is reconstructed using comparativedata from related languages. Forms preceded by a question mark have been tenta-tively identified in the glyphic corpus, but are in unclear, incomplete, or otherwiseproblematic contexts.

As these tables show, there is an underlying difference between third person andnon-third person implicit in these paradigms, since number is only obligatorilyexpressed in first and second person. A plural suffix -o’b can be used to specifyplurality for both ergative and absolutive referents, but it was never used withinanimates and was optional and rare even with animates.

Texts and Contexts

Until this point, the paper has skirted the fundamental issue of textuality. It is aninescapable and significant fact that the subject and vehicle for presenting this paper

Table 1The Ergative Pronouns in Maya Hieroglyphic Texts

___C Singular Plural

1st Person ni-4 ?ka-5

2nd Person a-6 *i-3rd Person u-

___V Singular Plural

1st Person w-7 ?k-8

2nd Person aw-9 *iw-3rd Person y-

Table 2The Absolutive Pronouns in Maya Hieroglyphic Texts

Singular Plural

1st Person -een10 ?-o’n11

2nd Person ?-at/?-eet12 *-eex/ *-ox3rd Person -Ø


is written text, not the spoken language that has been the implicit (or occasionallyexplicit) object of study by many of the scholars who have articulated the theoreticalunderpinnings of the present work (e.g., Hanks 1990; Jakobson 1990[1957]; Silverstein1976).

Yet it is the written text that best illuminates the processes involved incontextualizing language. Roman Jakobson opened his discussion of shifters with thesimple but profound observation that “a message sent by its addresser must beadequately perceived by its receiver. . . . The more closely the addressee approximatesthe code used by the addresser, the higher is the amount of information obtained”(Jakobson 1990[1957]:130). This is true in both spoken and written contexts, but theprocesses involved in specifying and negotiating that shared code can be markedlydifferent in written contexts than what has been observed for spoken linguisticinteraction (Chafe and Tannen 1987).

A good starting point for contrasting spoken language and texts in terms of themedium used is their respective durability. Spoken language, unless “inscribed”through any number of means of recording (and thereby converted into audio/visual“text”), is fleeting. Written language, on the other hand, is much more permanent.Even a text written in the condensation of a steamy bathroom mirror exists manytimes longer than the sound waves of spoken language.

One consequence of the durability of text is that it can be separated from the“psychology of its author” (Ricoeur 1973) and from the context of its production. Theidentity and intentions of the author may prove evanescent, as may any extra-textualreferents found in the text. These may include deictics, such as “this” and “that,” andother linguistic shifters, like personal pronouns. These instabilities are especiallyproblematic for non-third person reference, since, unlike third person pronouns (i.e.,anaphors), first and second person pronouns can only index extra-textual referents. Inpoint of fact, though, the simple descriptive or referential content of a written messagedepends for its interpretability on higher order contextual information: commonframes. Without this broader cultural context, the meaning of a text, no matter howapparently self-contained, will not be retrievable. Indeed, intrinsic in those frames arevariable, and ideologically motivated assumptions about the very issues we deal withhere: ideas about authorship and audience, who produces and who accesses texts, andwhy. Such theories of literacy, with all of their implications for recipient design, canvary considerably across social and historic contexts (Street 1985).

Anticipating the rupture between a text and its context of production, authorsdraw on these models of the text and employ a number of processes and strategies inwriting to address that rupture. Text-recipient design is a creative and productiveprocess on the part of the author that requires constructing an imagined audience forthe text, then supplying the appropriate form for that audience (Ong 1975). Unlikeverbal interactions, a text can engage in multiple and varied interactional events overthe span of its existence, each event generating its own interpretive framework. Whilethe author might not ultimately control the fate of his or her creation, the format andcontent of the text reflects the imagined purpose and audiences for that work. Unlikeactual real-time interaction, the frame selected by the author of a text cannot neces-sarily be constantly revised and updated to respond to the actions of fellow partici-pants. But in composing a text, the author must anticipate not only the personae whowill be accessing the message, but the context of that access—not just who will readthe text, but where they will read it, and why.

Conversely, the recipient or interpreter of the text also actively (re)constructs theauthor of the text, either by simply assuming a certain identity, or by inferring thatidentity from the form and content of the message, and its relationship to other texts.A crucial point here is that, just as the form of the message will depend to a greatextent on the imagined audience of the text, so the interpretation of the message willdepend ultimately on the reader’s construction of the author. Thus, both the produc-tion and the interpretation of written works are interactive, dialogical processes(Bakhtin 1981). The author engages in an imagined dialogue with the anticipated


audience, while the reader engages with the imagined author of a work in the processof interpretation.

Constructing Context

The following sections consider the issues of text, context, and indexical referencethrough a close analysis of the use of non-third person reference in the corpus of Mayahieroglyphic texts. As discussed above, non-third person pronouns, which prototypi-cally index participants in a speech act, are particularly context-dependent andcontext-defining, but entextualization disconnects a message from its creator and thecontext of its creation. That disconnect, however, is not usually total. Minimally, thesurrounding text is itself a context for a particular section of the whole. Additionally,the medium in which the text is fixed provides an important ground for interpretingthe message. Referents within the body of the text can anchor third person referentsanaphorically. First and second person, however, must have referents that areextra-textual.

The scribal authors of Maya hieroglyphic texts not only considered context at thetime of composition, but imagined the likely future contexts of their work andemployed several strategies to ensure that non-third person indexes remainedanchored to a clear extra-textual referent. Perhaps the most common such strategywas to permanently connect the relevant extra-textual context with the text. Forexample, on ceramic vessels, inscribed shells, and some monumental texts, figuraldepictions of non-third person referents are often found compositionally adjacent tothe personal pronouns that index them and form part of the same work. Several goodexamples of this can be found on Piedras Negras Panel 3 (Figure 1), a bas-relief courtscene of nobles and servants gathered around the central figure of the Piedras Negras

Figure 1A winakeen, Yop Ak’ “I am your servant, Yop?.” Example of spoken text by image.

Piedras Negras Panel 3. Drawing by Alexandre Safronov


king, seated on his massive, bench-like, stone throne. The scene is visually framed bya hieroglyphic inscription, written in the third person, which recounts historicalevents including what may be the same royal feast depicted on the panel. Interspersedthroughout the scene are short hieroglyphic captions that, from their position, and theuse of first and second person pronouns, are certain to be quoted statements fromseveral figures in the scene. Such quotations provide more detailed information aboutthe relationships among the persons depicted than would ordinarily be included instandard, third person narratives. One such caption, located adjacent to one of severalseated figures at the bottom of the scene, reads a-winak-een Yop? erg2sg-servant-abs1sg Yop? “I am your servant, Yop?,” apparently an expression of fealty from one ofthe seated servants (Stuart, Houston, and Robertson 1999:II-19).

The placement of the text relative to the participants in the scene allows us somesense of the framework in which the various participants are arranged relative to themessage.

In some cases, the text is even more explicitly connected to the accompanyingimagery by means of a “speech scroll,” a thin line visually connecting the “spoken”text to the mouth of the speaker (Houston et al. 2006:163, 228). Like speech bubbles inmodern day comic strips, this scroll serves as a sort of extra-linguistic first personmarker, indexing a figure as the addresser in the recorded interaction. An excellentexample of this strategy for linking text to context is the so-called “Rabbit Pot”(Fig. 2). This richly painted Late Classic ceramic vessel includes two scenes withspeech scrolls, both involving an aged lord of the underworld, known in the literatureas “God L.” In one of these scenes, shown in Figure 2, God L almost grovels before themighty figure of the Sun God, seated on a jaguar pelt throne on top of a zoomorphichill. His arms are folded, with hands on shoulders in a show of humility and sub-servience, and his head is raised slightly with his mouth open, clearly addressing thebeing seated above him. The Sun God also interacts with God L, since his right handis extended toward him, with the palm down. A scrolling line connects both figuresto two separate glyphic texts, indicating explicitly what voice is animating eachwritten statement. The text includes several first person markers, including

Figure 2Speech Scrolls. The “Rabbit Pot,” K1398


ni-w-uuh?, ni-buhk, ni-pata(n) “my jewelry?, my clothing, my tribute” (Beliaev andDavletshin 2006; Stuart 1993; Stuart, Houston, and Robertson 1999:II-21).

But Maya scribes were not limited to supplying context by use of visual icono-graphic cues. In some instances, additional texts, rather than visual grounds, wereused to frame the quoted speech. The framing discourse is linguistically separatedfrom the “spoken” text, allowing it to be seen as extra-textual material available as ananchor for non-third person referents. This framing of text within a text is accom-plished in English convention with quotatives, like “She said,” as well as the visualcue of quotation marks, further separating the spoken segment as a text within a text.In the glyphic language, the linguistic context for a non-third person index is oftenestablished with the “quotative” che’, or its phrase-final allomorphs che’een andcheheen “he/she/it says” (Grube 1998).2 In some contexts, these quotatives establishrhetorical distance between an inscription as a physical object and its content. In thelatter case, che’ and its variants “quote” either the inscriptions in which they appear(e.g. che’een tu baak, “so it says on his bone,” on an incised bone [MT167] from Burial190 at Tikal) or the artists who produced them (e.g., cheheen aj tz’ib, “so says thescribe,” on a Late Classic polychrome vessel [K1775]). Perhaps more often, they referto other texts: one-time utterances, conventional or mythological speeches, or inscrip-tions. Such quotative texts thus assume some familiarity on the part of their readerswith the original contexts of the quoted passages, and bespeak the essentiallyintertextual, “double-voiced” nature of quotation (Bakhtin 1981).

An interesting example of the latter use can be seen on the so-called “Papagayo”altar from Copan. The altar is an Early Classic inscribed stone step commissioned bythe fourth ruler of Copan, Tuun K’ab Hix, and placed in front of a large, preexistingstela as part of a rededication event (Stuart 2004). The stone is broken and eroded andsections of the text are missing, but in the brief surviving text there are at leastfour non-third person referents, including a-k’uh-uul “your god,” w-ajaw-aal “mylord,” u-mam-at “you are his ancestor,” and a-kab-ch’e’n “your territory?” (lit. “yourearth-cave” or possibly “your earth, your cave,” depending on how the passage isinterpreted).

What is relevant about this text is that the long series of non-third person referentsare not connected to any accompanying imagery by speech scrolls or any similardevice. Nor is there an accompanying scene, on the surviving portions of the altarthat depicts the moment of speech. Rather, we learn the referent, the “first person” ofthe text, from the expression che’een Tuun K’ab Hix, “so says Tuun K’ab Hix,” thefourth ruler of Copan. The particle che’een not only provides a ground for interpretingthe first person reference in the text, but also provides information about the sourceof the language itself. Specifically, this text at least purports to be a permanent recordof an oration, a speech event, that occurred at a particular time and place. How thisappropriation and re-entextualization relates to the various social roles involved inthe original speech event (a topic which we will return to below), and indeedwhether or not the quoted speech event actually occurred, we cannot know.However, che’een explicitly asserts both the identity of the linguistic first person, andinformation about the original context of the text’s performance, assertions thatare crucial for understanding the altar text, particularly the first and second-personreferences.

In several cases, both a verbal/linguistic frame and adjacent iconography areused to make the intended referents of the non-third person pronouns absolutelyexplicit. While the intertextual quotative che’een is used to frame spoken languagewithin the context of a larger discourse, the quotative phrase y-ala-j-iiy “his/her/itssaying”?, a morphologically unclear phrase based on the stem ala “to say,” is gen-erally used to frame quoted speech that accompanies a depiction of the speechevent. In these contexts, the position of the text with relation to the imagery, as wellas the linguistic frame created by the quotative, anchor the indexical referents ofnon-third person pronouns. One well-known example of this can be seen on aceramic vessel discovered in Burial 196 from Tikal, the so-called “Hummingbird


Vessel” (Fig. 4). This vessel has two scenes depicting a rather anthropomorphichummingbird conversing with the old deity, “God D.” Each scene includes a briefhieroglyphic caption which ends with the phrase y-ala-j-iiy tz’unu(n) ti “God D,”erg3-say-?-PST hummingbird “said the hummingbird to God D.” Not all of the textis transparent in meaning, but at least one key phrase is clear: a-wi-chi-NALwa-wa-IL aw-ichnal w-a[j]w-aal erg2-LOC[front] erg1sg-lord-POS “before you, mylord” (Houston and Stuart 1993). Here again, we have both a first person reference(my lord) and a second person reference (before you). While it would be clear fromthe accompanying scene, the text explicitly names both the first and second personin the recorded speech event, the hummingbird, and the aged deity, God D (Stuart,Houston, and Robertson 1999:44).

Figure 3Example of quotative/non-third person text without image. Copan Papagayo altar.

Drawing by David Stuart

Figure 4Example of y-ala-j-iiy quotative. The “Hummingbird Vessel,” K8008. Drawing by

Virginia Greene. Used with permission of the University of Pennsylvania MuseumArchives


Authority and the Text: The Use of First Person

Several monumental texts are remarkable in their lack of overt and obvious contex-tual “anchors,” such as quotative frames or accompanying imagery. In some cases,this lack of obvious anchors is likely the result of the pieces’ removal from originalcontext or the loss or destruction of too much of that context (e.g., Copan Stela49). Other carvings or texts, now missing, might well have provided such cues.However, in other cases, the lack of explicit grounding of the reference seems tohave more to do with the referent being indexed. An inscribed step at the entranceto Temple 22 of Copan makes frequent use of first person markers, but has nospeech scrolls or quotatives to anchor the text (Stuart 1992). The accompanyingimagery, while ornate, does not embody the “voice” of the text, but is more cosmo-logical in nature.

The lack of careful contextualization of reference in texts like this suggests that theauthors of these texts felt the intended referents of “I” or “you” to be obvious andunambiguous to their intended audience. The anticipated frame would include infor-mation about the identity of the referent. Obviously, not every resident of Copanwould have understood the ungrounded first person referent, but the creator(s) of thetext apparently felt that the referent would be apparent to enough people, or at leastenough of the “right” people, to make further specification unnecessary.

Silverstein (1976:39) observed that using plural pronominal forms as formalhonorifics, a common practice across languages, as well as such related phenomenaas the use of the “royal we,” serve to increase the “social weight” of the individualby stretching the conventional expression of number. The monumental anduncontexualized use of “I” also increases the “social weight” of the intended referentby shedding the ordinary assumption of the shifting and impermanent meaning of“I.” The assertion appears to be that the speaker, like the monument itself, is of lastingsignificance, and in some sense, the location of the text within a particular temple, ora particular city, was considered adequate context for interpretation.

Another relevant issue in such “proclamatory” texts is that of authorship in theuse of first person reference. Erving Goffman (1981:167) draws a useful distinctionin spoken language among the animator of an utterance, the individual who actuallyvoices the message; the author of the message, who is the person composing thewords of the message; and the principal, the person who authorizes the messageand is socially responsible for its content. Goffman suggests that, in speech, thesethree roles in relation to the speech act often belong to one and the same person,but that there are cases where they separate. Without much imagination, this divi-sion can be extended to glyphic script simply by labeling the scribe as the animator.In texts with explicit quotatives, such as the “Papagayo” altar text discussed above(Fig. 3), the assertion made by that quotative is that the first person referent in thetext is both the principal and the author of the text, and presumably, that at onetime that individual also acted as animator of the text. For texts without an explicitquotative, and no other quotative conventions, such as speech scrolls, there is nosuch implication. In the text at the entrance to Copan Temple 22 (Fig. 5), by currentunderstanding of the workings of scribes and royalty, it is quite unlikely that theking—indexed in the first person text from Copan Temple 22—was the animator ofthis message. In fact, although the precise wording of these inscriptions may havebeen the king’s doing, his authorship cannot be confirmed. Instead, the use of firstperson reference in royal monumental inscriptions asserts the king’s authority asprincipal to the text, making the royal presence and sponsorship of the messageunavoidable.

Imagining Context—a Problem of Interpretation

In the following section, we will use one particularly problematic case—a portion ofthe west panel of the Tablet of the Inscriptions from Palenque—to investigate in more


detail the processes of interpretation available to modern scholars attempting todecipher the intended reference of pronominal shifters like “I” and “you.” The Tabletof the Inscriptions, a continuous text inscribed on three fairly well preserved panelshoused in a shrine atop the funerary pyramid of the great Palenque king K’inichJanahb Pakal, is one of the longest surviving texts in the corpus of Maya hieroglyphicinscriptions. The text covers several different historical topics, including descriptionsof various rituals that were performed at several points in history, but it particularlyfocuses on ritual events in the life of K’inich Janahb Pakal, who was dead at the timethat this text was created. The majority of the text is written in the third-personnarrative voice that is typical of Maya hieroglyphic texts. However, for three sen-tences, at the beginning of the west panel (the last panel in the sequence), the textshifts into second person reference, and the aspect/mood marking on the verbs shiftsto an optative form. The text then returns to the usual third person referents andunmarked (likely incompletive) narrative aspect/mood.

All three passages are unanchored to external referents: they lack explicitquotatives, and the sentences occur within a much longer text that lacks accompa-nying imagery. The structure in which the three panels of this text are found doeshave several anthropomorphic figures on piers and jambs in the entrance, but thereis no obvious reason to suppose that any of these figures is the intended speaker oraddressee of the text. The passages under scrutiny immediately follow a section oftext that names certain rituals, performed by none other than K’inich Janahb Pakal,and states that those rituals “pleased the hearts” of certain deities. The three non-third person passages continue this theme of “pleasing hearts.” The first phrase(Fig. 6) reads:

Oratory Phrase 1 (West Panel, B8-B12):10-AJAW 8-YAX-K’IN CHUM[[mu]-TUUN]-ni i-chi na-i-ki u ti-mi je-la a-OHL-la

Lajuun Ajaw Waxak Yaxk’in chum-tuun i chi na’ik10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in seat-stone then go OPTu-tihm-j-eel a(w)ohlerg3-please[PASS]-PASS-NOM erg2sg-heart“10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in, the stone-seating [i.e., period-ending], then, may the pleasing of your

heart (have) take(n) place.”

Figure 5Example of ungrounded first person. Copan Temple 22. Drawing by Linda Schele


The first ambiguity of person reference in this phrase involves a third personanaphorical reference, as well as non-third person deixis problems. The first clause ofthe passage, 10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in, a date in the 52 year “Calendar Round” could beinterpreted as a temporal adverbial phrase specifying the date on which the subse-quent event takes place. However, the immediately preceding passage ends with apossessed noun u-k’uh-uul “his/her/its/their god(s)” (Zender 2004:259). This phraseleads to ambiguity in anaphorical reference, since the third person possessivepronoun u- here could reference the following noun phrase, meaning that the godspertained to the date 10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in. However, since the topic of that precedingphrase, and indeed most of the Tablet of the Inscriptions, is K’inich Janahb Pakal, it isalso possible to interpret Pakal himself as the referent of the third person possessivepronoun (Guenter 2007:40), and the possessor of the gods, placing the period-endingdate in the following clause.

The distinctive features of the passage above are the abrupt shift from plainindicative mood and all third person reference, to a second person reference (a[w]-ohl “your heart”), and an extremely rare usage of an optative particle na’ik, first

Figure 6Palenque Temple of the Inscriptions, Oratory Phrase 1. Drawing by Nicholas Carter


identified by John Robertson (p.c.). Assuming that the dates mentioned referencesignificant period endings, 10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in would be the period ending for9.12.0.0.0 (June 26, AD 672), the same date described in detail in the immediatelypreceding section.

The use of the optative particle na’ik in conjunction with a second person pronounis surely not accidental, as the indirect and unassuming sense of optative statementsare a common way to show respect and deference to an important interlocutor inmany languages. The central problem of this passage, however, is determining who isbeing addressed. This problem only continues as we proceed to the subsequentpassage (Fig. 7), which reads as follows:



Oratory Phrase 2 (West Panel C1-D6)8-AJAW 8-IHK’-AT CHUM[mu]-TUUN-ni i-chi-ki u-ti-mi o-OHL-la ch’a-ho-mata-ma-ta-wi AJAW-wa ta-BAAK-la a-k’a-no-ma a-?-li

Waxak Ajaw Waxak Ihk’at (Wo) chum-tuun i chi-k8 Ajaw 8 Wo seat-stone then go-OPTu-tim-ohl ch’ahoom ta matwii(l) ajaw ta baakeelerg3-please-heart ch’ahoom prep Matwiil lord prep Baakeela-k’anoom? a-??erg2sg?-?? erg2sg?-??“8 Ajaw 8 Wo, the period ending, then it will happen the heart-pleasing of the ch’ahoom of

Matwiil, of the Lord of Baakeel, your k’anoom?, your ??.”

In this phrase, two unclear terms make it difficult to determine if there is in facta second person reference. The initial date is a future one, the 9.13.0.0.0 periodending (March 13, AD 692), and indeed the main verb of the phrase displays a rareoptative/future form with the suffix -ik. The spellings a-k’a-no-ma and a-?-li bothhave the appearance of second person markers, and are visually parallel with clearsecond person markers in the following sentence, discussed below, but both con-structions are unique and therefore difficult to interpret. As Zender (2010:13) hasrecently suggested, for instance, a-k’a-no-ma could be ak’noom, a future or agentiveform of the verb ak’ “to give,” with the /a/ spelling the first letter of the root. Theagentive title ak’noom, “giver,” is attested on a Late Classic hieroglyphic panellooted from Cancuen, Guatemala. That text, however, records the verbal rootlogographically: a-AK’-no-ma. The Palenque spelling, being purely phonetic, ismore ambiguous. The next glyph block (a-?-li) also begins with a. While it is notcertain that a records the second person singular ergative pronoun in these spell-ings, that is a plausible interpretation given the use of other second person pro-nouns in the same part of the text. One possibility is that they cue “your k’anoom(harvester?), your ??.”

The couplet ch’ajoom ta Matwil, ajaw ta Baakeel “The Ch’ajoom in Matwil, the Lord inBaakeel” is a clear reference to K’inich Janahb Pakal, since Matwil and Baakeel are twoterms used in reference to the Palenque kingdom and its rulers. It is somewhat lessclear whether Pakal is the agent of the “heart-pleasing” event, or its beneficiary. Byanalogy with similar constructions, such as u-tz’ap-tuun “his/her stone planting”(referring to the erecting of a stela), or u-k’al-hu’n “his/her paper wrapping” (refer-ring to the tying of a bark-paper crown as part of an accession ritual), we will assumethat he is the agent. If this is the case, it implies that in the previous section, Pakal wasnot the addressee, since he is not the person whose heart is being pleased, but the oneperforming the heart-pleasing.3

Oratory Phrase 3 (West Panel C7-D10)7-AJAW 18-CHAK-AT i-chi-ki u-ti-mi-o-OHL-la ta-te?-ma 5-?-ni a-po-poa-TZ’AM-ma

Wuuk Ajaw Waxaklajuun Chakat (Sip) i chi-k u-tim-ohl7 Ajaw 18 Sip then go-OPT erg3-please-heartta teem? ho’ ?n a-pohp a-tz’amprep bench 5 ?? erg2sg-mat erg2sg-throne“7 Ajaw 18 Sip, then may the heart pleasing happen on the seat, the five ??, your mat, your

throne.”

The third oratory phrase (Fig. 8) also refers to the future: the Calendar Round datewith which it opens, 7 Ajaw 18 Sip, denotes the Long Count date 10.0.0.0.0 (March 9,A.D. 830), the upcoming bak’tun ending at the time the text was written. The finalcouplet includes two second person markers in the possessed nouns a-pohp a-tz’am“your mat, your throne.” Their position is parallel to the two final glyphs of thepreceding phrase, another thread of evidence that the a syllables in that case are, infact, the second person ergative pronoun a-, and not simply phonetic spellings of


vowel-initial roots. The biggest difficulty in this passage is the material that intervenesbetween u-tim-ohl “his/her/its heart-pleasing,” and the second person couplet. Thisappears to include a prepositional phrase, possibly ta teem “on the seat,” and anothercollocation composed of the numeral ho’ “five” and an undeciphered glyph (perhapsbe) with a ni phonetic complement. Either this collocation is a synonym of te?-ma(teem?, “seat”?), and therefore also part of the prepositional phrase, or else, parallel tothe preceding passage, it names the agent of the heart-pleasing event.

The text goes on, jumping from distant future events to contemporary events, andeven events in the deep past, but in no other section of the text do we find secondperson markers. Though not distinguished from the surrounding text by visualconventions like layout, design, or glyphic form, the second person forms in thesethree phrases, as well as the distinctive optative verbal forms (which are also absentelsewhere in the inscription) clearly demarcate these three sentences as linguisticallydistinct. Their visual and thematic integration into the rest of the text, however, givethe impression that these passages were considered part of the same text, and afforduseful insight into the perceived audience of even the most general historical texts. Inthe case of the Tablet of Inscriptions, the second person references reveal that theperceived audience of this text was a specific (single) entity. Like the ungrounded firstperson referents mentioned earlier, the addressee’s identity must have been cultur-ally obvious enough that no explicit mention of it was seen as necessary. The presenceof a specific referent changes our interpretation of the text from a ritual history tosomething more like ritual supplicative language.

But who was the intended addressee in these texts? Who was being supplicated?One proposal, based on analogy with modern religious practices, is that the



addressee is a deity. In modern Mayan communities it is fairly common for ritualspeech to be directed to deities or ancestors. However, the form of the person markerstells us that the addressee is a single entity, not multiple deities, and even if theaddressee is a god, there are no clues from modern analogy or any other source tosuggest who that specific deity would be.

Another possibility is that the text addresses an ancestor, most likely K’inichJanahb Pakal, the topic of the majority of the Tablet of the Inscriptions text. To evaluatethat proposal, we move to intra-textual considerations. Unlike anaphor, intra-textualclues about first and second person pronouns do not necessarily involve the mostrecent mention. Explicit third person mention of an individual within the text isevidence against that person’s role as addressee. The frequent third person referencesto Pakal in the Tablet of the Inscriptions text reduce the chances that the secondperson referent is Pakal himself. It is otherwise difficult to understand the sporadicswitch from a second person in the first phrase of the oratory passage to an overtlymarked third person reference in the second phrase, and then an immediate return tosecond person. In addition, as mentioned above, at one point, Pakal is clearly thesemantic agent of the activity, heart-pleasing, that is the topic of these passages, whilethe addressee is the semantic beneficiary of this activity. Changes in footing arecertainly possible, and such may well be the case for the second-person section as awhole, though the intricate inter-clausal dance that Pakal-as-addressee would implyseems excessively complex.

An additional possibility would involve a vocative mention of the addressee.Mayan languages do not have case, and, in the language of the hieroglyphs, thevocative form of noun phrases is the same as the third person form. This can lead toambiguities in interpretation. For example, one possible analysis of these phrases is tounderstand the period endings themselves as the addressees. Cycles of time, andeven specific positions in the calendar, are often treated, in art and texts, as almostanimate entities, or even deities (one might consider the parallel character in our ownculture of December 7, 1941; September 11, 2001, and other “date[s] which . . . live ininfamy”). The interpretation of a specific date as the addressee of the text, then, workswell in the cultural context. It seems to fit for the first phrase, where the ergativepronoun is affixed to “heart,” making it clear that the addressee is receiving theaction. In this case, the preceding date could be analyzed as a vocative. In the otherphrases, it is less clear how a personified date might be involved. In the third phrase,the addressee is mentioned as the owner of a seat of office or throne. While monthsigns are occasionally modified by chum, the positional root for “sit,” it is unclear whatthe seat of a day would be. What is clear, however, is that the author(s) of this text, feltthe referent to be clear and obvious. The difficulty, it seems, lies in our incompleteunderstanding of too many of the relevant details of Classic Maya life, and theintertextual background for this unusual text, details that would have been part of thegeneral body of common knowledge among the Classic Maya.

Conclusion: Person Reference and Genre in the Hieroglyphs

A survey of non-third person reference in the corpus of Classic Mayan hieroglyphicinscriptions has brought out several different contexts in which such referenceoccurs, each with distinctive strategies for linking the pronominal reference to a clearground for interpretation. While these cases can be categorized in a variety of ways,perhaps the most basic distinction is between those cases in which the text is pre-sented as a record of a specific speech event—a transcription of what was said before,or what was imagined to have been said—and those cases in which the text is not apresented as a transcription of a speech event, but is itself the primary text. Such textsare not records of events, and are not properly events at all, but artifacts, in that theydo not “happen.” Rather they are made, and exist, without indexical links to anyparticular (real or imagined) speech event.


Those texts that are presented as records of prior speech events can be labeledquoted texts. Quoted texts re-create and reentextualize a specific framework, a par-ticular event. They are one step removed from a direct text because, despite theirtextuality, they claim to project and index another moment in time. They commemo-rate a framework. For diverse motives and surely with varying degrees of conformityto “what really happened,” the author who employs a quoted text pretends to docu-ment the particulars of an event. One of the most salient features of these quoted textsis their specificity. Such cases are generally explicitly anchored to their indexicalreferents and to the events that they commemorate. Without such explicit indexing,the necessary specificity would be lost. This anchoring can be done linguistically, byembedding the quoted material within the descriptive frame of a larger text with theparticle che’een. It can be done visually, by attaching the spoken word to the speakerby means of a speech scroll or through the judicious placement of the text relative tothe accompanying scene. In some cases, both methods are used, generally with thequotative phrase y-ala-j-iiy.

Those texts that do not record events might be called direct texts. They, more thanquoted texts, illustrate the consequences of textuality because they do not record aframework of a prior event, but a frame. The salient feature of direct texts is theirgenerality. They are not tethered to a particular moment in time, not records of a prioror imagined speech event, but instead are atemporal. In third person texts, the authorand addressee become similarly unspecified. Because of this lack of specificity,however, first and second person reference, when used, have very distinctive conse-quences. The text remains timeless, but the participant is forced to be present in theinterpretation: they “project themselves from the current context [in this case, thecontext of the text’s creation] into a narrated one” (Hanks 1990:137). Within thatnarrated text, the voice of the author can only have a specific identity if that identityis embedded in the schematic frame for interpretation that will accessed by theintended audience. Since frames are forged through habit and experience, only indi-viduals with the necessary salience to become the stereotype, the default, can besuccessfully drawn into the text through non-third person reference. Such genericknowledge is context that can be read into the text, but only if the reader’s frame ofreference overlaps sufficiently with that of the author.

In this paper, we have explored how observations from contemporary linguisticanthropological theory about the dynamic workings of deixis in ongoing interactionscan be applied to a superficially static, almost fossilized data set. Particularly relevantis the pragmatically potent concept of “shifters,” such as first and second personpronouns. One outcome of this study has been to highlight the relevance of inferredgeneric norms of interpretation in the process of reading meaning into texts. Themodel of textuality and literacy assumed by both author and reader, whether acontemporary participant or an unanticipated interloper, are brought to bear in theproduction and interpretation of a text. Those models can be painfully inadequatewhen, as in the case presented here, the reader is millennia removed from the socialand ideological context of a text’s creation. In such extremes, the process of readingcontext back into a text, something that often goes unnoticed when faced with morefamiliar material, is made visible, open to scrutiny, and able to offer insights into ourdynamic reading of even the most rigid contemporary texts.

Notes

1. A reasonably complete list of first and second person references in the corpus of Mayahieroglyphic inscriptions is included in an appendix to this paper.

2. Nikolai Grube (1998) identified the quotative function of che’ (che), che’een (che-’e-na), andcheheen (che-he-na) and proposed that they are allomorphs all meaning “he/she/it says” or “itis said.” Kerry Hull, Michael Carrasco, and Robert Wald (Hull et al. 2009:36–37, note 9) proposedthat che’een and cheheen are made up of a root che’ and the first person singular absolutive suffix-een, so that they should be read “I say.” We consider Grube’s interpretation more likely given the


contexts in which che’een and cheheen appear, but note that similar or cognate forms with bothmeanings appear in modern Ch’olan languages: Ch’orti’ cheh-en, “I said,” and Ch’ol che’en, “soit is said” (Wisdom 1950:698; Aulie and Aulie 1978:47; Grube 1998:549).

3. This proposal contrasts with the widely held view (i.e., Guenter 2007:41) that theaddressee of these sections is K’inich Janahb Pakal himself.

4. It has also been proposed that, following the form in Colonial Ch’olti’ (and in Yukatek),the spellings of this pronoun represent the innovative form in-, rather than the conservativeform ni-. But, apart from a very late form in the Landa manuscript, there are no phoneticspellings that explicitly support this idea (i.e., *i-ni-. . ., etc.). Texts with first person pre-consonantal ni- include: Copan Stela 49, Copan Temple 22 step, the “Rabbit Pot” (K1398), TheTikal “Mundo Perdido Vessel”, The “Parrot Shell” (K8885), the Cleveland Shell (Schele andMiller 1986:Plate 59), Palenque Tablet of the Scribe (A4), Palenque Tablet of the Orator (E4), andthe “Birth Vase” (K5113).

5. The contexts in which this pronoun is attested are somewhat opaque, with the clearestexamples from the Postclassic codices. Possible attestations include ka-ma-ma (ka-mam, “ourgrandfather”) in the Dresden Codex and ka-AJAW-wa (k-ajaw, “our lord”) and ka-K’UH(ka-k’uh, “our god”) in the Madrid Codex. Likely Classic-period attestations include ka-bu-la(ka-bu’l, “our beans”) on a polychrome ceramic vessel (K2914) and ka-CHAN-nu (ka-chana’n?,“our guardian”) in the auxiliary text of Piedras Negras Panel 3.

6. Examples of the second person ergative pre-consonantal are: Palenque Tablet of the Scribe(B1), Palenque Tablet of the Orator (B1), Copan Papagayo Altar (D2, Side: A2), Palenque Tabletof the Inscriptions-West Panel (discussed in detail in this paper), and an unprovenancedpainted vessel (Grube 1998:548, Fig. 6).

7. It has long been assumed (e.g., Kaufman and Norman 1984) that the Common Ch’olanform of this pronoun was the innovative *niw- or *inw-, and therefore that the glyphic language,as a descendent of proto-Ch’olan, would also have this form, though no examples of this exist.However, a consideration of the available data on Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages makes it clearthat the Common Mayan form w- continued in use among these languages until well after thebreakup of proto-Ch’olan. The confusion stems from the fact that in all of the Ch’olan-Tzeltalanlanguages except for Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’ (and the language of the hieroglyphs), the originalform of the first person singular was replaced with the form originally used to mark the plural(*k(a)-). Effectively, this makes it impossible to ascertain at what stage the Common Mayan formw- was replaced by the innovative form niw- ∼ inw-. There are several promising attestations ofvowel initial roots, spelled with an initial w- prefix, in texts with other clear non-third personreferents. Examples of the first person ergative prevocalic form include: Copan Temple 22 step(wi-IL-a), Copan Papagayo Altar (wa-AJAW-li), K550 (wu-bi), K793, K1092 (wi-IL-la), the TikalBurial 196 “Hummingbird Vessel” (K8008: wa-wa-li), and possibly K793 (wa-la-wa), thoughthis last is less clearly first person.

8. From comparative data, it is clear that, some time after the separation of proto-Ch’olan, theoriginal first person plural prevocalic from *k- was replaced by the innovative form kaw-. Thisis attested in Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’. However, we have no way of knowing if this change tookplace before or after the time of the glyphic texts. The existence of ka-AJAW-wa (k-ajaw, “ourlord”) in the Madrid Codex, could be an indication that the archaic form was still in use thehieroglyphic language.There are no known attestations of kaw- in the glyphic corpus.

9. Examples of the second person ergative prevocalic are rare. They include: the Humming-bird Vessel (K8008: a-wi-chi-NAL) and Palenque Temple XVIII Stuccos (a-wo-la). The PalenqueTemple of Inscriptions tablet has a spelling a-OHL-la a(w)-ohl “your heart,” but the /w/ is notexplicitly written, and it is not clear if this reflects actual pronunciation or an orthographicconvention.

10. The absolutive set of pronouns are even more unusual for first and second person thanthe ergative pronouns. The first person singular absolutive pronoun is clearly attested in onecase, in one of the auxiliary texts of Piedras Negras Panel 3 (a-wi-na-ke-na). Another case(hu-le-na) has been reported on Pomona panel 2, but derives from an erroneous drawing of thistext.

11. Unfortunately, none of the possible examples of the first person plural absolutive areclear. It appears to be attested on two ceramic vessels. In both cases, the root to which theapparent -o’n suffix is affixed is ambiguous. One is on an unprovenanced vessel labeledinformally the “Court vase” (wa-jo-ni; Boot 2008). Another possible attestation is found on theTablet of the Orator from Palenque (u-ba-jo?-ni?). The Palenque example can only be specula-tively interpreted: the glyph reconstructed as ni is obliterated, and the variant form interpretedhere as jo is also unclear.


12. The form of the second person singular absolutive suffix in Maya hieroglyphs is gener-ally held to be /-at/. However, the clearest attestation of this, on the Copan Papagayo altar(u-MAM-ta) does not explicitly spell out the vowel of the root. This form can also be seen atseveral points on the “Vomit Pot” (K6020). Two spellings on the “Court Vase” (he-ta, ?-ke-ta),however, suggest that the intended form here might actually be -eet, which agrees with theanticipated form based on comparative reconstructions of Common Ch’olan. The suffix is alsofound in the form of the independent pronoun ha’at attested on Piedras Negras Panel 3(ta-ha-’a-ta), Copan Stela 42, the “Rabbit Pot” (K1398), the “Vase of the 88 Glyphs” (K1440), theCleveland Shell (B2, Schele and Miller 1986:Plate 59), and the “Birth Vase” (K5113). See Hullet al. (2009:40–41) for the history of identification of independent/emphatic pronouns inClassic Mayan inscriptions.

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Appendix—List of known hieroglyphic texts with non-third person pronouns:

MonumentalCopan

Altar to Stela 63ha-taha’at2sg.ind“you”

Papagayo altara-K’UH-li (D2)a-k’uh-uulerg2sg-GOD-poss“your god”wa-AJAW-li u-MAM-ta (F1-E2)w-ajaw-aal u-mam-aterg1sg -LORD-poss erg3sg-Grandfather-abs2sg“my lord, you are his grandfather”a-KAB-CH’E’N (J2)a kab-ch’e’nerg2sg -earth-cave“your territory?” (lit. “your earth-cave”)

Stela 49ni-TZ’AK-bu-ji u-KAB-ji-ya 9-TZ’AK-bu K’UH xu-ku-pi-AJAW (B2-B4)ni-tz’ak-bu-uj u-kab-j-iiy bolon-tz’ak-a’b k’uh[ul]erg1sg-complete-trans-? erg3-earth-?-PST 9-complete-? God ?

xukpi ajaw(Copan) lord“I fulfilled the obligation of the ‘9-ordered’ (dynastic) holy Copan lords.”

Temple 22 stepni-KAN-nu (G1, I2)ni-kan-a’n?erg1sg –“Guardian?”wi-IL-’a (H2)w-ila’-Øerg1sg -see-erg3“I see it.”ni-KAB-nu (I1)ni-kab-a’n?erg1sg-earth-?“my kab-a’n?”

Naj TunichDrawing 51

ka-bo-na (A7)ka-boon?erg1pl-painting?“our painting?”

PalenqueTablet of the Orator

a-CH’AHB-a-’AK’AB-li (B1)a-ch’ahb a?-ak’ab-aalerg2sg-penance erg2sg?-dark-Vl“your penance, your darkness”ni-SAK-ka-ma (E4)


ni-sak kamerg1sg-white ??“my white ??”

Tablet of the Scribea-ba a-’AK’AB-li (B1-C1)a-baah a?-ak’ab-alerg2sg-image dark-Vl“your image, your darkness”na-wa-AJ ni-CHAK-ka-ma (A4)na[h]w-aj ni-chak kamdisplay[PAS]-PAS erg1sg-??“is made known my red ??”

Tablet of the Inscriptions, West Panel10-AJAW 8-YAX-K’IN CHUM[[mu]-TUUN]-ni i-chi na-i-ki u ti-mi je-laa-OHL-la (B8-B12)Lajuun Ajaw Waxak Yaxk’in chumtuun i chi na’ik u-tihm-j-eel a(w)ohl10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in seat-stone then go optative erg3-please[pass]-pass-nomerg2sg-heart“10 Ajaw 8 Yaxk’in, the period-ending, then may the pleasing of your heart(have) take(n) place.”8-AJAW 8-IHK’-AT CHUM[mu]-TUUN-ni i-chi-ki u-ti-mi o-OHL-la ch’a-ho-ma ta-ma-ta-wi AJAW-wa ta-BAAK-la a-k’a-no-ma a-?-li (C1-D7)8 Ajaw 8 Ihk’at (Wo) chum-tuun i chi-k u-tim-ohl ch’ahoom ta matwii(l) ajaw tabaakeel a-k’anoom? a-?8 Ajaw 8 Wo, seat-stone then go-fut erg3-please-heart ch’ahoom prepMatwiil lord prep Baakeel ?? ??“8 Ajaw 8 Wo, the period ending, then it will happen the heart-pleasing ofthe ch’ahoom of Matwiil, of the Lord of Baakeel, your k’anom?, your jal?.”7 AJAW 18 CHAK-AT i-chi-ki u-ti-mi-o-OHL-la ta-te?-ma 5-be?-nia-po-po a-TZ’AM-ma (C8-D11)7 Ajaw 18 Chakat i chi-k u-tim-ohl ta teem? ho’ ?n a-pohp a-tz’am7 Ajaw 18 Sip then go-fut erg3-please-heart prep bench 5 ?? your mat, yourthrone“7 Ajaw 18 Sip, then may the heart pleasing happen on the seat, the five ??,your mat, your throne.”

Temple 18 stucco wall paneltz’ak-bu-AJ wa-ja-wa-IL (E1-F1)tz’ak-bu-aj w-ajaw-ilcomplete-TRANS.POS-? erg1sg-LORD-Vl“My lordship is set in order.”ti-ma-AJ a-wo-la a-TZ’AK-bu-ji (G1-G3)ti[h]m-aj aw-ohl a-tz’ak-bu-jiplease[PAS]-PAS erg2sg-heart erg2sg-complete-TRANS.POS-AP“Your heart is pleased [that] you set them in order.”

Piedras NegrasPanel 3 (subsidiary captions)

ha-’a-ta ka CHAN-nuha’at ka-chan-a’n?1sg.ind erg1pl-“Guardian?”“You are our guardian.”a-wi-na-ke-naa-winak-eenerg2sg servant abs2sg“I am your servant.”


PomonaPanel 2a-wi-CHAN-na (C1)aw-ichan?erg2sg-presence?“your presence?”

UnprovenancedLimestone panel (Mayer 1987: plate 125, in Grube 1998:554)

ni-CH’AHB (B1)ni-ch’ahberg1sg penance, erg1sg ??“my penance, my ??”ni-su-pu (B2)ni-superg1sg ??“my ??”ni-CHAN-nu (A4)ni-chan-a’n?erg1sg-“Guardian?”“my guardian?”

PortableCeramics

K793che-ke-na (D2)chek-een???-abs1sg“I become clear?”

K1092wi-IL-la (R1)w-ila-Øerg1sg-see-abs3“I see it.”ni-cha-nu wa2-li (Q4-Q5)ni-chan-a’n? w-a[j]w-alerg1sg-“Guardian”? erg1sg-lord-Vl“my guardian?, my lord”wa-wa-li (W2)w-a[j]w-alerg1sg-lord-Vl“my lord”

K1398 (“Rabbit Pot”)ni-CH’AM-AW ni-??ni-ch’am-aw ni-?erg1sg-recieve-TRANS erg1sg-??“I receive my ??.”pu-lu a-JOL u-tz’u a-wi-lipul a-jol, uhtz’ aw-ilburn erg2sg-head smell erg2sg-??“Burn your head, smell your ??”ni-UUH?-ha? ni-bu-ku ni-pa-tani-uuh?, ni-buhk, ni-patanerg1sg-jewel? erg1sg-clothing erg1sg-tribute“my jewels?, my clothing, my tribute”ni-MAM


ni-mamerg1sg-grandfather“my grandfather”hi-nahiin1sg.IND“I”

K1440 (“Vase of the 88 Glyphs”)ta-ha-ta (Z2)ta ha’atPREP 2sg.IND“to you”hi-na (BB4)hiin1sg.IND“I”

K2914ka-bu-la (Z1)ka-bu’lerg1pl-bean“our beans”

K5113 (“Birth Vase”)ti-ni-BAAH (C2)ti ni-baahprep erg1sg-self/head/person“to my self?/head?/person?”

K6020 (“Vomit Pot”)ni-’AT-na (A3, B5)ni-’atanerg1sg-spouse“my spouse”bi-xi-ne (B3)bix-een?go-abs1sg?“I go”?

K7727a-pi ba-IL (Q2-Q3)a-pi:b-ilerg2sg-?“your ??”

K8008 (“Hummingbird Vessel”)a-wi-chi-NAL wa-wa-li (Q1-R1)aw-ichnal, w-a[j]w-alerg2sg-presence erg1sg-lord-Vl“before you, my lord”

Unprovenanced painted vessel (“Court Vase,” Boot 2008)he-ta (B1)heet2sg.IND“you”bi-xi wa-jo-ni (A7-B7)bix-w-aj-o’n?go-?-abs1pl“we go?”wa-wa-li (subsidiary texts)w-a[j]w-al


erg1sg-lord-Vl“my lord”

Painted vessel (Grube 1998:548, Fig. 6; Reents-Budet 1994:255)a-CH’E’N-? a-?-?a-ch’e’n-??, a-??erg2sg-cave-?? erg2sg-??“your cave ??, your ??”

Tikal “Mundo Perdido Vessel” (Stuart, Houston, and Robertson 1999:49)ni-CH’AHB AK’AB-lini-ch’ahb-ak’abal“my penance-darkness”ni-tu-pani-tuup“my earspool”ni-KAB-na ni-CH’E’Nni-kaban ni-ch’e’n“My territory?” (lit. “My earth, my cave”)

ShellsK8885 (“Parrot Shell”)

a-wu?-le-li-ya ti-ni-?-la me?-te (A1-C1)aw-ul-eel-iiy ti-ni-?-meterg2sg?-arrive?-NOM-PAST PREP-erg1sg-?-met“Your arrival at my ? nest.”

Cleveland shellta-ha-tata ha’atPREP 2sg.IND“to you”

CodicesMadrid Codex

ka-AJAW ? ka-K’U-u (p. 70)k-ajaw ?? ka-k’uerg1pl lord ?? erg1pl god“our lord ?? our god”ka-AJAW-wa (p. 91)k-ajawerg1pl-lord“our lord”

Dresden Codexka-ma-ma (p. 28a)ka-mamerg1pl grandfather“our grandfather”


Reading in Context: The Interpretation of Personal References in Ancient Maya Hieroglyphic Texts

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