A Method for the Investigation of Glyph Syntax

Abstract

This paper will outline a method for the investigation of the syntax of the Mayan hieroglyphs which bypasses many of the problems previously encountered in attempts at decipherment. Decipherment has proved difficult largely because it required competence in 1) Mayan epigraphy, 2) the Mayan language, and 3) techniques by which the first could be correlated whit the second. Furthermore, most previous attempts at decipherment have been based on a prior assumption of relation of the glyphs to the language spoken by their writes –that the glyphs from an alphabet, that they form a syllabary, that they are ideographic, et. In addition, the assumption has often been made that some glyphs can be positively identified as having a certain phonetic, syllabic, or ideographic value. It should be clear that making the wrong assumption at the beginning of a study can only lead to compounded error in the later stages. Neither type of assumption, however, is necessary for the beginning of decipherment, and in fact both types of assumption are ill-advised before considerably more is known about the internal structure of the glyphic system than is presently known. The present method attempts to bypass these typical failures of prior investigators.