Mayan Languages Research Articles

Yucatec Maya language planning and the struggle of the linguistic standardization process

Abstract This study on Yucatec Maya language planning analyzes the linguistic standardization process over a six-year period. The primary research site was the programa, a mandatory Yucatec Maya course for 1,600 Indigenous Education teachers in Mexico. Alongside this acquisition planning effort, other government agencies simultaneously produced an official standard Maya. Programa administrators who oppose official standardization made their own model of Maya in widely distributed government textbooks. Neither model was the main target of programa language teaching; the Maya of classrooms is characterized by vast variation. Although the government promulgated an official standard in 2014, standardization of Maya has not been attained. The difficulties of creating a popular standard by and for Indigenous language speakers are analyzed. Social networks upholding different models of Maya are examined through an economy of language planning framework that views language as social capital and integrates knowledge and learning economy concepts. This research presents the notion of social-linguistic orders to understand how different models of a language coexist and/or compete in a language planning endeavor.

The Acquisition of Directionals in Two Mayan Languages.

We use the comparative method of language acquisition research in this article to investigate children’s expression of directional clitics in two Eastern Mayan languages – K’iche’ and Mam (Pye and Pfeiler, 2014; Pye, 2017). The comparative method in historical linguistics reconstructs the grammatical antecedents of modern languages and traces the evolution of each linguistic feature (Paul, 1889; Campbell, 1998). This history informs research on language acquisition by demonstrating how phonological and morphological features interact in the evolution of new uses for common inherited traits. Children acquiring modern languages must learn the arbitrary constraints imposed on their language by its history.

Contextual and speaker variation of glottalic stops in Q'eqchi'

Because of the complex coordination of laryngeal and supralaryngeal articulations, the realization of glottalic stops is highly variable across both languages and speakers. Therefore, it is important to discern the range of variation of glottalic stops. In Q’eqchi’, like other Mayan language, the production of bilabial glottalic stops varies between implosive and ejective. The present study explores whether the phonetic realization of glottalic stops in Q’eqchi’ systematically varies based on phonetic context. We also investigate whether different speakers have preferences for certain realizations of glottalic stops. Examining acoustic measures, we found that (1) both types of glottalic stops (implosive and ejective) are variably produced by speakers, and they are acoustically distinct, (2) ejective-like stops are more likely to occur in word-initial position, and that, (3) individual speakers have preferences towards either producing more implosive-like stops or more ejective-like stops. This study supports the hypothesis that variation of glottalic stops is conditioned by phonetic context, and that differing speakers have different preferences for the realization of these stops.Because of the complex coordination of laryngeal and supralaryngeal articulations, the realization of glottalic stops is highly variable across both languages and speakers. Therefore, it is important to discern the range of variation of glottalic stops. In Q’eqchi’, like other Mayan language, the production of bilabial glottalic stops varies between implosive and ejective. The present study explores whether the phonetic realization of glottalic stops in Q’eqchi’ systematically varies based on phonetic context. We also investigate whether different speakers have preferences for certain realizations of glottalic stops. Examining acoustic measures, we found that (1) both types of glottalic stops (implosive and ejective) are variably produced by speakers, and they are acoustically distinct, (2) ejective-like stops are more likely to occur in word-initial position, and that, (3) individual speakers have preferences towards either producing more implosive-like stops or more ejective-like stops. This study suppo...

“Time is not a line.” Temporal gestures in Chol Mayan

The metaphorical mapping of time and space has been attested in a variety of languages and cultures around the world. Although much research has been devoted to documenting variations in the direction and orientation of such metaphorical timelines according to cross-linguistic differences, the inherent linearity of this model of temporal representation is rarely called into question. The present study provides gestural evidence which shows that speakers of Chol, a Maya language spoken in Chiapas, Mexico, do not conceptualize time in terms of such abstract mental timelines or axes. A description of temporal reference and temporal gesture in Chol is provided, focusing on how deictic (past/present/future) and sequential (earlier/later) relations between events are expressed in this language, followed by a qualitative analysis of the types of gestures that accompany these kinds of temporal expressions. It will be argued that, instead of reflecting the metaphorical mapping of time onto space in a timeline, temporal gestures in Chol often reflect the aspectual semantics of the sentences where they occur.

Discourse in the Longue Durée: A View of Mayan Poetic Inertia

Discourse is dynamic and emergent, yet certain elements of discourse can appear remarkably stable, enduring across centuries. This discursive inertia gives us evidence of discourse in the past, allowing us to put current discursive moments in a longue durée context. Discursive inertia also begs avenues of investigation in its own right. We here discuss the common poetic patterns of chiasmus and difrasismo on one branch of the Mayan language family, consisting of Classic Mayan, documented in hieroglyphic inscriptions, Colonial Ch'olti’, and contemporary Ch'orti’ Mayan. Texts from these languages share poetic discourse that speak to the long perseverance of discursive patterns.

Weaving Authenticity: Artesanías or the Art of the Textile in Chiapas Mexico

During my six months in Chiapas, I worked for the weaving cooperative Mujeres Sembrando la Vida (MSV), a partner organization to Natik. Natik works with grassroots organizations in Mexico and Guatemala with a focus on economic development and education. MSV is a cooperative of sixty women weaving from the municipality of Zinacantán1 founded by Doña Magdalena and currently run by her two daughters Yoli and Xunka. Zinacantán is a Tzotzil Mayan village in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. Chiapas has the highest population of indigenous people and is also the poorest state in Mexico with a poverty rate of 75.7 percent.2 There are seven different Mayan languages spoken throughout the state, though in the highlands, the most common spoken language is Tzotzil. Because of the high poverty rates, Chiapas is facing a migration crisis of mainly single men moving to larger cities or the United States.3 The increase of men’s migration has lead more women to take on other economic activities, such as craft cooperatives. These economic projects are often supported by government programs4 or organizations in the resistance movement, which includes the famous Zapatistas.5 In both cases women become the shock absorbers to new economic realities. Today, this artisan craft industry has become a central part of the economy for indigenous municipalities. Textiles are made for consumption within the community as well as for a tourist market. The duel markets for textiles created a need for greater classification, splitting this artistic practice into different classes of production. In order to think about textiles as art, I conducted six months of fieldwork within Chiapas. During my time there, I did six interviews with weavers across five different municipalities. I also had the opportunity to interview a Mexican design student, who has shifted her work to be in collaboration with textiles artists from Chiapas and Oaxaca. My participant observation is based on my work with the weaving MSV cooperative. I spent time in weavers’ homes working on photo and video projects as well as listening to various meetings. Because I was living in San Cristobal de las Casas, I also learned about the city from a tourist’s perspective. I spent time in the artisan market and volunteered at Centro Textiles del Mundo Maya (CTMM). My participant observation included learning how to weave on the backstrap loom in the styles of San Juan Cancuc and Zinacantán. Unraveling the idea of authenticity is

Restricting the Power of Cophonologies: A Representational Solution to Stem Allomorphy in Uspanteko

In Uspanteko, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala, certain possessive prefixes lead to variation in stress and pitch accent and can sometimes trigger vowel length alternations or consonant deletion in roots. We argue that this complex pattern of stem allomorphy can be successfully analyzed within a morpheme-based model of morphology given two assumptions: i. underlying representations can contain metrical templates (e.g. Saba Kirchner 2013, Iosad 2016, Köhnlein 2016, 2019 for recent proposals); ii. pitch-accent contrasts in Uspanteko are a surface exponent of a difference between trochaic (falling tone) and iambic feet (level tone), as proposed in Köhnlein (2019). We claim that our analysis is more restrictive than an earlier account by Bennett & Henderson (2013; henceforth B&H), who divide relevant items into several nominal cophonologies. In analyzing non-concatenative exponence as an epiphenomenon of metrical affixation, our approach is in line with principles of Generalized Non-Linear Affixation (e.g. Bermúdez-Otero 2012, Trommer & Zimmermann 2014).

Implementation of edible insect programmes in developing countries to improve food security: findings from a training initiative and a train-the-trainer programme

Abstract Background In 2013, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization released a report explaining the potential of nutrient-dense and environmentally friendly edible insects to help reduce malnutrition and feed the growing world population. The MealFlour programme started in Guatemala in July, 2016, with the goal of increasing access to protein, reducing malnutrition, and improving food security. MealFlour and local organisations partnered to teach people how to make in-home mealworm farms and how to process mealworms into a protein-rich powder. Mealworm powder is easily incorporated into existing recipes, and can be sold as a source of income. Here, we describe the MealFlour programme and train-the-trainer programme that aims to create a community of mealworm farmers in Guatemala. Methods MealFlour worked with local partner organisations that have existing outreach programmes in communities with food insecurity in Quetzaltenango, Chimaltenango, and Huehuetenango, Guatemala. The partners identified community leaders, health workers, or teachers who were interested in participating in a train-the-trainer programme. Bilingual trainers were included (Spanish and Mayan languages) to reach indigenous populations. Trainers participated in a 6-month programme of five classes, weekly home visits, and monthly focus groups. MealFlour's local partners help conduct long-term monitoring and evaluation of the programme. We measure farm success and the improvements in health, income, and diet. Findings MealFlour has worked with five partner organisations, introduced mealworm farming to 296 people, and helped five families set up a farm through the initial training programme, and an additional ten families through a train-the-trainer model. Because of the climate in the western highlands of Guatemala, the initial MealFlour programme yielded no output of mealworms for several months until participants discovered solutions to improve the farms and shared these during structured focus groups. All five participants in the initial training programme retained farming knowledge from the classes. Evaluation of farm outputs and effects on nutrition is ongoing. Community leaders in the train-the-trainer programme in Chimaltenango expressed interest in mealworm farming despite the small culture of eating insects in this region. Their outreach is ongoing to recruit other interested community members. In Huehuetenango, there is a robust culture of eating insects and there is interest in home-grown edible insects to increase access to protein. Interpretation The main ongoing challenge in the MealFlour programme is optimising farm output in the varying Guatemalan climates while using low-cost materials. Future edible insect programmes should set up test farms with local partners to adapt the process to varying climates, do acceptability studies, and involve participants in the design of the farms and best practices for the farming process. Future studies should analyse the risk of reliance on only one insect species. Funding The Resolution Project, HealthRoots Foundation, The University of Chicago.

The roots of measurement

In addition to roots for familiar classes like verb, noun, and adjective, Mayan languages have a class of roots traditionally called “positional”. Positional roots are distinct from other roots most prominently in terms of requiring derivation into stems of one of the more familiar categories to be used. The goal of this work is to show that the behavior of positionals follows from semantic facts, in particular, the fact that they denote measure functions of type ⟨e,d⟩. This conclusion is supported through a series of novel arguments from the Mayan language Kaqchikel that positional roots have a scalar semantics. It then argues for the type ⟨e,d⟩ analysis by contrasting them with gradable root adjectives, which similarly make reference to ordered degrees on a scale, but which have a relational type—namely, ⟨d,et⟩. I then show that a core function of positional morphology, and the morpheme that derives positional stative predicates in particular, is to take positional roots into stems of type ⟨d,et⟩, which will account for the fact that derived positionals behave semantically like root adjectives. In this way, this work not only presents a novel account of the Mayan data, but provide additional evidence for the proposal that even within languages there can be differences in the fine-grained compositional structure of degree-denoting expressions.

Wh-indeterminates in Chuj (Mayan)

AbstractThis article investigates the varied uses of wh-words in Chuj, an understudied Mayan language of Guatemala. Cross-linguistically, wh-words are commonly used not only for question formation but also in a range of other constructions, including wh-quantification, indefinites, and the formation of relative clauses. In Chuj, we will show that wh-words are used to form indefinites (in certain limited environments), universal quantifiers, free choice items, and two kinds of free relatives: definite free relatives, but also the typologically rarer indefinite free relatives. We sketch an analysis of each construction, and discuss generalizations concerning their distribution. The varied uses of wh-words in Chuj support the view that wh-words are used in two capacities: to generate alternatives, and to create a movement/binding relation.

The comparative method of language acquisition research by Clifton Pye

Reviewed by: The comparative method of language acquisition research by Clifton Pye Katherine Demuth The comparative method of language acquisition research. By Clifton Pye. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017. Pp. 304. ISBN 9780226481289 (Hb). $150. This book is a welcome addition to the literature on language acquisition and a testament to Clifton Pye’s life’s work on the acquisition of Mayan languages. It comes at a timely juncture, after a flurry of crosslinguistic studies of language acquisition during the 1980s and 1990s (cf. Slobin 1985, 1992). Researchers are now again reawakening to the fact that, to make theoretical progress in the field, we need to understand how languages with very different typological structures are acquired. As P notes, comparing the acquisition of closely related languages is also extremely valuable and can tell us much about both the course of language acquisition and why it proceeds as it does. Thus, just as comparative/historical linguistics provides a framework for refining theories of linguistic structure, comparing the acquisition of closely related languages provides an ideal laboratory from which to understand the ‘universals’ of language acquisition. One of the challenges, however, is translating this comparative understanding to languages that are typologically very different. As P notes, this raises the question of what the units of comparison are. Even the notion of a ‘word’ is not always straightforward in morphologically rich or polysynthetic languages. Calculating mean length of utterance (MLU) can thus be a challenge for making comparisons across typologically different languages (though see suggestions for how to do this in other polysynthetic languages in Allen & Dench 2015). The author then puts research on the acquisition of Mayan languages into a larger context, illustrating how the comparative method (henceforth CM) helps us understand why children produce the early forms of language that they do. P’s finding that children learning Mayan languages [End Page 814] tend to produce the stressed syllable of the verb complex, which may or may not land on the verb stem, is extremely revealing of the much more ‘universal’ processes found across typologically different languages (cf. Swedish; Peters & Strömqvist 1996). P then goes into detail regarding the CM, how it has been applied in historical linguistics, and the acquisition implications for Mayan and other language families. He suggests that much comparative acquisition research involving European languages has been conducted in the context of testing different theories of syntax and/or acquisition, whereas the CM can also be used with a more theory-neutral goal of describing how children acquire a linguistic system more generally. He then presents an overview of the structure of Mayan languages, outlining the general synthetic structure of these languages, providing details about the form of the lexicon, the structure of the Mayan verb (including person-marking and verb suffixes), the realization of stative predicates and verb nominalization processes, and syntactic processes more generally. This is then followed by a description of acquisition data from three Mayan languages. Two of these data sets P collected himself (K’iche: six children, Mam: eleven children), while the third (Ch’oi: five children) was collected by members of the community (for more detail, see pp. 98–100). P provides comparative examples of each. P then discusses the Mayan lexicon (nouns, relational nouns, adjectives, transitive and intransitive verbs, positionals, particles, pronouns) and how these categories are acquired across the three different Mayan languages. P notes that these categories are put to different uses across languages, resulting in different acquisition patterns. However, all of these languages exhibit cross-reference marking on nouns and verbs, licensing the omission of lexical arguments. This results in the verb playing a more important role in the Mayan grammar than in a language like English, as it does in many morphologically rich languages. The summary in this chapter includes a brief mention of how the acquisition of related Greater Tzeltalan languages differs from that of the Mayan languages (cf. Pye, Pfeiler, & Mateo Pedro 2017), some of this having to do with focus and person marking. He then examines the acquisition of Mayan intransitive and transitive verb complexes, respectively. The templatic structure of the morphologically complex verb, including the verb root and...

Antonio OrtuñoOlinka

Books in Review of language, resist “facile contrasts,” and yet “recognize the role opposition plays in constructing meaning.” Kurt Heinzelman University of Texas, Austin Antonio Ortuño Olinka Mexico City. Planeta. 2019. 248 pages. In 2015 the Independent reported that the United States Treasury Department had sanctioned more businesses for money laundering in Guadalajara—our southern neighbor’s second-largest city—than any other place in Mexico. More recently (in July 2018), Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the Mexican presidency in a landslide victory after having waged a campaign in which anticorruption measures served as a centerpiece of his agenda. It is in this context that Antonio Ortuño (b. 1976, Guadalajara) has published Olinka, a short novel dealing with Mexico’s runaway housing market, families torn apart by crime, and the human face of large-scale corruption. Ortuño’s narrative, rife with rapid-fire dialogue and fascinating psychological meanderings, has already garnered favorable reviews in the LA Times (Spanish edition), Mexico’s Aristegui Noticias , and Spain’s El País. Olinka opens when the protagonist, Aurelio Blanco, has to pick up the pieces of his life after spending fifteen years in prison. Naturally, “Blanco” could be read as the most commonplace of last names (White), even though other translations —namely, “target” or even “empty”—seem more telling, especially since Aurelio feels broken and believes himself to be a marked man. Having worked as an accountant, Blanco’s time behind bars comes after being the fall guy for one of Guadalajara ’s patriarchal engineers, Carlos Flores, who has built an unsuccessful and unfinished luxury housing complex. This boondoggle of a project had been ambitiously christened “Olinka,” the name of the proposed utopian community originally dreamt up by Gerardo Murillo, the real-life artist who found fame in twentiethcentury Mexico during the heyday of national consolidation. Furthermore , it is intimated that Flores’s and Blanco’s failed Olinka has been funded by crooked investors from Mexico’s northern states, a shadowy allusion to the specter of drug money, constant in the collective political consciousness of Mexico. All told, the text is haunted by the ghosts of Mexico’s monumental twentieth century even as the nation’s present-day political realities are rendered painfully personal— especially for Blanco, who returns to a wife who doesn’t love him and a daughter who doesn’t know him. Ortuño provides remarkable insight into the strained internal lives of these characters via an omniscient and curious narrator; Ortuño’s prose reveals how much emotional damage can be inflicted by crime and corruption. The novel invites us to ponder the relationship between our built environments , nationalism, and family ties. Against a booming housing market , buoyed by neoliberalism , fudged finances, and disappeared people, how is the sense of family life diminished? Kevin Anzzolin University of Wisconsin –Stout Lasana M. Sekou Hurricane Protocol Philipsburg, St. Martin. House of Nehesi. 2019. 53 pages. The latest poetic effort of the revolutionary poet of St. Martin, Lasana M. Sekou, drags us into the whirlwind of his words right from the start of the collection with a traditional proverb: “The gale doesn’t stop at the frontier.” Be it an imaginary frontier, such as that still dividing St. Martin between the Netherlands and France, or a metaphysical frontier, such as the threshold we cross when we start reading a book, the hurricane does not stop in any case. Written in memory of the devastating hurricanes Irma (Sept. 6) and Maria (Sept. 19) that ravaged St. Martin, and many other Caribbean islands, in 2017, this collection of poems materializes Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s statement that “the hurricane does not roar in pentameters” (History of the Voice, 1984). And in the roar of Hurricane Protocol, Sekou significantly tackles a climate phenomenon that seems glaringly absent from the region’s arts, despite its annual destructive recurrence. The book’s title derives from the Mayan word huracan, which the poet identifies with “a K’iche’ Maya god of wind, storm, fire, and one of the creator deities”—and explains further as “Huracán in Spanish; in Mayan languages Hunraqan (‘one legged’), and often U K’ux Kaj (‘Heart of Sky’).” The...

Eschatological Encounters

The corpus of missionary and indigenous colonial texts in the highland Maya language K’iche’ is an exceptional resource for studying the colonial encounter of Christianity and pre-Columbian religion. To translate Christianity into K’iche’, the missionaries appropriated lexical concepts from highland Maya religion, while indigenous authors took up the doctrinal discourse to negotiate both cosmologies and maintain religious tradition. This article examines the terminology used by missionary authors to express conceptualisations of Christian eschatology and analyses how the new Christian discourse of Heaven and Hell was mapped onto pre-Columbian notions of afterlife and otherworld dimensions.

Hunab Ku, revisión de una deidad en la Historia de Yucatán de Fray Diego López Cogolludo

En diversos estudios sobre la religión maya se menciona a un dios particular: Hunab Ku. Se trata de una deidad creadora que, de acuerdo con las fuentes históricas, no tenía representación y era incorpóreo. Aunque algunos investigadores han puesto en duda su autenticidad, aún no se determina si fue o no una deidad maya prehispánica. Tal vez el problema radica en que los datos sobre Hunab Ku son utilizados sin considerar el contexto histórico en el que se enunciaron y se registraron. Por lo anterior, este artículo tiene como objetivos conocer, identificar y analizar a Hunab Ku en la Historia de Yucatán de Diego López Cogolludo, que es una de las fuentes principales que da cuenta de su existencia, además de comprobar si es una deidad de origen prehispánico o se trata un título del dios cristiano “traducido” a la lengua maya. Para conocer el porqué López Cogolludo habló sobre Hunab Ku es necesario recurrir al método hermenéutico propio del análisis histórico y comprender su obra dentro de su propio contexto historiográfico, así como la construcción de su discurso histórico, al considerar estos aspectos podremos entender quién fue Hunab ku.

Mopan in Context: Mayan Identity, Belizean Citizenship, and the Future of a Language

Mopan in Context:Mayan Identity, Belizean Citizenship, and the Future of a Language Jennifer Carolina Gómez Menjívar (bio) and William Salmon (bio) mayan communities in belize have been largely excluded from the linguistic inquiry into Mayan languages that began in the late nineteenth century, as well as from the grassroots movements that have promoted the revitalization of Mayan languages in Guatemala more recently.1 In the absence of academic interest, limited attention to grassroots activism, and a lack of publishing opportunities for authors, the issues affecting Mayan languages in Belize have been relegated to the periphery of larger discussions about Mayan languages in Mesoamerica.2 Even as attention turns to speakers of Mayan languages living in the United States, Mayan migrants from Belize continue to be absent from research on the Mayan diaspora.3 As such, the study reported on in this article is the first to look in depth at the ecology in which the Mopan language resides.4 Significantly, it is also the first study to consider the implications of a young generation of ethnic Mayans growing up as native speakers of Kriol. Our findings in this article suggest that a language shift from Mopan to Kriol is underway among the younger generations of Mopan speakers and that if its use among this demographic is not revitalized, it could lead to Mopan's endangerment in the near future. The larger discussion focuses on geopolitical and socioeconomic factors that influence language attitudes toward Spanish, English, and Kriol in Belize, contributing to an ongoing body of work on Belizean languages in general.5 The Mopan Language Family and History Mopan belongs to the Yucatecan branch of the Mayan language family, which also includes Yucatec, Itza', and Lacandón. Yucatec and Lacandón are primarily spoken in Mexico, with the former having an estimated eight hundred thousand speakers and the latter seriously endangered, with approximately one thousand speakers. Itza' is spoken in the Petén region of northern Guatemala and is also severely endangered. Mopan is one of two Yucatecan languages spoken in Belize, and it is believed to have approximately ten thousand speakers.6 There are an additional five thousand speakers of Mopan in [End Page 70] Guatemala; they are concentrated in in San Luis and in the Lake Petén Itzá road area (an enclave between Dolores and Poptun) within the department of Petén.7 Both of the Mayan languages spoken in this area of Guatemala, Mopan and Itzá, have been identified by the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) as endangered languages and have been targeted for revitalization efforts.8 Over the last few centuries, speakers of Mayan languages in Guatemala, including Mopan, have been subjected to a process of castellanización, or Hispanicization, that parallels the experiences of speakers of indigenous languages in other former Spanish colonies.9 Unlike Guatemala and the rest of Central America, however, the official language of colonial British Honduras (now Belize) was standard British English. Speakers of Mayan languages were subjected to a process of Anglicization. This process has continued since Belize gained its independence in 1981 and become increasingly complex: the American English standard variety has overtaken British English in terms of overt prestige, and Kriol now holds both covert and overt prestige as a lingua franca qua national language.10 Political Setting While most former English colonies obtained their independence from the British Empire in the 1960s, Belize had to assess three interrelated factors before claiming its independence. It had to consider first the threat of a Guatemalan invasion of Belize during the former's civil war (1960–96); second, the brutal genocide against Mayan populations across the border in the Petén region; third, the ongoing territorial dispute between the countries over the existence and precise location of the Belizean-Guatemalan border.11 The factors remain salient, as their potential threat has not attenuated in the years since the end of the Guatemalan civil war. The territorial dispute is still very much alive, with the territory involved including the southern section of Belize District, most of Cayo District, and the entirety of Stann Creek and Toledo Districts, which are home to the Kekchi and Mopan...

Flame, icons and healing: a colonial Maya ontology

The Ritual of the Bacabs is an eighteenth-century Yucatec Maya language manuscript containing over forty healing chants and numerous remedies for a variety of illnesses. In this paper, I reconstruct features of colonial Maya ontology through an analysis of those healing chants accompanying treatments involving fire and heat. In particular, I demonstrate that the manipulation of fire and heat in autochthonous healing was a means of managing kinam, a ‘force’ which Maya past and present discern as a relative quality of things and people. Managing kinam occurs as the healer acts upon the material ‘icons’ (uayasba) of beings involved in the rite, including indigenous deities, medicines, and parts of the healer's own body. Furthermore, in contrast with Western semiotics, I argue that these chants exhibit a colonial Maya ontology in which uayasba signifiers are considered co-substances rather than substitutions.

Mayanists’ Methods and Tradition Discourses: Research and the Politics of Maya Language and Cultural Practice

This essay reviews the following works: The Ch’ol Maya of Chiapas . Edited by Karen Bassie-Sweet, with Robert M. Laughlin, Nicholas A. Hopkins, and Andres Brizuela Casimir. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 251. $45.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806147024. Wellness beyond Words: Maya Compositions of Speech and Silence in Medical Care . By T. S. Harvey. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013. Pp. vii + 256. $55.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780826352736. Maya Market Women: Power and Tradition in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala . By S. Ashley Kistler. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 160. $44.68 paperback. ISBN: 9780252079887. Southern Eastern Huastec Narratives: A Trilingual Edition . Translated and edited by Ana Kondic. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 197. $24.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780806151809. Indigenous Bodies, Maya Minds: Religion and Modernity in a Transnational K’iche’ Community . By C. James MacKenzie. Boulder: University Press of Colorado; Albany: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies, 2016. Pp. ix + 368. $34.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781607325567. Songs That Make the Road Dance: Courtship and Fertility Music of the Tz’utujil Maya . By Linda O’Brien-Rothe. Forewords by Allen J. Christenson and Sandra L. Orellana. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 244. $72.93 paperback. ISBN: 9781477305386. Language and Ethnicity among the K’ichee’ Maya . By Sergio Romero. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 123. $50.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781607813972.

Statistical and acoustic effects on the perception of stop consonants in Kaqchikel (Mayan)

This paper investigates the relationship between speech perception and linguistic experience in Kaqchikel, a Guatemalan Mayan language. Our empirical focus is the perception of plain, ejective, and implosive stops. Drawing on an AX discrimination task, a corpus of spoken Kaqchikel, and a text corpus, we make two claims. First, we argue that speech perception is mediated by phonemic representations which include acoustic detail drawn from prior phonetic experience, as in Exemplar Theory. Second, segmental distributions also condition speech perception: The perceptual distinctiveness of a pair of phonemes is affected by their functional load and relative contextual predictability. These top-down factors influence phoneme discrimination even at relatively fast response times. We take this result as evidence that distributional factors like functional load may affect speech perception by shaping perceptual tuning during linguistic development. This study replicates and extends some key findings in speech perception in the context of a language (Kaqchikel) which is structurally and sociolinguistically different from the majority languages (like English) which have served as the basis of most work in the speech perception literature. At the practical level, our research illustrates methods for conducting corpus-based laboratory phonology with lesser-studied and under-resourced languages.

A compositional morphosemantic analysis of exclusivity in Ch'ol

We argue that novel empirical generalizations on exclusive operators in Ch’ol (Mayan) provide strong evidence for a morphological decompositionality of exclusivity into a core semantic entry and focus sensitivity. There is a robust literature on exclusivity and the distributions of scalar particles in various languages (Beaver & Clark 2003, 2008; Orenstein & Greenberg 2010; Coppock & Beaver 2011a,b). Coppock & Beaver (2011a) argue that mere operates in a different domain (properties) than only (propositions). Recent work on focus constructions in Mayan languages include Yasavul (2013) for K’iche’ and AnderBois (2012) for Yucatec Maya. However, little work has been done on the variation among exclusives in morphologically rich languages like Ch’ol. Original data from fieldwork indicate that exclusivity can occur independently of focus marking, and when divorced from focus, the exclusive morpheme has a wider distribution and range of meanings.

From Hacienda Domesticity to the Archaeological Sublime: Sentiment and the Origins of Heritage Management in Yucatan, Mexico

Frictions between state-sanctioned heritage policies and the quotidian practices of local stakeholder communities often have deep historical roots. In this essay, I trace the history of conflicts in the management of archaeological sites in the Yucatan peninsula to the emergence of a romantic sensibility toward the leisured enjoyment of ruins in the mid-nineteenth century. This posited a kind of subjectivity that was radically different from the subsistence practices that brought Maya-speaking peasants into contact with archaeological sites. There are important parallels between this discourse on ruins and a philological approach to the Yucatec Maya language which tended to denigrate the vernacular of rural speakers. Interestingly, the tendency of these entwined discourses to delegitimate the speech and customs of rural agriculturalists posited a “proper” relationship to heritage that could be assumed by people from diverse ethnic categories if they adopted an attitude that was consistent with liberal perspectives on labor and identity. The heritage of this simultaneously inclusive and elitist discourse is still evident in contemporary heritage practice and neoliberal multiculturalism.