More on the Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions

Author(s): Stephen Houston, John Robertson and David Stuart

Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 42, No. 4 (August/October 2001), pp. 558-559
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for
Anthropological Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/322544
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Discussion and Criticism
More on the Language of Classic
Maya Inscriptions
s t e p h e n h o u s t o n , j o h n ro b e r t s o n , and
david stuart
Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young
University, Provo, Utah 84602, U.S.A.
sdh@email.byu.edu Department of Linguistics,
Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, U.S.A./
Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge,
Mass. 02138, U.S.A. 22 ii 01
In his response to our article (CA 41:32156) on the
language of Classic Maya inscriptions, Grube (CA 41:
837) sidesteps the point of that essay by stating he does
not want to address the question whether or not Classic
Mayan was a precursor to Cholti. Curiously, he goes
on to do just this, albeit indirectly, by characterizing our
conclusions as premature and founded upon vicious
circles of reasoning and chain[s] of hypotheses. Some
clarifications are clearly in order.
Grube seems to feel that, as long as certain spelling
rules remain unsettled, specialists cannot be expected to
resolve or confront the question of language affiliation.
We disagree. The Maya script is now essentially deci-
phered, even if minor questions remain about certain
orthographic conventions (we should look to Sumerian
and Egyptian for comparisons in this regard). We feel
strongly that the writing system is well enough under-
stood to allow for a hypothesis on language affiliation to
be put forward.
In fact, the orthographic issues and our own under-
standing of them are not as confused as Grube says. His
concerns deal primarily with vowel complexity, the issue
of whether the Classic Maya recorded long vowels or
laryngeals (glottal stops and /h/), and the separate topic
of velar versus glottalspirants. It strikes us as odd that
he should raise these issues and criticize us for impre-
cision, since we have been, along with a few others such
as Alfonso Lacadena and Sren Wichmann, the principal
discussants of them. The very notion that glyphic dis-
harmony expresses vowel complexity comes from our
work, and Grube has not, to our knowledge, refuted this
proposal.
More to the point, the example he critiquesthe spell-
ing of the ut-i verbis not well chosen. He says that our
Permission to reprint items in this section may be obtained only
from their authors.
558
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analyses of this glyph are self-contradictory, but all we
have done is modify an earlier idea. He has conflated two
different articles and unfairly concluded that, since they
differ, our methods are inconsistent. All epigraphers, in-
cluding Grube himself, have over time recommended
different proposals with respect to Mayan writing, as in
his Masters thesis on the Primary Standard Sequence in
Maya inscriptions and his subsequent divergent treat-
ments of the subject. We would not accuse him of being
inconsistent. He has simply changed his views, as any
scholar grappling with evidence is entitled to do.
So too with the spelling ut-i. In 1998, we proposed that
the final [i] signaled vowel complexity. It later became
clear that it was more likely a reflex of an archaic suffice
-ik used as a marker of single-argument predicates, par-
ticularly of root intransitives. An argument for vowel
complexity would necessitate the view that all root in-
transitives in the script had this feature. Thus, ut-i po-
tentially represented one of two things, both with pre-
cisely the same surface expression: ut with short vowel,
and ut with an elided marker of single-argument predi-
cates. Contrary to Grube, we would never argue that
these explanations applied at the same time. They are
mutually exclusive. Moreover, neither Cholti nor
Chorti had vowel complexity or single-argument pred-
icate markers. Both features occurred in ancestral Mayan
languages, so, logically, they must have been lost at some
point in their descent to daughter forms. This inescap-
able fact highlights the importance of later spellings. We
believe that they point to the loss of vowel complexity
in a living language spoken during Classic times. In con-
trast, Postclassic spellings show a return to earlier con-
ventions. We assert that this standardization reflected
the process by which a written prestige language became
detached from common speech. Similarly, historical lin-
guistics also predicts the loss of the single-argument
predicate marker. Grube provides no alternative expla-
nation for these patterns, and he cannot hope to find any
relevance of ut to the matter of language affiliation. Ei-
ther explanationvowel complexity or single-argument
predicate markeraccords with the Cholian
hypothesis.
We repeat a key point from our article. The task of the
comparatist, as influenced and disciplined by Maya epig-
raphy, is to account for the shift from earlier, reconstruc-
tible patterns to later ones attested first in the language
of hieroglyphs and then in the languages of colonial and
modern times. This is not an easy task, nor will all hy-
potheses meet with equal success when evaluated
against data. But, despite the difficulties, comparatists
and epigraphers cannot avoid such challenges if they
wish to achieve a persuasive, comprehensive account not
only of Mayan language history but also of the hiero-
glyphs themselves. While we recognize that the spelling
 Volume 42, Number 4, AugustOctober 2001 F 559

conventions of the language of the hieroglyphs are of
substantial merit in their own right, we also hold that
the correct placement of that language in the Mayan
family tree is far more than an arcane linguistic exercise.
It is of great moment to Mayan epigraphy because it
requires the most exacting attention to those details of
phonology, grammar, and semantic that help define the
epigraphic enterprise. At the same time, such accounts
are always subject to modification and improvement in
the light of new texts or linguistic analyses. Our late
colleague Linda Schele put it aptly: As new decipher-
ments are made and new data comes out of the ground
. . . the connections that we see between these patterns
will change. Interpretation in our work is an ephemeral
thing that continually adapts to the changing nature of
these underlying patterns (Schele and Freidel 1990:15).
References Cited
g r u b e , n i k o l a i . 2000. On Classic Maya inscriptions. cur-
rent anthropology 41:83738.
h o u s t o n , s t e p h e n , j o h n ro b e r t s o n , a n d d a v i d
s t u a r t . 2000. The language of Classic Maya inscriptions.
current anthropology 41:31256.
s c h e l e , l i n d a , a n d d a v i d f r e i d e l . 1990. A forest of
kings: The untold story of the ancient Maya. New York: Wil-
liam Morrow.

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