[Aztlan] Calakmul & La Corona updates & transcriptions

[ECOLING at aol.com]

These Calakmul & La Corona web pages have been substantially updated 
since the Maya meetings in Austin 2009.
Links to each of them are available from the "latest changes"
at the top of the page
www.TraditionalHighCultures.com/Calakmul.html

Here is a summary:

The file "Site Q Chronology" now includes Simon Martin's
2008 readings for the major parts of the "Dallas Altar" 
which he treated.
 
The file "Calakmul Influences" shows events by site (columns) 
vs. by time (rows), thus an overview of history and of the reigns 
of particular rulers. Many dates have been added, 
and Gregorian dates are now consistently using the correlation 
584285 rather than ...283.

Added a list of known dates from Calakmul monuments and 
from elsewhere referring to it, and a similar list from La Corona.

Added an overview of La Corona monuments, 
including the two naming systems (Peter Mathews and David Stuart), 
and sources for photos and some drawings.

The page of references (publications print and email) is somewhat 
augmented.
For the last three, thanks to Randa Marhenke for helpful checking, 
editing, and some addtions.

*

A note on transcriptions, some possibilities and problems,
with some questions on what we know and do not know:

Like others, I am struggling to make transcriptions of glyphic
texts both more readable and more accurate renderings.  
There are two very minor innovations which should make 
transcriptions easier to read.  
(Complete consistency is not yet attained, partly because of 
ongoing improvements in detail -- but the transcriptions are I hope 
more easily readable and understandable 
than what we have used in the past.) 

The most noticeable innovation is the use of small superscript 
letters to indicate phonetic complements, and the abbreviation 
of these in most synharmonic cases to a simple consonant, 
in disharmonic cases to either consonant+vowel or vowel alone,
thus avoiding any visual suggestion that a separate syllable 
should be pronounced.   More readable.   Signalling superscript 
here in email by parentheses, I give two examples.

chan(n) -- indicates that the "sky" sign has a subfix or 
postfix/na/ phonetic complement.   For synharmonic
examples, ideally no vowel need be indicated.

tuun(i) or tuun(ni) -- again the superscript indicates 
that the /tuun/ sign has a phonetic complement, 
in this case /ni/.   Writing the disharmonic vowel 
clues the reader in to the disharmonic complement.   

The "chan" and "tuun" need not be written in all-caps 
because, with final consonants, they are necessarily 
logograms not phonetic complements, and because 
the contrast with phonetic complements is shown 
by superscripting of the complements but not of the 
logograms.   (If epigraphers believed that there are also
CVC phonetic signs which are not logograms,
which is currently not the case, this might be a 
disadvantage.  Of course the labeling of glyphs as
logograms vs. as phonetic complements may be
adding something not in the original text to the
understanding of Mayan scribes, if some glyphs
can be used either way, as /ku/ ~ /tuun/.
It can be the context not the glyph itself which signals
the status, logogram or phonetic complement.)

I am also gradually moving towards using initial capital
letters for proper names and for beginnings of sentences, 
thus following standard conventions for use of capitals 
in Latin-letter alphabets, 
but avoiding capitals otherwise in transcriptions.   
This is nowhere near consistent yet, 
it is just in initial stages, so again I must go back 
through earlier transcriptions to make this consistent.   
Familiar use of capitals makes for easier readability,
and makes meanings of the texts appear more directly,
makes the texts appear less exotic.   This can have a
salutary positive effect on treating ancient Maya as
an intelligent and reasonable people, a greater effect
than most of us can imagine.

*

A second problem recognized by a number of epigraphers 
is the ambiguity of brackets to indicate both infixation as 
chu[ku], yu[ku]-no-ma etc.
and also that a text is damaged, partial unreadability.   
Several epigraphers are now using 
an asterisk "*" to signal a glyph which cannot be read, 
and a "?" to indicate uncertain identification of a glyph
which is in part readable.

In most other traditions transcribing ancient texts,
brackets are used to mark damaged text,
in the simplest cases square brackets [...],
in other cases half-brackets 
(just upper or lower halves of "[" and "]").
It would be nice to avoid diverging from what is
standard elsewhere, simply through lack of 
communication among specialists in different fields.
So in the transcription of the "Dallas Altar" I have used 
half-brackets to signal damaged text which is plausibly 
reconstructed.
That is my most recent piece of transcription.
I will try to extend this to the other transcriptions 
on these web pages, thus removing the ambiguity in the 
two uses of "[...]" which is still present in texts
trascribed earlier, but retaining full square brackets
for infixed signs.   

As an aside, cuneiform specialists use "P x Q" 
to indicate Q infixed into P, 
but that is peculiar to them, not a standard elsewhere,
and is less intuitive than "[...]".

(Do we have a mark to indicate "conflated" signs 
distinct from infixed ones?   Do we need such a
distinction? I may have used an "=" sign once or twice.)

Asterisks:   In linguistics, asterisks are used for 
reconstructed forms.
Reconstructions are of course hypothetical, 
which they share with the recent usage of asterisk 
by some Mayan epigraphers for hypothetical filling-in of 
missing text.
It is not yet clear to me whether ambiguity between these 
two uses of asterisk is likely to become a problem
in some types of discussions.

Best wishes,
Lloyd

Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics
PO Box 15156
Washington DC 20003
ecoling at aol.com
202-547-7683



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