The Glyphic Corpus from Ek’ Balam, Yucatán, México

Linguistic Comments

The early impressions on the linguistic aspects from Ek’ Balam set forth by Vargas et al. 1999 are confirmed by the new information obtained in the past few years, allowing for a greater and more profound accuracy concerning the conclusions preliminarily suggested.

On one side, texts written in classic Cholan are documented in Ek’ Balam, as evidenced in Stela 1, most cover of vaults, Column 1, or Miscellaneous Text 2, where the following forms are documented:

• -V₁’ w, for transitives CVC (u-tz’a-pa-wa, utz’apa[’]w "he pushes it/he pushed it") (Bricker 1986; Wald 1994; Houston et al. 2000).

• Passives –h-…-aj for transitives CVC (ma-ka-ja, ma[h]kaj "was covered") and –n-aj for non-CVC transitives (u-#-lu-na-ja, uCVlnaj "it was engraved") (Lacadena, in press).

• Antipassives –VV₁w (>-V₁w) (vid. Lacadena 2000) used in teonyms such as Chak Jutuuw Chan Ek’, or Sayaw Chan K’uh, well documented in the south in names such as Tiliw Chan Chaahk or Jasaw Chan K’awiil (vid. Houston and Stuart 1996; Grube 2002).

• Participle present in –VV₁l, in the verbal form of Column 1 which is a part of the expression jo-ch’o-li K’AK’, joch’ool k’ahk’  "the fire has been drilled" referred to the fire ceremony.

• yi-chi-[#], yich[nal] "with him, in his presence" from the mural in Room 22 is clearly Cholan in its phonology, reflecting the change pM *k>ch corresponding to the Yucatecan yiknal.

This behavior is normal throughout the Maya lowlands during the Classic Period, where a language with an eastern Cholan filiation served as written, prestiged language (Houston et al. 2000).

However, and simultaneously, a series of elements repeatedly pointing to the fact that the vernacular tongue of the site was of a Yucatecan filiation, strongly emerged in Ek’ Balam. This statement is supported by a number of elements:

• ka-na, kan "four". It is written in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs. The context is semantically controlled by the substitution of the sequence ka-na and the logogram IV "four" in the name of Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. Writing "four" like kan instead of chan in the Mural of the 96 Glyphs is a clear indication that the vernacular tongue from the place is of a Yucatecan provenance: YUC kan "four" (Bastarrachea et al. 1992: 94); ITZ kän -, käm- "four" (Hofling and Tesucún 1997: 342); MOP kän "four" (Schumann 1997: 99); compare with the Cholan forms CHN chän-, chäm- "four" (Keller and Luciano 1997: 81); CHL chämp’ejl "four" (Aulie and Aulie 1978: 52); CHR chante’  "four" (Pérez et al. 1996: 34).

• YAX-WINIK-ki, Ya’ax winik "month of Ya’ax". The Yax month usually appears in texts of the Classic Period in the form of YAX-SIHOM?-(ma), Yax Siho’m, which would represent the Cholan name. The writing of this name in the form of YAX-WINIK-ki instead of YAX-SIHOM?-(ma) in Cover of Vault 18 from Ek’ Balam, is anomalous. Even though according to the sources, the Yucatecan word for "month" in colonial times seems to have been winal, the truth is that whenever the logogram "month" is documented throughout the Classic Period in northern Yucatán with a final phonetic complement, this invariably is ki and not la, pointing to winik as the noun used for "month". Even in Chichén Itzá, in the Hieroglyphic Band from the Red House, in a semantically controlled context where the word for "month" is expected, this is written like wi-ni-ki, winik. Taking this into consideration, it is possible then that winik, in the example YAX-WINIK-ki should simply stand for "month", thus leaving only YAX as the sole definite denomination for it. Yax–without Siho’m or any other added feature–is present in the Yucatecan list of months recorded by Bishop Diego de Landa in the XVI century. Yax, or better yet Ya’ax, with a re-articulated vowel, is indicating the use of the Yucatecan language in this text. The Ek’ Balam example would add up to other peculiar cases, like when during the Classic Period the name of the months are written following the Yucatecan list and not the Cholan, as documented in sites like Xcalumkín (K’AN-K’IN-ni, K’ank’in, instead of Uniiw) and Chichén Itzá (wo, Wo’, instead of Ik’at).

• u-WAY, WAY-ya-li, WAY-li, u-WAY-li, way "room, chamber, cell". This term, well documented in colonial Yucatecan sources (Barrera 1980: 915) may be considered as a marker of Classic Yucatecan because it is absent from southern texts, where apparently the expression used for "room, chamber" is wayib’. The difference between both expressions lies in the presence of the instrumental –ib’ in the Cholan expression, and the absence thereof in the suggested Yucatecan expression.

In addition to the examples mentioned, enough to suggest the presence of Yucatecan in the place, other indications also suggest the presence of classic Yucatecan in the texts:

• Alike other sites from northern Yucatán, in Ek’ Balam the titles of rank and position exhibit the Yucatecan trend to syntactically be placed at the beginning of the nominal clause, before the personal denomination (Lacadena 2000). For instance, in the seven occasions where the title of Kalo’mte’ has been documented so far in Ek’ Balam, five times it has been situated before the personal denomination, against the remaining two where it has been situated subsequently. In one occasion also, the title ajaw "king" behaves similarly. In Cover of Vault 15, ajaw has been written before the name Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’. Although it could be argued that actually it is not directly related with the name of the king but rather with the preceding supernatural toponym Ho’…lnal, thus giving shape to a hypothetical expression of Emblem Glyph, we would then have a syntactic aberration, given that the title represented by the Emblem Glyph usually comes after the personal denominations, and not before. Therefore, the expression AJAW-wa u-ki-ti-IV-le-ku-TOK’, ajaw Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’ from Cover of Vault 15, may be put in relation with the other examples mentioned above where the title of kalo’mte’ precedes the personal denominations, reinforcing the presence, therefore, of this characteristic in Ek’ Balam.

• Going further with syntax, though in a different ambit, the change of place of temporal references, which used to occupy a position at the beginning of the phrases and now changed to be placed after the verb or at the end of the phrase, could also be taken as a diagnostic trait of Yucatecan. Even though a more detailed analysis is still pending, this trait could perhaps be found in the Mural of Room 22, where the Calendar Round 3 Hix 7 K’ank’in follows the Introductory Glyph and the verb-God-N, and maybe also in Mural B of Room 29-sub, where, apparently, the one single calendric expression in the text, 1 Ajaw 3 Wayeb, is placed at the end of it.

As to the morphological evidence, the Yucatecan from the Classic Period presents particular identification problems because the forms we are in a position to document, precede in several centuries the forms of the proto-Yucatecan rebuilt by linguists around the XI century (vid. Lacadena and Wichmann 2002). Nevertheless, we may suggest a Yucatecan filiation for some of the documented forms:

• The ending –ja-la, -jal, from the dedicatory verb in Miscellaneous Text 5 (A1) may be consistent with the inchoative of the colonial Yucatecan –(a)j-al, also identified in other texts from northern Yucatán and different from the equivalent Cholan forms expressed as –ja and –ni (Lacadena and Wichmann 2002).

• I suggest as well to consider classic Yucatecan the presence of the suffix –aay, which alternates with –aj in the relational expression u-RABBIT-ka-ja / u-RABBIT-ka-yi, in Murals A and C from Room 29-sub. As a possession fomula, the possessed expression must be a noun. The suffix -aay from Ek’ Balam could well correspond to the suffix –ay documented in colonial Yucatecan, which derives nouns from verbs–the composition RABBIT-ka appears like a verb in southern texts, as shown by the form RABBIT-ka-ja written in the Brussels Panel. About this suffix –ay, Smailus states: "There is a function of forms in –ay that makes them look like nouns. Whether this derivation is a variation of the construction shown above or otherwise is a different morpheme, remains to be seen. Concerning this use of –ay, Buenaventura declares: <-ay postponed to neutral verbs having removed from them the two last letters, which were there, will turn them into nouns and other adjectives> (Buenaventura 20v). This substantival use of –ay fits as well its usual capacity of being preffixed with the ergative pronoun E-" (1989: 138).

• Similarly, perhaps some constructions of the type VERB-aaj present in northern Yucatán, such as tu-ta-ji, tutaaj in Ek’ Balam or TZAK-ka-ji, tzakaaj in Chichén Itzá, may be considered as Yucatecan. These forms are apparently different, on the one side, of the Cholan forms VERB-aj and on the other, of the Cholan forms ERG-VERB-VVj expressing perfect participles.

• The possible ending –e’ of forms written in Ek’ Balam as u-k’a-le and u-wo-jo-le could also be reflecting this Yucatecan vernacular background, following typical forms from elsewhere in northern Yucatán, where disharmonic forms ending in –Ce, such as u-tz’i-b’a-le, u-TUN-ni-le, yo-to-che, yu-CV-lu-le or yi-ta-je are documented (vid. Lacadena and Wichmann 2002). This is not merely a way to indicate disharmony with a pattern Ca–Ce, Co-Ce and Ci-Ce instead of the usual Ca–Ci, Co-Ci and Ci-Ca, but it clearly introduces new disharmonic examples where the common pattern is of a synharmonic nature, as in u-TUN-ni-le instead of u-TUN-ni-li.

I wish to refer now to the text of Cover of Vault 18. We have seen that the dedication verb mak "to cover, to close", has been written like ma-ka, and not like ma-ka-ja, the usual form (vid. supra). True, ma-ka could be an abbreviated form for ma-ka-ja, and therefore the word to be transcribed may be the rebuilt form ma[h]ka[j], reflecting the Cholan morphology of the passive voice of verbs with a CVC structure, like in the remaining cover of vaults of the site. But there is another possibility to explore, the one that considers that ma-ka is a simple reflection of ma[h]k. This mahk form may be analized as ma-h-k-ø, and consider that the infix -h- is the pre-proto-Yucatecan morpheme of the mid-passive voice VV (a high tone in Yucatecan) documented for CVC verbs in the modern languages of the Yucatecan group, prior to the change Vh > VV, typical of the group (-h-, a mid-passive morpheme is well documented in other languages of the Mayan family, and can be traced back to the proto-Mayan (Kaufman 1986)). If we recall that it is precisely this Cover of Vault 18, the one that presented the interesting example of the month Ya’ax written in Yucatecan (vid. supra), we may consider that this interpretation, which suggests a Yucatecan solution to the uncertain form of ma-ka, is reinforced. Thus, the dedicatory verb would be translated as a mid-passive "it was covered". If we did this, nothing would remain in the text that could be diagnostic of a Cholan tongue. On the contrary, the text should then be considered as an example of a text entirely written in classic Yucatecan, in Ek’ Balam, by the end of the VIII century A.D.

11 Chuen, tu 9 Ya’ax winik, wal 4 tuun [9 ajaw], ma[h]k way[i]l, uk’aal Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’
"(In) 11 Chuen, on the ninth Ya’ax month, (in) the times of the 4 tuun (in) 9 Ajaw, the room was covered, Ukit Kan Le’k Tok’s chamber"

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