Itzaj Maya Documentation

ITZAJ MAYA GRAMMAR

Acknowledgements

The project of documenting the Itzaj Maya language has taken me over twenty years. Grants in support of various aspects of this work began with a pre-doctoral Fulbright Fellowship to Guatemala, 1979-80.  A University of Kentucky Summer Research Fellowship (1988) supported text collection. Intensive work on grammatical research began in 1991-93, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF BNS-9009259). I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for work on the dictionary during 1993-95 (NEH/RT-21447-93) and another grant from NSF to continue grammatical research during 1996-98 (NSF SBR-9507876). I received a Summer Research Grant from the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and a grant from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI) to complete research on the grammar during the summer of 1998. I am very grateful to all of these institutions for their support of this research; none of them is responsible for any of its shortcomings.

Over the course of this research I have benefited from the help of hundreds of people and dozens of institutions and cannot hope to thank all of them adequately. In the early to mid 1990’s I was based at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Cincinnati. I sincerely appreciate their support of this project and especially want to thank Rhoda Halperin, Joseph F. Foster, Vernon Scarborough, Pat Mora, and Barry Isaac. Since then, I have enjoyed the support of my colleagues at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, who have provided an immensely stimulating environment for interdisciplinary anthropological research and a haven for Mayan studies. I am especially grateful to Don and Pru Rice, and Vice Chancellor Victoria Molfese for their support of this project. I also thank my students, especially my student assistants David Carlson, Laura Moll, and Bill Duncan.

Many colleagues in Guatemala have encouraged this work. I especially thank the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Hirstoria de Guatemala, the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA), and Oxlajuuj Keej Maya’ Ajtz’iib’ for their interest and support. I also thank CIRMA for archiving the Itzaj documentary materials in Antigua, Guatemala. The community of San José has always welcomed me and encouraged my work and I hope that it is useful to them. I especially thank doña Castora Collí for keeping my household together in the field.

I thank Norman Schwartz and Grant Jones for sharing knowledge and enthusiasm about the Itzaj and the Petén. My friends and colleagues Jill Brody, Laura Martin, Nora England, Katherine Hall, and Nancy Adamson have never wavered in their support of this seemingly endless task. Nora England and Jill Brody made many valuable comments on the entire manuscript, helping me to improve it significantly. Laura Martin gave constant encouragement and offered excellent suggestions for improving the final chapter on style. I thank Marta Macri for her assistance in archiving the Itzaj materials at the University of California at Davis.

I am grateful to the University of Utah Press and its director, Jeff Grathwohl, for supporting the publication of the documentation of the Itzaj Maya language over the last decade. I also thank Richard Firmage and Rodger Reynolds for their editorial assistance.

This book is dedicated to my teachers. In particular I would like to acknowledge my intellectual debt to Marshall and Mridula Durbin, Bernard Comrie, Fernando Tesucún, and my parents, Madelyn L. and Charles K. Hofling.

Last and most important, I thank my wife, Lynne, and daughter, Helen, for being so wonderful through it all.

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