Late Preclassic Inscription Documentation Project

Preliminary Epigraphic Discussion

Four of the hieroglyphic texts published here are particularly useful to epigraphers: the DO pectoral, the JM spoon, the PMY jaguar, and the UNP clamshell. They have been discussed and studied by Coe (1966; 1973; 1976), Ayala (1983), Schele and Miller (1986), Fields (1980), Freidel and Schele (1989), Reents-Budet and Fields (1990), Anderson (1993), Mora-Marín (1997), and Coe and Kerr (1998), among other authors. Coe (1973; 1976) first remarked on the close stylistic and orthographic similarities between the DO pectoral and the PMY jaguar, while Reents-Budet and Fields (1990), Anderson (1993), and Mora-Marín (1997) have remarked on the close similarities between those two and the JM spoon and the UNP clamshell. Due to these similarities, their generally excellent preservation, and the fact that they are all inscribed on portable objects, I think that these four texts constitute a data set with more (structural and semantic) controls for epigraphers to exploit than any other group of Late Preclassic texts. Instead of undertaking a thorough review of the scholarship on these texts, here I just point to a few of the preliminary results of my epigraphic and linguistic analysis of these texts. I defend this analysis at length in my dissertation, as well as in an article that is near completion and submission.

In Mora-Marín (1997) I tested the hypothesis by Freidel and Schele (1989) that the text inscribed on the reverse of the DO pectoral contained two glyphs commonly present in the dedicatory formula or Primary Standard Sequence of Classic Mayan texts on portable objects (Coe, 1973; Grube, 1991; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, 1989; MacLeod, 1990; Stuart, 1989). I selected two stylistically, calligraphically, and orthographically related texts, as first identified by Coe (1976), and added the two examples with the same attributes first discussed in Reents-Budet and Fields (1990) and Anderson (1993). Three of the texts are inscribed on jadeite pendants, and one on a basalt jaguar figurine. All have legible texts. The most important of these is the one on the DO pectoral: it has the longest text of the four, and thus offers the best test case for a more detailed grammatical analysis.

Anderson (1993) conducted a structural comparison of the four texts centering on what I identify as a bearded Late Preclassic version of the GOD.N dedicatory glyphic verb; Anderson indeed suggested this glyph might be a verb. In Mora-Marín (1997) I conducted a structural analysis (Figure 46) of the texts and found supporting evidence for the claims by Freidel and Schele (1989) and Anderson (1993). I identified two additional glyphs which have possible correlates in the Classic period dedicatory formula (Figure 47), one of these being the bearded GOD.N glyph, and the other being T124 TSIK ’to (re)count, honor’ (also tsi), and evidence for the glyphic names of the artifacts themselves and/or for parts of the artifacts (Figure 48).

Since then, I have refined my analysis of the morphological and syntactic structure of the same passages of these texts (Figure 49). I believe that four out of the five instances of the bearded GOD.N glyphic verb in these four texts are examples of antipassive verbs: GOD.N-ni for VERB-n-Ø-i (verb-AP-3sABS-CMP.ST).¹³  The sentences would be of a kind similar to the English sentences ’Casey baby-sat’ (baby is the (underlying) object of the verb).¹⁴  Antipassive sentences of the kind proposed here (absolutive/incorporative antipassives) take a suffix represented with a wV sign in the Classic period, not an nV sign (Lacadena, 1998; Mora-Marín, 1998). If the DO text is in (pre/proto-)Cholan, as seems very likely, this evidence would support Kaufman’s (1989) proposal that the proto-Mayan absolutive/incorporative antipassive was *-(a-)o-n, and not *-(a-)o-w, and suggests that the -(V)w suffix for incorporative antipassives in the Classic period was an innovation or borrowing. If the text is in Yucatecan, then it agrees with the Yucatecan -n ’absolutive/incorporative (incompletive) antipassive’ suffix.

Thus, whether the DO pectoral text is in Cholan or Yucatecan hinges on whether the earliest form of the absolutive/incorporative antipassive suffix was a *-(V)n or *-(V)w form. I support Kaufman’s (1989) reconstruction (*-(a-)o-n), which unfortunately leaves the question unanswered (i.e. the texts could show either a form of Cholan that had retained the ancestral *-(V)n suffix, or Yucatecan). I have not identified any evidence in these early texts, so far, that allows a more narrow distinction.¹⁵

The fifth instance of the bearded GOD.N verb appears to be a (medio)passive verb: GOD.N for VERB[h]-Ø-Ø (verb[(M)P]-3sABS-CMP.ST). This sentence would be of the kind as ’The car was/got stolen’. The fact that there is no overtly spelled suffix on the verb suggests an infixed -h- ’(medio)passive’ marker; Kaufman (1989) reconstructs this suffix as a ’mediopassivizer’ for proto-Mayan, but notes that in Cholan it eventually became a ’passivizer’. It is not possible based on this example to discriminate between the two.

Lastly, assuming the bearded GOD.N glyph is in fact a dedicatory verb here, the incorporated objects that follow it in the four antipassive sentences, and the subject that follows it in the passive sentence, refer to the inscribed artifacts, or to parts of the inscribed artifacts themselves (Figure 48).¹⁶  These findings, if correct, suggest a major role of the dedicatory genre at an early date. This in turn supports an important role of gift exchange in the political economy of Late Preclassic Mayan society (Stuart, 1995) and in the spread of Late Preclassic Mayan writing (Mora-Marín, 1997).

Endnotes

13. AP = antipassive, (M)P = (medio)passive, 3sABS = third person singular absolutive suffix, CMP = completive status marker.

14. The verb baby-sit is more a case of a lexicalized compound in English, but it is the closest analog to the examples of antipassives with object-incorporation in Mayan.

15. I pointed out above that the spelling 7u-ya- for 7uy- in the DO pectoral text points to a Lowland Mayan affiliation (Cholan/Yucatecan).

16. There is abundant iconographic evidence suggesting T503 functions as a label for jade ornaments, and therefore, that it may refer to the jade spoon itself in the JM spoon text. The best case for this hypothesis is the T503 7IKÕ(-NAL) sign that follows the bearded GOD.N-ni glyph in the JM spoon text.

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