![]() The author argues in ♤ that allographic signs might make decipherment a longer process, but doesn‘t argue that it‘s stymied the experts. The author isn‘t trying to prove that Mayan signs have done anything, only to detail progress. ![]() A check of the passage shows that his purpose is to illustrate just this. Knorozov is mentioned in ♣, which deals with progress in detangling the syllabic grid. In evaluating a particular phonetic interpretation of a syllable, it‘s helpful to identify as many as possible of the variant forms so the process of recognizing allographs depends on the slow work of comparing many texts in order to find variant spellings of the same word.ġ)As usual, use your map to get a rough prediction. Each scribe chose from several different signs to convey the sounds. Such equivalences are common in Maya texts (there are at least five different signs that could be chosen to represent the Maya syllable ba). One aspect of Maya writing that may complicate this progress is the fact that different signs can be allographs. Nonetheless, the pace of phonetic decipherment is bound to increase in the coming years as more resources are trained on it. Furthermore, the consonant-vowel syllables that are already understood are the common ones. It must be remembered that the discovery of the structure of the syllabic elements-Knorozov‘s main contribution-was made a little more than 30 years ago. Epigraphers have filled more than half of the syllabic grid, meant to plot the consonants of the spoken Maya language against its vowels and thus represents the totality of signs needed to write the language. But a significant number of the logograms have been deciphered and the number of deciphered syllabic signs keeps growing. ![]() Sounds are formed by combining a particular consonant with one of the five vowels (hence a syllabary, rather than an alphabet).īecause many Maya signs remain undeciphered, it‘s not possible to state precisely the relative proportions of logographic and syllabic signs. By contrast, all Maya words can be formed from various combinations of nearly 800 consonant-vowel glyphs, each representing a full syllable. All English words are formed from various combinations of only 26 phonetic signs. The Maya wrote both logographically and phonetically, and within their phonetic system alone, the Maya had multiple options. None of this should be taken to mean that the Maya only wrote in simple pictures. The pictorial principle is taken to the extreme in inscriptions composed of ―full-figure‖ glyphs, in which individual signs and numbers become animated and are shown interacting with one another. Mayan signs are by nature highly pictorial, often representing in considerable detail animals, people, body parts and objects of daily life. ![]() Likewise, the word pakal (―shield‖) can be indicated by a depiction of a shield or by the combination of syllabic elements pa-ka-la. But it is also possible to write the word as a combination of three phonetic, syllabic signs: a-ha-wa. For example, one very common honorific title in Maya texts is ahaw, meaning ―lord‖ or ―noble.‖ Ahaw may be written in logographic form as a head in profile, with the distinctive headband or scarf that marked the highest nobility in Maya society. The combination of consonant-vowel syllabic glyphs and logographs in ancient Mayan gave the scribes a variety of choices with which to write the words of their texts in detail. ![]()
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