Danny Law | The University of Texas at Austin (original) (raw)

Papers by Danny Law

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2019

In: Aissen, Judith, Nora C. England and Roberto Zavala Maldonado (eds.) The Mayan Languages. Routledge Language Family Series. New York: Routledge. , 2017

This essay provides an overview of the language attested in ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing, or... more This essay provides an overview of the language attested in ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing, or what we choose to call Classic Mayan.1 The writing system was in use for nearly two thousand years, beginning in what archaeologists call the Late Preclassic period (ca. 300 B.C.) and lasting until the time of European conquest and domination. In this period the hieroglyphic script was used throughout the region we traditionally know as the “Lowland Maya area,” concentrated mostly in the lowlands of what is today Guatemala, Belize, southern Mexico (Yucatan, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Chiapas, and Tabasco) and parts of western Honduras. Thousands of ancient texts survive on stone monuments, various portable objects such as ceramics, and in three (possibly four) screen-fold books dating to the later stages of the script’s history. These mostly record religious and historical information, although the styles and genres of such texts varied considerably over time and space. Remarkably, virtually all of the extant hieroglyphic texts seem to represent a single “prestige” language that, even at the time of its use, may have been highly formalized and even archaic in some of its features (Macri and Ford 1997; Houston et al. 2000). With the decipherment of the script in the 1980s and ’90s, specialists soon realized that many of the basic phonological, morphological, and syntactic features of this language are represented in great detail by the ancient writing system. These are now the subject of considerable study, debate, and discussion. However, as the following sections attest, in spite of a variety of confounding factors and interpretive obstacles, there is a great deal that we can say about the linguistics of ancient Maya writing

Diachronica, 2017

Definitions of ‘mixed’ or ‘intertwined’ languages derive almost entirely from studies of language... more Definitions of ‘mixed’ or ‘intertwined’ languages derive almost entirely from studies of languages that combine elements from genetically unrelated sources. The Mayan language Tojol-ab’al displays a mixture of linguistic features from two related Mayan languages, Chuj and Tseltal. The systematic similarities found in related languages not only make it methodologically difficult to identify the source of specific linguistic features but also mean that inherited similarity can alter the processes and outcomes of language mixing in ways that parallel observed patterns of code-switching between related languages. Tojol-ab’al, therefore, arguably represents a distinct type of mixed language, one that may only result from mixture involving related languages.

The Cambridge World History, Vol. III: Early Cities in Comparative perspective 4000 BCE - 1200 CE, ed. by Norman Yoffee, 2015

The Cambridge World History, Vol. III: Early Cities in Comparative perspective 4000 BCE - 1200 CE, Ed. by Norman Yoffee, 2015

Ancient Mesoamerica 25(2): 357-366, Sep 2014

Advances in hieroglyphic decipherment and in language contact typology provide new data and theor... more Advances in hieroglyphic decipherment and in language contact typology provide new data and theories with which to investigate and reassess prior interpretations of Mayan linguistic history. The present study considers the shift from proto-Mayan *k and *k’ to /ch/ and /ch’/, a sound change that affected several Mayan languages in different phonological contexts. This sound change, with a very particular set of conditions, has been highlighted as a defining feature of the Cholan-Tseltalan branch of the Mayan language family. New evidence suggests that this sound change was shared as a result of contact around the time of the Classic period, rather than reflecting an inherited sound change that would have taken place at a much earlier stage of the language family. Hieroglyphic data provide further evidence that this sound change was adopted in the hieroglyphic language in a word-by-word fashion, rather than applying to all similar phonological contexts at the same time.

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 23(2): E23-E47., Sep 18, 2013

The interpretation of deixis in language is heavily context-dependent. In spoken language, the ad... more The interpretation of deixis in language is heavily context-dependent. In spoken language, the addressee(s) have the context of an utterance to aid in its interpretation. In writing, however, language can become separated from both its creator and the context of its creation. This article investigates the use of certain deictics—first and second person markers—in ancient Maya hieroglyphics (circa AD 250–900). The temporal and cultural gap that separates modern language scholars from the creators of these texts means that much of the larger cultural context in which these texts would have been interpreted has been lost. An analysis of the way in which first and second person reference was framed and deployed in Maya hieroglyphs, even when identifying the intended referent proves impossible, provides insights concerning how people recontextualize textual language and how the authors of these texts adapted the form of their messages in response to the modality used.

Journal of Language Contact 6, 271-299, 2013

Similarity has been cited, generally anecdotally, as a significant factor shaping the outcomes of... more Similarity has been cited, generally anecdotally, as a significant factor shaping the outcomes of language contact. A detailed investigation of long-term contact among more than a dozen related Lowland Mayan languages has yielded specific examples of contact-induced language changes that, I argue, were facilitated by the systematic similarities shared by these languages because of genetic relatedness. Three factors that seem to have been particularly relevant in the Mayan case are 1) the high degree of overlap in linguistic structure, which would have allowed significant interlingual conflation, the collapsing of language boundaries at points of similarity between the languages, 2) the paradigmatic interchangeability of particular elements of related languages without the need for adaptation or accommodation, which facilitated the borrowing of various kinds of linguistic material, particularly bound morphemes, that in other contexts have been found to be highly resistant to borrowing, and 3) contact-induced drift, parallel sec- ondary developments in more than one language that were triggered by contact-induced innova- tions but subsequently proceeded along similar paths of change after contact because of the preexisting structural similarities that the languages shared as a result of their common inheri- tance. I argue that these processes of change are much less likely, if not impossible, in situations of contact between unrelated languages, and suggest specific ways in which contact between genetically related languages can be qualitatively different from contact between unrelated languages.

Language and Linguistics Compass, Mar 2013

Mayan historical linguistic research has progressed at a healthy pace since the 1970s. The recent... more Mayan historical linguistic research has progressed at a healthy pace since the 1970s. The recent decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing and the publication, in the last decade, of a large cohort of high quality linguistic descriptions of several Mayan languages, many of them written by native speakers of those languages, have opened a floodgate of new linguistic data that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the history of the language family. In particular, recent research has shown the Mayan region to have been a remarkably dynamic zone of language contact. Contact among Mayan languages has the potential to illuminate mechanisms and constraints on language contact between related languages. New data and attention to contact phenomena may also help clarify long-standing disagreements about the historical relationships among Mayan languages, particularly Wastek, Tojol-ab’al, and the language of the hieroglyphs, all of which have been an important impetus for historical linguistic research in the past decades.

Ch. 10 of Kerry Hull and Michael Carrasco (eds.) Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse, and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial and Classic Maya Literature., 2012

International Journal of American Linguistics, Jan 1, 2009

This paper traces the evolution of the Common Mayan derivational suffixes *-V-ng and *-V-j into t... more This paper traces the evolution of the Common Mayan derivational suffixes *-V-ng and *-V-j into their descendant forms in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages. Specifically, the paper outlines a remarkable but markedly consistent shift from a transitivizing, derivational morpheme to an aspectual, inflectional suffix, whose most far-reaching fate is a negative future marker in Ch’orti’. It is only by firmly focusing on the systems of grammatical relationships that one can realize an informed, historical account of the series of shifts that brought the ancestral form to the forms attested in the several daughter languages.

Latin American Indian literatures journal, Jan 1, 2007

The purpose of this study is to identify, describe, and discuss the poetic structures and verbal ... more The purpose of this study is to identify, describe, and discuss the poetic structures and verbal artistry of a seventeenth century manuscript written primarily in the Colonial Mayan language Ch'olti'. Because this manuscript is the sole attestation ofthis partic- ular language, any analysis necessarily involves a comparison of Ch'olti' poetry with known elements of Mayan poetic traditions in general, including specifically the verbal art of Ch'orti' a very close relative of, Ch'olti'. The various poetic forms used throughout the manuscript lend themselves to interesting inferences regarding the respective pragmatic purposes of the differing sections of the manu- script. A great deal can be learned from this document about the role of poetic discourse among the Ch'olti' at the time that this manu- script was authored. The consistency between the poetic forms used in the Ch'olti' manuscript and those so long associated with the Maya culture suggest that the author(s) of this text had a deep under- standing of Maya culture that enabled them to adapt their message, both in content and in structure, so that it would most appeal to the sensibilities of the intended audience.

Diachronica, Jan 1, 2009

A central concern in the study of language contact phenomena is the question of what linguistic f... more A central concern in the study of language contact phenomena is the question of what linguistic features are more or less likely to be borrowed, and why. Pronominal borrowing, at least the direct borrowing of the phonological forms, is often ranked among the least common outcomes of language contact. This paper presents an extended case study of contact-induced changes in the system of person markers in several Mayan languages over nearly two thousand years of intense linguistic contact. The contact phenomena discussed appear to include the direct borrowing of pronominal ‘matter’, as well as the diffusion of structural and semantic ‘patterns’ that have led to a high degree of convergence in the overall system of pronominal reference in these languages. Possible social and linguistic motivations for the unusual contact-induced changes are considered.

International journal of American linguistics, Jan 1, 2006

An unchallenged assumption regarding the linguistic history of the Ch’olan branch of the Mayan la... more An unchallenged assumption regarding the linguistic history of the Ch’olan branch of the Mayan language family is that this common language was “split ergative”—demonstrating an ergative/absolutive pattern of pronominal inflection in the completive aspect and a nominative/accusative pattern in the incompletive. Such a hypothesis is untenable in light of the data, which show that the Ch’olti’an branch of Ch’olan did not share in the split ergative innovation. To support this conclusion, the evolutionary history of tense/aspect in each of the modern Ch’olan languages is presented. From a straight ergative ancestral system, a typologically plausible series of changes can account for various systems found in the modern languages. No such account is possible if scholars assume a split ergative system for Common Ch’olan.

Books by Danny Law

This book offers a study of long-term, intensive language contact between more than a dozen Mayan... more This book offers a study of long-term, intensive language contact between more than a dozen Mayan languages spoken in the lowlands of Guatemala, Southern Mexico and Belize. It details the massive restructuring of syntactic and semantic organization, the calquing of grammatical patterns, and the direct borrowing of inflectional morphology, including, in some of these languages, the direct borrowing of even entire morphological paradigms. The in-depth analysis of contact among the genetically related Lowland Mayan languages presented in this volume serves as a highly relevant case for theoretical, historical, contact, typological, socio- and anthropological linguistics. This linguistically complex situation involves serious engagement with issues of methods for distinguishing contact-induced similarity from inherited similarity, the role of social and ideological variables in conditioning the outcomes of language contact, cross-linguistic tendencies in language contact, as well as the effect that inherited similarity can have on the processes and outcomes of language contact.

At the time of the Spanish conquest, Ch’olti’ was spoken throughout much of the southern Maya low... more At the time of the Spanish conquest, Ch’olti’ was spoken throughout much of the southern Maya lowlands in what is present-day Petén and Chiquimula, and is closely related to that spoken by the authors of the Classic Maya inscriptions. This book presents for the first time a facsimile, transcription, English and Spanish translation, and grammatical analysis of the Morán Manuscript, a Colonial-era document that provides the sole attestation of Ch’olti’.

In addition to its value as a chronicle of the Colonial period, the Morán Manuscript is crucial to our understanding of the Classic Maya, particularly their language, captured in thousands of intricately carved and painted hieroglyphic inscriptions. Robertson, Law, and Haertel, regarded as the ablest interpreters of Ch’olti’ now working in Mayan linguistics, provide not only a painstaking presentation of language data but also a detailed history of the manuscript itself. They discuss the document’s probable authorship, investigate where and by whom Ch’olti’ was spoken at contact, and infer how speakers maintained their expressive capabilities in the face of colonial oppression. The transcribed Ch’olti’ texts feature an orthographically standardized version with a morpheme-by-morpheme gloss, a literal English translation that preserves many of the poetic structures and metaphors, and a flowing translation in both English and Spanish.

The publication of this document marks a major contribution to the fields of Maya epigraphy, Mayan linguistics, ethnohistory, and Mesoamerican languages. It will serve as the definitive presentation of the Morán Manuscript and stand as a major contribution to further understanding the language of the Maya inscriptions in Mexico and Guatemala.

Conference Presentations by Danny Law

13th conference of Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, 2019

This research is both a methodological exploration applying the comparative method in historical ... more This research is both a methodological exploration applying the comparative method in historical linguistics to putatively-related signed languages; and a theoretical inquiry into whether there is a parallel to regular sound change in signed language change.