Historical Sociolinguistics of the Classic Maya Lowlands: The Generic Preposition Variable

This paper applies a historical sociolinguistic framework to the study of Epigraphic Mayan (EMY), a logosyllabic writing system (ca. 400 BCE-CE 1700) innovated by speakers of the Ch’olan and Yucatecan (Mayan) languages. The focus is a morphological variable, the Generic Preposition, tä ~ ti. Following background information on Mayan historical linguistics and epigraphy, and a review of prior literature on the Generic Preposition, the paper describes the methodology, which involved the compilation of a comprehensive dataset by means of the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (Looper and Macri 1991–2024). The dataset was used to study, by means of quantitative methods, the variable’s temporal and geographic distribution, on the one hand, and the influence of scriptal, linguistic, and social factors, on the other. Proxies for social factors had to be devised and implemented due to the paucity of explicit information about the ancient scribes. The results show that: 1) proto-Ch’olan likely exhibited *tä ~ *ti variation to start with; 2) that Epigraphic Mayan texts, during the Early Classic period, attests to the beginnings of this variation; 3) that the innovative variant, ti, likely spread from the Southeastern region (Copan, Quirigua) westward, and become the dominant variant overall during the Late Classic period; 4) that the West region appears to have resisted the innovative variant; 5) that the Northern region, likely the realm of Yucatecan inhabitants, witnessed a switch from ti variant, likely motivated by proto-Yucatecan *tiʔ, to Ch’olan-motivated ta (for tä) during the Terminal Classic period, likely as a result of influence of scribes from the West region, an influence supported in the rise in phonographic spellings of etyma exhibiting Ch’olan(-Tzeltalan) phonological innovations; and 6) that the proxies for social factors proved to be influential on the spread of the innovative variant ti, especially the presence references to diplomatic political strategies in the texts.