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The PARI Journal Vol. XIV, No. 2 ThePARIJournal A quarterly publication of the Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute Volume XIV, No. 2, Fall 2013 Mesoamerican Lexical Calques in Ancient Maya Writing and Imagery In This Issue: CHRISTOPHE HELMKE University of Copenhagen Mesoamerican Lexical Calques Introduction ancient cultural interactions which might otherwise go undetected. in Ancient Maya The process of calquing is a fascinating What follows is a preliminary treat- Writing and Imagery aspect of linguistics since it attests to ment of a small sample of Mesoamerican contacts between differing languages by lexical calques as attested in the glyphic and manifests itself in a variety of guises. Christophe Helmke corpus of the ancient Maya. The present Calquing involves loaning or transferring PAGES 1-15 treatment is not intended to be exhaus- items of vocabulary and even phonetic tive; instead it provides an insight into • and syntactic traits from one language 1 the types, antiquity, and longevity of to another. Here I would like to explore The Further Mesoamerican calques in the hopes that lexical calques, which is to say the loaning Adventures of Merle this foray may stimulate additional and of vocabulary items, not as loanwords, (continued) more in-depth treatment in the future. but by means of translating their mean- by ing from one language to another. In this Merle Greene sense calques can be thought of as “loan Calques in Mesoamerica Robertson translations,” in which only the semantic Lexical calques have occupied a privileged PAGES 16-20 dimension is borrowed. Calques, unlike place in the definition of Mesoamerica as a loanwords, are not liable to direct phono- linguistic area (Campbell et al. 1986:553- logical assessment, which would other- 555; Smith-Stark 1994; Campbell 1997:344, Joel Skidmore Editor wise help to fix the donor culture and the 2004:81-82, 333-335). Calques form a [email protected] time when the initial semantic borrowing specific subset of linguistic borrowing in took place. Mesoamerican calques are rep- which reliance is placed on literal transla- Marc Zender resented in the textual record of the ancient tions of a foreign expression, phrase, or Associate Editor Maya, and since many such examples can juxtaposition of words, rather than the [email protected] be dated with some accuracy on the basis direct phonetic adoption of a single for- of associated calendrical statements, these eign lexical item as a loanword. It is in this The PARI Journal greatly expand the time-depth of attesta- respect that calques have been thought 202 Edgewood Avenue tions and assist in the identification of of as “loan translations.” The term calque San Francisco, CA 94117 415-664-8889 is itself a loanword from the French verb [email protected] calquer “to trace, reproduce, or copy” es- 1 Thus, for example, the distinctive Nawatl pho- pecially in reference to the reproduction of λ Electronic version neme tl [ ] may have originated due to influence illustrations on translucent tracing paper available at: from Totonakan (Kaufman 2001:9, 12). In much www.mesoweb.com/ the same way, the basic word order of Classical (known as papier-calque). pari/journal/1402 Nawatl—which is predominantly VOS (verb- An oft-cited example is worth object-subject)—contrasts with other Yuto-Nawan repeating here to illustrate the notion ISSN 1531-5398 languages, which tend to be SOV (Haspelmath et further: the Americanism skyscraper was al. 2005:330-333), and consequently it is clear that calqued into French as gratte-ciel “sky- the dominant word order of Nawan is a result of scratcher,” German as wolken-kratzer, its Mesoamerican acculturation (Kaufman 2001:24- “cloud-scratcher,” Spanish as rasca-cielos 28). Likewise, the dialects of Nawatl that exhibit SVO appear to be recent and can be said to have “skies-scraper” (Campbell 2004:81), and developed under influence from Spanish (see Danish as sky-skraber “cloud-scraper.” Campbell 1985:103; Hill and Hill 1986:237). Another noteworthy calque attested in The PARI Journal 14(2), 2013,1-15. 1 Helmke European languages is the term for “exhibit,” which is culturally-laden concepts (and often the corresponding found in French as exposition (i.e., ex-position), in German tangible referent). Calques, however, are not liable to as aus-stellung, in Danish as ud-stilling, in Swedish as ut- direct phonological assessment, which would otherwise ställing, and in Polish as wy-stawa (Una Canger, personal help to fix the donor culture and the time when the communication 2009). In all of these examples the terms concept was initially borrowed, as is otherwise the case are multi-morphemic and are structured in the same with loanwords. How then can one determine the period fashion with an initial element for “out” followed by when the borrowing or cultural influence took place and corresponding items for “placement” or “position” to the time-depth of particular calques? The glyphic texts constitute calques for “exhibit.” In one of the earlier of the ancient Maya provide us with a tantalizing oppor- treatments of such calques in Mesoamerica, Terrence tunity, since Mesoamerican calques are attested in the Kaufman (1973:477) referred to such constructions as written record of the Classic period (AD 250 – 950) and types of specific metaphors employed in lexeme forma- their temporal incidence can be assessed on the basis of tion (see also Smith-Stark 1994:17-18; Montes de Oca associated calendrical statements. This contrasts sharply Vega 2004:226-227). What is clear from these examples with previous treatments where full reliance was placed is that whereas calques appear to be careful and literal on modern or colonial vernaculars in Mesoamerica. In word-for-word translations, this is a function of the bi- fact, upon first reading Smith-Stark’s (1994:19-21) list lingualism of the context as well as the aptitude of the of Mesoamerican calques, I was immediately struck donor or recipient language to translate the original by the pervasiveness of concepts that form an integral lexeme, prior to incorporation. Therefore calques for the part of the ancient Ch’olan language and culture re- most part are not direct and perfectly matching trans- corded in glyphs (see Houston et al. 2000; Lacadena and lations as the ideal definition would have it, but only Wichmann 2002; Wichmann 2006:280-284). What fol- nearly so. lows is a preliminary treatment of some representative Another good example of a calque that I have en- examples of Mesoamerican lexical calques as attested in countered as part of my fieldwork in Belize concerns the glyphic corpus of the ancient Maya. the name of a particularly venomous snake, known formally as the fer-de-lance, or terciopelo (Bothrops The Present Study asper) (Beletsky 1999:262; Schlesinger 2001:223-225; see In the present study I have reanalysed the list of calques also Krempel and Matteo 2009:6). The snake is more provided by Smith-Stark (1994:19-21) and defined three commonly known as the barba amarilla, “yellow beard,” sub-classes (see Table 1). I have maintained the numeric in Spanish, or as the yellow-jaw tommygoff in Belizean designations that Smith-Stark attributed to each calque Kriol.2 The notion of “yellow buccal area” is essentially for the sake of consistency and ease of cross-referencing. descriptive since it refers to the yellowish mandibular The first sub-class encompasses all items that are scales, which contrast greatly to the rest of the snake’s in fact targeted by a single-morpheme term or two dark colouration. This observation also constitutes close cognates. Included in this sub-class are items the basis for the compound k’an-ti’, literally “yellow- 3 such as (19) “day” = “sun,” where we have k’in with mouth,” the original name of the snake in the area, as the meanings of both “sun” and by extension “day” indicated by a Yukatek informant from the village of as attested in the Maya languages pertinent to the Soccutz (Oscar Chi, personal communication 2001). study of Classic Maya glyphic inscriptions. The Maya Interestingly, k’an-ti’ appears to be a loanword from languages that are here deemed most significant to the Ch’olan, as the expected Yukatekan form *k’an-chi’ is study of Classic Maya glyphic texts are: Yukatek, Itza’, unattested. What is clear is that the modern Spanish and Mopan, Lakantun, Ch’orti’, †Ch’olti’, Ch’ol, Chontal, Kriol attestations are direct word-for-word translations, Tzeltal, and Tzotzil (see Lacadena and Wichmann 2002; or calques, of the widespread Ch’olan term. The most in-depth and detailed treatment of Mesoamerican calques to date is the study conducted 2 In Kriol tommygoff refers to large vipers as seen in tommygoff by Thomas Smith-Stark, who compared 52 different (Porthidium nasutum), jumping tommygoff (Atropoides nummifer), and calques throughout 34 Mesoamerican languages and a green tommygoff (Bothriechis schlegeii) (Beletsky 1999:262-263). series of 21 adjoining and distant Amerindian languages 3 In this paper, all dictionary entries are provided as in the as control sets (Campbell et al. 1986:553-555; Smith-Stark original sources unless there is sufficient consensus to present a 1994). As stated above, calques have been investigated form in an updated modern orthography, especially for Mayan for their potential as diagnostic areal delineators in the languages. Otherwise all entries are presented as they are in the definition of Mesoamerica as a linguistic area (see also original source. Angled brackets < … > are used to render either colonial spellings of terms, or more recent items whose spelling or Campbell 1997:344-346, 2004:81-82, 333-335). Calques, orthography is deemed inadequate. Names of culture groups are in their role as semantic vehicles between linguistically- left in their original spellings as for example Mixtec, Aztec, and disparate cultures, should also be highly revealing with Otomi, but the language names are updated as with the case of regard to identifying the donors of the underlying and Mixtek, Nawatl, and Hñähñu, respectively.
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