Mayan languages are part of a language family spoken in Mesoamerica. Currently, the 34 languages listed in glottolog 4.8 as members of the Mayan language family, are spoken in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. The language of the Classical Mayan inscriptions is a descendent of the Proto-language of the contemporary Mayan languages.
The situation of these languages varies: some languages, such as Yucatec Maya, are spoken by a large population and are represented in education and the mass media, while others are severely threatened. Although many languages of this family are still under-studied and under-documented, the Mayan family at large is overall well represented in current linguistic research, with reference grammars and dictionaries, numerous PhD's and research articles dedicated to particular grammatical phenomena, such as possessive constructions, classifier systems, optionality of plurals, pluractionality, absence of tense morphology, ergativity, spatial expressions, omnipredicativity, word order typology (with emphasis on V-initial word order), discourse functions of left peripheral positions, etc.
The present resource was created between October 2023 and March 2024 by a group of experts on Mayan languages who enjoy linguistic fieldwork, linguistic analysis, scientific exchange, and collaborative activities. They were motivated by an audience of students at the Universities of Göttingen and the Humboldt University of Berlin, as well as numerous external participants who contributed to the discussions and created materials for this project. The project was funded by the
German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
The design of the present resource used ideas developed within the sister projects Glottothèque: Ancient Indo-European Languages online (by Saverio Dalpedri, Götz Keydana, and Stavros Skopeteas),
Glottothèque: Languages of Anatolia, Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia (by Christiane Bulut, Anaïd Donabédian-Demopoulos, Geoffrey Haig, Geoffrey Khan, Pollet Samvelian, Stavros Skopeteas, Nina Sumbatova),
TutorMX (by Rodrigo Gutiérrez Bravo, Jorgina López Torres).
The targets, contents and design of the "Glottothèque: Mayan Languages" differ in various ways from the earlier glottothèque volumes, reflecting the ideas of the editors, contributors, and students of the present project.
The editorial team
program
Our goal is to address selected issues of current research on Mayan languages for an audience of students/researchers in linguistics who do not necessarily have earlier experience in the languages of this family.
Hence, the challenge is to find a balance between introducing prerequisites (about Mayan grammar or linguistic analysis) and demonstrating the analytical depth of the current scientific discussions.
The program below contains a range of topics that are representative of the different layers of morphosyntax. In order to establish coherence,
we selected topics that have been intensively discussed in the current linguistic research: number and classifier systems in the nominal domain, ergativity in the verbal domain, information structure in the clausal domain. The teaching units also contain issues beyond these topics that will point to further fruitful directions of research in these languages.
Schedule
Mo 18.12.2023, 4-6 pm (CET)
snippets on resources and morphological issues.
Mo 15.01.2024, 4-6 pm (CET)
snippets on the nominal domain, with emphasis on numbers and classifiers.
Mo 29.01.2024, 4-6 pm (CET)
snippets on the verbal domain, with emphasis on ergativity.
Mo 12.02.2024, 4-6 pm (CET)
snippets on clausal domain, with emphasis on information structure.
Mo 8.04.2024, 6-8 pm (CET)
poster presentations by the course participants.
Sections
By Language
In the following sections, you find the same units sorted by language - along with basic information (affiliation, place, population, sources and basic readings) about the languages at issue.
Interested students and researchers are welcome to participate to the course meetings! You can receive the announcements of the meetings including connection details as well as further relevant announcements for the course by subscribing to the
Our aim is to introduce representative snippets within the topics of interest. These snippets may present the core points of a phenomenon or an analysis with introducing the basic facts and point to further readings for a deeper understanding. In the following webpage, you find detailed instructions for the contents, the form and the technical issues of the video units:
Cine Janal YouTube channel with various films around the Yucatec Mayan culture and gastronomy. You may want to see El Pib with a child narration in Yucatec Maya, and Spanish/English/German subtitles.
Discover Humanity: Guatemala by the Humanity project: about the culture and the current way of living in Guatemala, with many contributions of Mayan people [15 min.].
To the Roots: A Maya Reunion by Steve Bartz, 1998: interviews with Itzá and Lancadon Maya, discussions about the culture and the relation to the nature [27 min.].
