·     This verb can apply to rituals involving a woman in relation to marriage or captives in relation to sacrifice.

·     Bíró-ONoM (implicitly) warns against assigning modern English translations like “marriage” and “engagement” for mak and na’/naw, found in the passive as mahkaj and nahwaj on PNG Stela 1, 3, and 8 and other inscriptions – better to use “to present” and “to cover” respectively.

·     There is an additional subtlety was nahwaj, which, on face value, one would expect to have the infinitive naw. Bíró-ONoM.p6.fn2: The na-wa-ja spelling is usually interpreted to represent the root naw- with the h…-aj composite passive suffix and in turn connected to the Ch’olti’ root nau “to adorn, to paint”. The translation is therefore “he/she/it was adorned, painted”. The problem with this interpretation is that the actual transcription of the Ch’olti’ gloss is nab’ which is already attested in Classic Ch’olan. David Stuart (in Guenter 2007:21, note 21) suggested that the Classic Period spelling was based on the Ch’olti’ root na’ “to know (someone)” as in a public presentation and which has many cognates in all Mayan languages. In this case, the verb should be analysed as na-w-aj where the composite -w-aj passive suffix indicates a non-CVC root, probably a derivation. The translation would be “he/she/it was known” (publicly) akin to presentation, and in a parallel structure with mak- it may have the implicit meaning of unveiling (as also suggested by Christophe Helmke and Harri Kettunen, personal communication with Christophe Helmke, 22 November 2010).

o L&D.p47 states that a non-CVC takes the passive endings -naj or -waj. The former is known for tz’ihbnaj, the latter for na’waj (although neither of these are given as an explicit example in L&D – just the grammar rule is stated, and the example given is uxul).

o Note that na’ is apparently not considered a CVC-verb, which means that the glottal stop is not considered a “standard” consonant in this context. This is shown by the fact that otherwise we would have na’ (passivized) ènah’aj. Even if there were a phonological rule for simplifying the consonant cluster -h’-, this would not explain the -w- seen in the passive form nawaj. Instead, this requires the ending to be -waj, i.e., for na’ not to be considered a CVC verb.

·     k’al, na’, and t’ab are translated as “to present” in English, but they are quite different types of “presenting”:

o k’al: a ritual object (e.g. a headband or stela) is the object of k’al.

o na’: a human being (e.g. a bride or prisoner) is the object of na’.

o t’ab: a ceramic (or perhaps the inscription / painting on the ceramic) is the object of t’ab.