·    Is there really a context (outside of a placename) where this word means “maize”? Mostly it seems to be ixiim which has this function.

·    Variants (2):

o A. Full – features:

§ Above: corn cob protective sheath-leaves:

·      Left: a small “roundish” leaf, curling to the left.

·      Middle: a small “longish” leaf, above the right leaf.

·      Right: a long leaf, horizontally stretched.

·      Optionally: three to four maize kernels attached to the underside of a spine in the longer leaf on the right.

§ Below – corn cob:

·      Boulder with many corn kernels.

·      Optionally: two flanking protective leaves.

o B. Reduced:

§ Just the top element of the full variant.

§ (Optionally) three to four maize kernels attached to the underside of a spine in the longer leaf on the right – this is more frequent in the reduced variant, presumably because the full variant already shows many maize kernels within the boulder outline.

There is occasionally a “fancy” reduced form (e.g. QRG Stela J D17 where the leaf on the right comes down over the entire right side of the glyph below it). In general, in the reduced form, the leaves stay in the upper rectangular area that the glyph normally occupies. In the full form, the leaves on the top also stay at the top, and the boulder outline doesn’t have any leaves flanking it, or has a set of zero (K&H.p85.#5), two (BMM9.p20.r6.c1), or four (TOK.p32.r1.c1) additional leaves flanking the “boulder” part.

·    Do not confuse the reduced variant of logogram NAL with syllabogram wi:

o Syllabogram wi has only two “leaves” while NAL has three (in both cases probably the sheathes of the corncob).

o Syllabogram wi has dots on the “outside the long leaf” whereas NAL has them on the “inside”.

o Syllabogram wi usually has more dots than NAL – 4 or more for wi, and only 2-3 for NAL (although MC.p165.r2.c1.3 is an example where the complete array of kernels from the full form are infixed in the long leaf).