CMGG entry for wa'      (This article is part of the Learner's Maya Glyph Guide and Concordance.)

Alternative readings: WAL
Translation: erect, put upright
Part of speech: Verb

Logogram spellings of wa'

                                                                                      

K&L.p41.#4.2&3&4&5 [K&L.p41.#4.4= 25EMC.pdfp50.#1.4]                  TOK.p31.r2.c4                   BMM9.p18.r2.c2                25EMC.pdfp50.#1.1&2&3

WA’ / WAL

 

                                     

MHD.AX1.1                      T588a                                    

WA’                                   -                                              

 

              

MHD.AX1.3                          T588b

WA’                                        -

 

TOK.p22.r3.c4 = BMM9.p15.r7.c3

WA’                                                      

 

Graham

YAX Lintel 30 E3

<WA’:[ji]ya>.ja

 

                  

K&L.p41.#4.1                                MHD.AX1.4

WA’ / WAL                                     WA’                   

 

                   

Graham                                 

NAR Stela 24 D12                

AJ.<WA’:la>                          

 

MHD.AX1.2  

WA’

 

·     No glyphs given in K&H.

·     The infixed element in T588b could be mistaken for a K’IN but it is in fact a CHUWEN / WINIK.

·     Yesugi&Saito-GYotMSS.p8.para7.l+2 equate T588 to WA’ (probably correctly so).

·     Variants (4), with some sub-variants:

o A. Animal head – features:

§ Animal head:

·       Mammal-head profile/nose with (optional) mammal ear with, or

·       Snake- or bird-head profile/beak without mammal ear.

§ (Optional) PAX-feelers on top, going into a split in the middle of the head.

§ (Optional) cross-hatched elements in the top of the head.

§ CHUWEN”-like eye (or a WINIK-like eye, a codical form).

o B. Skull – features:

§ Skull with bone-jaw and nose-hole.

§ PAX-feelers on top, going into a split in the middle of the head.

§ CHUWEN”-like eye.

o C. Reduced – features:

§ Above: bold left and right feelers (the equivalent of the PAX-feelers in the non-reduced variant).

§ Below: “CHUWEN”-like element (or a WINIK, a codical form) (the equivalent of the “CHUWEN”/WINIK-like eye in the non-reduced variants).

o D. Reduced – features:

§ Animal (bird?) head with no CHUWEN-like element.

§ PAX-like feelers on top.

·     This is a positional verb. As this category doesn’t exist in English, they are often translated with “to be” + “past participle”, e.g. chum = “to be seated”. This then tends to give them a feeling of being a passive form of a transitive verb, but they are certainly not that in Classic Maya. Instead, they reflect a situation where an object or person occupies (or takes) a certain physical position, with respect to the surroundings. So they should feel more like intransitive or stative verb.

·     EB.p196.pdfp201.#2: wa’ pv. “to put upright, to erect”.

·     K&H.p96.#3 =K&L.p83.#2 = BMM9.p96.#1 (non-glyphic dictionary) distinguish – in terms of meaning – the two verbs wa’ pv. “to put upright, to erect” from wal tv. “to set up”. However, K&L. and 25EMC make no distinction in the glyphs, reading the glyph as either WA’ and WAL, while TOK and BMM9 read only WA’, not WAL.

·     Sometimes known as the “819-day-cycle dedicatory verb” 819DCDV – this is one of its major uses – it is the verb when performing the 819-day cycle Station ritual.

o It does appear occasionally in other contexts, e.g. NAR Stela 24 D12, as a toponym.

o However, neither Wa’l Chak nor Wal Chak are listed in Tokovinine-CMPNDP.

·     Valencia-KyeCMd819D.p108-113 gives 22 examples of 819-day cycle expressions with 18 of them explicitly having a WA’-glyph. An MHD search on “blcodes contains AX1” yields 52 hits. I have not yet determined how many of these correspond to 819-day cycle expressions.

·     Do not confuse WA’ with the phonetically and semantically (but not visually) similar WAL? (they are distinguished by TOK and BMM9 but not by earlier works):

o WA’ is a complex mammal head or skull, with a “PAX”-element in the split in the middle of the top of head [a verb].

o WAL is a simple boulder shape, with 2-3 medium-sized to small non-touching circles vertically arranged [a noun or noun-related].

 

Syllabogram spellings of wa'

                                                                                                         

AT-E1168-lecture19 Assignment 10 / Zender-PhD.p543.fig72                       AT-E1168-lecture19 Assignment 10 / Zender-PhD.p543.fig72

CML Urn 26 Stingray Spine 3 A11                                                                        CML Urn 26 Stingray Spine 3 A12

wa:<[i]ja>.<<[K’IN]TUUN>:ni>                                                                              wa:<[i]ja>.<wi’:na:la?:la?>

 

·     wa:<[i]ja>.<<[K’IN]TUUN>:ni> è wa’iij k’intuun = “there was drought”.

·     wa:<[i]ja>.<wi’:na:la?:la?> è wa’iij wi’naal = “there was famine”.

·     Sim: how closely related are wa-i-ja è wa’iij = “there was” and WA’ = “to erect, put upright” (often used in the 819-day cycle expression) – both share the meaning of “existing” / “being there” in some “positional” sense.