Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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Monumental art of the Maya incorporates figural imagery and hieroglyphic texts to document dynastic and mythical history. One particular monument tells us that near the end of April in 752 A.D., Bird Jaguar IV was inaugurated as ruler of the Mayan city now known as Yaxchilan. Investigation of his sculptural programmes reveals a multiplicity of innovative solutions for Bird Jaguar's unparalleled problems in validating a tenuous claim to rulership of Yaxchilan. It appears that in order to compensate for his insufficient genealogical claim, Bird Jaguar fabricated a series of ritual events which proclaimed his political legitimacy. This study examines the intended integration of two parallel systems of communication: the visual and hieroglyphic languages of the Maya. Analysis shows how Bird Jaguar's artists presented symbolic references which manipulated the past history, justified the current history, and established the future political history of Yaxchilan. / Arts, Faculty of / Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisor: Keith Walters. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Texas State University--San Marcos, 2009. / Vita. Appendix: leaves 121-159. Reproduction permission applies to print copy: Blanket permission granted per author to reproduce. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-120).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Supervisors: Brian M. Stross and Nikolai K Grube. Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe the grammatical system of Classical Ch'olti', the language of the Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions, as attested in inscriptions of the Early Classic (approximately AD 200-600). Around 300 Lowland Maya Hieroglyphic inscriptions have been dated to the Early Classic or before, nearly one third of these remain unpublished. Previous work on the monumental inscriptions of the Early Classic (Mathews 1985; Proskouriakoff 1950) has examined Early Classic monuments primarily as works of art. Mora-Marin (2001) examined the language of inscriptions found on early portable texts, a small subset of the corpus here examined. In great part, however, this study of the language of Early Classic inscriptions breaks new ground. The body of the thesis consists of a description of the linguistic system attested in Early Classic texts, with particular emphasis on morphology. The corpus is divided into three general sections according to date: Cycle 8 Texts, including all texts which date prior to the end of the Eighth Baktun in AD 435; Early Ninth Baktun Texts, covering the years between AD 435 and AD 534 (9.0.0.0.0-9.5.0.0.0 in the Maya Long Count), and ‘Terminal Early Classic’ Texts, which includes texts from between AD 534 and AD 633 (9.5.0.0.0-9.10.0.0.0). With these divisions it is possible to track the development of the attested linguistic system of the Early Classic inscriptions. It is discovered that the core elements of that system are already in place by the end of the Baktun 8. The morphological features first attested during the Eighth Baktun continue in use for the duration of the Early Classic, though in both of the subsequent time periods new features are added to the inventory of Early Classic morphemes. The static nature of the language, as suggested by its apparent continuity throughout the centuries which comprise the Early Classic, is consistent with the prestige status proposed for that language by Houston et al. (2000).

Finite-state morphological modeling has been used in natural language processing for many years particularly when dealing with lower resource languages. The present study details the development of an open-source finite-state morphological model for the Q'eqchi' Maya language using Helsinki Finite-State Technology (HFST) and the Giellatekno infrastructure. This project represents the first comprehensive morphological analyzer for Q'eqchi' and sets a foundation for future work in data annotation for this language. The resulting transducer consists of 4,439 lexemes, 2,610 states and 9,558 transitions and covers between 75% and 85% of tokens in a Q'eqchi' corpus. The success of this project lays the groundwork for future work in improved automatic corpus annotation in Q'eqchi', as well as suggesting further success in the development of similar utilities for other Mayan languages.