MAYA HIEROGLYPHS — WHORF 483 



extent), combining these signs so that the combined fractions of 

 utterance outlined the total utterance of a word or a sentence. Past 

 study of this system has been considerably retarded by needless and 

 sterile logomachy over whether the system, or whether any particular 

 sign, should be called phonetic or ideographic. From a configura- 

 tive linguistic standpoint there is no difference. "Ideographic" is 

 an example of the so-called mentalistic terminology^, which tells us 

 nothing from a linguistic point of view. No kind of writing, no 

 matter how crude or primitive, symbolizes ideas divorced from 

 linguistic forms of expression. A symbol when standing alone may 

 symbolize a "pure idea," but in order to represent an idea as one 

 in a definite sequence of ideas it must become the symbol for a 

 linguistic form or some fraction of a linguistic form. All writing 

 systems, including the Chinese, symbolize simply linguistic utter- 

 ances. As soon as enough symbols for utterances have been assem- 

 bled to correspond uniquely to a plainly meaningful sequence (phrase 

 or sentence, e. g.) in the language being written, that assembly of 

 signs will inevitably convey the meaning of that linguistic sequence to 

 the reader native to that language, no matter what each sign may 

 symbolize in isolation. Meaning enters into writing, writing of any 

 kind, only in this way, and in no other. The meaning of any linear 

 or temporal succession of symbols is not the sum of any symbolisms 

 or denotations that the symbols may have in isolation, but is the 

 meaning of the total linguistic form which that succession suggests. 

 Hence the fact that some individual signs look like pictures of the 

 things or ideas denoted by the words of the utterance plays no real 

 part in the reading; those signs are just as much symbolic, learned, 

 and at bottom arbitrary signs for fractions of utterance as any other 

 characters or letters. On the other hand, resemblance to an object 

 or picture may be really important in decipherment, as a clue to 

 how the sign came to be invented, to the logic of its original use, 

 and hence to the fraction of utterance, i. e., sound, which answers to 

 it in reading — a clue to be tested by how well that proposed fraction, 

 or sound, fits into each proposed reading. 



Figure 1 shows 23 symbols selected out of the several hundreds 

 found in the whole Maya literature. These particular ones have 

 been chosen because they enter into the written words and the codex 

 sentence used as examples of decipherment in this paper. The frac- 

 tions of utterance to which these signs regularly correspond have 

 been identified by comparative evidence — running back ultimately to 

 that body of evidence which I have called the Maya Rosetta Stone. 

 Signs 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 17, 22, are also given by Landa with the same 

 values (1, 7, 12, 17 being slightly altered in form) in his book 

 "Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan," a first-hand account of the Maya 

 shortly after the Conquest. The left-hand column shows in alpha- 



430577—42 32 



