490 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1941 



pescar, y pescar con lazo," with the verbal inflection, e. g., leah mean- 

 ing catch or trap with noose snare, for which the Motul gives the 

 participial Hean: cosa enlazada o cogida en lazo." Here again we 

 see the principle that a sign is inadequate by itself, in that No. 13, 

 though itself derived from the picture of a slipknot or noose le and 

 denoting the sound fraction le, is not sufficient alone to write the 

 monosyllabic word having this sound, i. e., le "noose," but is subject 

 to the rule that a sign must be combined with another and cannot 

 stand alone. Here it has its inherent vowel reaffirmed by attachment 

 of the sign e. Hence there is a mixture of the synthetic and the 

 repeated affirmation principles in sign clusters or glyphs of this type. 

 We also find the verbally inflected form leah "catch with noose," 

 written le-e-a, with No. 1 of figure 1 for a. Cyrus Thomas correctly 

 analyzed the le-e cluster, I believe, though I worked it out without 

 referring to his work. A number of Thomas's readings are undoubt- 

 edly correct. 



In No. 6, figure 2, we have one of the polysynthetic words common 

 in Maya, in which two stems are compounded and suffixes attached. 

 It is illustrated in Tro-Cortesianus, page 46, by three pictures show- 

 ing vividly in successive stages of action a deer caught and jerked 

 upward by the spring of the bent tree to which the noose of the trap 

 is attached. It is written le-e-sin-a (or -ah), with signs 12, 3, 19, and 

 1 of figure 1, and is to be read lesinah. This word is typical of a 

 common kind of Maya compound, consisting of two stems with the 

 verbal inflection suffixed after the second. The stems are le, already 

 defined, and sin "stretch or string tightly (as cloth, hides, or cords 

 are stretched on a frame), draw taut, string with stretched cords, 

 string up, string or rig a noose trap or the like to spring when 

 released, etc." The Motul gives "^m (i. e., sin) : estender paiios o 

 cueros y colgar estendiendo o tender desarrugando ; armar lazos; 

 armar arco o ballesta." Such a compound usually has the following 

 type of meaning : designating the two stems as X and Y, a compound 

 X-Y-aA or "K-Y-t-ah ^ means do X by means of Y, transitively, or to 

 an object. Thus, since le-ah means catch in a noose, we can form 

 freely words such as le-h''db-ah (or more modern le-k''db-t-ah) "catch 

 in a noose by action of the hand" {Tc'oib "hand"), le-k''as-ah "catch in 

 a noose by a tying action," and so on. Our word le-sin-ah then 

 means catch in a noose by the action sin or catch in a noose by tight 

 stretching, catch by the spring of a tautly strung noose trap.® 



* The form with the suflSx -t- before the sufBx -ah is the common form In Maya of the Motul 

 dictionary for binary compounds of this type. 



•We find in the codices other compounds of this type, including some others with sin 

 as second member ; thus in the Tro-Cortesianus (e. g., 41a) the picture of a deer trtissed up 

 in a bundle, legs folded up, with cords lashed around it, is accompanied by the sign cluster 

 ma-sin-a (with Landa's tna sign), to be read probably massinah, assimilated from maiinah 

 compound of stems ma6 and sin), meaning clasp together (like a clasped flst) by pulling 

 and tension, by tight stringing, by tightly drawn cords. 



