David Mora Marín’s Research

I’m a linguistic anthropologist interested in the cultural and linguistic history of Mesoamerica, a cultural superarea extending from Central Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, to parts of Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. I specialize in the study of the historical linguistics and epigraphy of the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan and Yucatecan languages, two of the major subgroups of the Mayan language family. My publications range from the history of applicative constructions and independent demonstratives in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages, to the orthographic conventions, syntactic structure, and historical development of ancient Mayan hieroglyphic writing. My more recent line or research lies within the field of historical sociolinguistics, looking at the way in which variation and change of various types (graphic, graphemic, orthographic, linguistic) is influenced by time, geography, linguistic factors, scriptal factors, and proxies for social factors. This more recent line of research involves the application of descriptive and inferential statistics, primarily through the use of DATAtab (now numiqo), an online statistics calculator available at https://datatab.net (= https://numiqo.com/).

Primary documentation in the form of line drawings of ancient Mayan inscriptions; research on the earliest Mayan hieroglyphic texts, some as early as ca. 400-300 BCE, as well as the broader corpus of inscriptions on portable objects, often bearing a version of the well-known dedicatory and proprietary formulae of Mayan texts.

Interest in the origins of Mesoamerican writing systems, with work on Olmec and Olmecoid writing from the Early and Middle Formative/Preclassic periods, and the documentation and synthesis of information on other poorly known writing systems, such as the one attested at the site of Izapa in Chiapas, Mexico.

Limited fieldwork on Guichicovi Mije, a variety of Isthmus Mixean that has been poorly documented by linguists to date. Also limited work on contemporary Yucatec (Maayat’aan) and Yokot’an, two Mayan languages.

Also carrying out comparative historical research on Mayan and Mije-Sokean languages, and increasingly delving into research on the Chibchan language family to the south of Mesoamerica.

A 9-minute video where I describe my research and teaching interest, and how I got into these topics, aimed at illustrating for students how one’s career may unfold, is available here. An almost 4-minute video focusing on the first part is found here. You can find an updated summary of my recent research, teaching, and advising here: IntrotoResearchTeachingv2.

Next I provide a list of courses I like to teach at UNC, followed by publications and manuscripts of various types, followed by some useful resources.

Recent course offerings:

Ancient Mayan Hieroglyphs

Writing Systems: Past, Present, Future, Fictional

Sociolinguistics

Linguistic Variation and Change

Language and Power

Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics

Languages of the Americas

Field Methods in Linguistics

Historical Sociolinguistics

Linguistic Anthropology

Education:

PhD 2001 (SUNY-Albany): Anthropology

BA 1996 (University of Kansas-Lawrence): Anthropology, Linguistics

My Blog Series (in which I test new ideas):

Notes on Mesoamerican Linguistics and Epigraphy

Publications:

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2025. Historical Sociolinguistics of the Classic Maya Lowlands: The Generic Preposition Variable. Cadernos de Linguística, [S. l.], v. 6, n. 1, p. e794, 2025. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. Orígenes de la escritura en Mesoamérica: Una revaluación de los rasgos formales, conexiones interregionales y filiaciones lingüísticas entre 1200-400 a.C. In La escritura indígena de México: de la estela al texto digital, edited by Hans Roskamp, pp. 23–43. Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. Some Observations on the Historical Development of CVC Phonograms in Mayan Writing. The Codex 32(3):35–55. Pre-Columbian Society at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. An inscribed shell silhouette at the Brooklyn Museum and some comments on hand gestures and provenience. Contributions in New World Archaeology 17:7–22. https://cnwa.journal.uj.edu.pl/cnwa_19.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. Lexical Evidence for the “Initial Sign” of Epigraphic Mayan as ʔAY ‘Existential Particle’. The Codex 32(1-2):27–47. Pre-Columbian Society at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. El “Signo Inicial” de la SEP como ʔAY ‘partícula existencial’: Predicación posesiva y predicación evidencial fáctica. 36 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2023, edited by Bárbara Arroyo, Luis Méndez Salinas, Glora Ajú Álvarez, pp. 377–390. Guatemala: Asociación Tikal. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. The Duplication Diacritic: A Case Study of Variation and Change in Mayan Writing. Ancient Mesoamerica, First View. https://doi.org:10.1017/S0956536123000317. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F., and Lynne Cahill. 2024. On the systematic nature of writing systems. Written Language and Literacy 26:1–4. Co-authored with Lynne Cahill. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00070.mor. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2023. Lexico-semantic stability in the anatomical domain in the Mayan language family. Journal of Historical Linguistics. Online First publication: 13 November 2023. https://doi.org/10.1075/jhl.21031.mor. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2023. Evidence for lexical and phonetic determinatives in Mayan writing: The case of T713. Ancient Mesoamerica, First View. Published online 27 February 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536122000335. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2023. Graphic, Orthographic, and Diachronic Considerations Regarding the Initial Sign Collocation of Mayan Writing. The Codex 31(1-2):23–46. Pre-Columbian Society at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Evidence, New and Old, Against the Late *k(’) > ch(’) “Areal Shift” Hypothesis. In Festschrift for Lyle Campbell, edited by Wilson Silva, Nala Lee and Thiago Chacon, pp. 130–163. Edinburgh University Press. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. La paleografía de la escritura maya: Resultados preliminares del estudio de T1 ʔu, T126 ya y T168 ʔAJAW ‘señor, gobernante’, tres grafemas de gran frecuencia. Paper presented at the XXXIV Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala 26 al 30 de julio, 2021, Tomo I, pp. 945–959. Guatemala: Asociación Tikal. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. A New Drawing of the Inscription on the Kimbell Art Museum Early Classic Shell Trumpet. Glyph Dwellers Report 82:1–12. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. A Preliminary Drawing of the Inscription on an Early Classic Conch Shell Trumpet. Glyph Dwellers Report 80:1–11. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Consonant-insertion Ligatures in Mayan Writing: Revisiting Old Types, Defining New Ones. Glyph Dwellers Report 77:1–18. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. A Study of T670 and Two Lexical Determinatives in Mayan Writing. Glyph Dwellers Report 76:1–23. Click here.

• Schieber de Lavarreda, Christa, Miguel Orrego Corzo, Nikolai Grube, Christian Prager, Elisabeth Wagner, Alejandro Garay, Sven Gronemeyer, Albert Davletshin, David Mora-Marín, Oswaldo Chinchilla, Federico Fahsen. 2022. Tak’alik Ab’aj Stela 87: Essay of a Collaborative Study. Estudios de Cultura Maya XL:11–55. https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ecm.60.23X00S701.

• Douglas J. Kennett*, Mark Lipson*, Keith M. Prufer*, David Mora-Marín, Richard J. George, Nadin Rohland, Mark Robinson, Willa R. Trask, Heather H.J. Edgar, Ethan C. Hill, Erin E. Ray, Paige Lynch, Emily Moes, Lexi O’Donnell, Thomas K. Harper, Emily J. Kate, Josue Ramos, John Morris, Said M. Gutierrez, Timothy M. Ryan, Brendan J. Culleton, Jaime J. Awe, & David Reich*. South-to-North Migration Preceded the Advent of Intensive Farming in the Maya Region. 2022. Nature Communications 13:1530. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29158-y. Click here. Supplements here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. Reconstructing Possession Morphology in Mayan Languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 87:369–422. https://doi.org/10.1086/714250. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. The Anthropomorphic Celtiform Pendant Theme of the Jade Tradition in Costa Rica. In Pre-Columbian Art of Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach, edited by John Hoopes and Colin McEwan, pp. 47-60. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. The Regularizing, Analogical Effect of Metathesis in Modern Ch’ol (Mayan). Revue canadienne de linguistique/Canadian Journal of Linguistics 66:317–345. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. Drawing of Mayan Inscription on Stone Sphere (K6582) with Epigraphic Commentary. Glyph Dwellers Report 68:1-19. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F., and Melissa Frazier. 2021. The Historical Reconstruction of Greater Tzeltalan (Mayan) Vowel Assimilation and Vowel Raising Patterns. Transactions of the Philological Society 119:182–240. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2020. The Cascajal Block: New Line Drawing, Distributional Analysis, Orthographic Patterns. Ancient Mesoamerica. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0956536119000270. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2019. Problems and Patterns in the Study of Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing. In The Chinese Writing System and Its Dialogue with Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mesoamerican Writing Systems, edited by Kuang Yu Chen and Dietrich Tschanz, pp. 239-269. Rutgers University Press. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2018. Izapan Writing: Classification and Preliminary Observations. Ancient Mesoamerica 29:93–112. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2018. The Hatzcap Ceel Axe Inscription: Recent Documentation and Epigraphic Analysis. Glyph Dwellers Report 60:1–24. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2018. A Drawing of the Teotihuacan-style Vessel at the University of Kansas Introduced to Mesoamericanists by the Late Erik Boot. Glyph Dwellers Report 59:1–8. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2016. A Study in Mayan Paleography: The History of T168/2M1a ʔAJAW ‘Lord, Ruler’ and the Origin of the Syllabogram T130/2S2 wa. Written Language and Literacy 19:1–58. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2016. Testing the Proto-Mayan-Mijesokean Hypothesis. International Journal of American Linguistics 82:125–180. Click here. Appendices here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2016. Ritual Actions and Ritual Language in Late Preclassic Mayan Texts. In The Dimensions of Rituality 2000 Years Ago and Today, edited by Christa Schieber de Lavarreda and Miguel Orrego Corzo, and Heber Delfino Torres Estrada, pp. 161–173. Parque Arqueológico Nacional Tak’alik Ab’aj, Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural/IDAEH. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2012. The Mesoamerican Jade Celt as ‘Eye, Face’, and the Logographic Value of Mayan 1M2/T121 as WIN ’Eye, Face, Surface’. Wayeb Notes 40:1–17. Click here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2012. A Ritual Title: ‘He of the Incensing’ or ‘Incenser’. A Mayavase.com Essay. http://www.mayavase.com/POOM.pdf.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2010. La epigrafía y paleografía de la escritura preclásica maya: nuevas metodologías y resultados preliminares.In XXIII Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2009, edited by Bárbara Arroyo, Adriana Linares Palma, and Lorena Paiz Aragón, pp. 1045–1957. Guatemala City, Guatemala: Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología. Click here to read.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2010. A Note on a Glyph from the San Bartolo Murals: A Possible Rebus Based on *7aj ‘Reed’ for *7aj+ ‘Male/Large/Occupation Proclitic’. Wayeb Notes 33:1–5. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2010. Consonant Deletion, Obligatory Synharmony, Typical Suffixing: An Explanation of Spelling Practices in Mayan Writing. Written Language and Literacy 13: 118–179. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2010. A Review of Recent Work on the Decipherment of Epi-Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing. Mexicon 32(1):31–37. Click here to read corrected version (published version has several typographic mistakes that involve phonetic fonts and are therefore not trivial). A rough scan of the publication, with notes on the font conversion errors on the first page, which shows the cover page of the journal, is available here.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2009. Early Olmec Writing: Reading Format and Reading Order. Latin American Antiquity 20(3): 395–418. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2009. A Test and Falsification of the “Classic Ch’olti’an” Hypothesis: A Study of Three Proto-Ch’olan Markers. International Journal of American Linguistics 75(2): 115–157. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2009. Reconstruction of Proto-Ch’olan Independent Pronouns: Grammaticalization and Evidence for Sociolinguistic Variation. Transactions of the American Philological Society 107(1): 98–129. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2008. Full Phonetic Complementation, Semantic Classifiers, and Semantic Determinatives in Ancient Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing. Ancient Mesoamerica 19:195-213. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2008. Análisis epigráfico y lingüístico de la escritura maya del período Preclásico Tardío: Implicaciones para la historia sociolingüística de la region. In XXI Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, 2007, edited by Juan Pedro Laporte, Bárbara Arroyo y Héctor E. Mejía, pp. 853-876. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2008. Two Parallel Passages from the Late Preclassic Period: Connections Between San Bartolo and An Unprovenanced Jade Pendant. Wayeb Notes 29:1-6. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2007. The Identification of an Ingressive Suffix in Classic Lowland Mayan Texts. Proceedings of the CILLA III Conference, October 2007, Austin, Texas, edited by Nora England, pp 1-14. Austin: Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, Linguistics Department, University of Texas. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2007. A Possible Western Ch’olan Innovation Attested on Itzan Stela 17. Glyph Dwellers 23:1-5. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2007. A Logographic Value HUʔ (~ ʔUʔ) ‘to blow’ or ‘sacred, moral, power’ for the GOD.N Verbal Glyph of the Primary Standard Sequence. Wayeb Notes No. 27:1-22. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2007. Two Incised Shell Silhouette Plaques at Dumbarton Oaks. FAMSI Journal of the Ancient Americas, pp. 1-16. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2005. The Proto-Ch’olan Positional Status Marker *-täl and Additional Comments on Classic Mayan Positional Morphology. Wayeb Notes 17:1-5. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2005. Kaminaljuyu Stela 10: Script Classification and Linguistic Affiliation. Ancient Mesoamerica 16:63-87. Click here to read paper.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2005. The Initial Sign Glyph of the Primary Standard Sequence Part I: Spelling Patterns. 18 pp. Unpublished note distributed among epigraphers in attendance at the 2005 Texas Maya Meetings. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2004. A New Sign with Phonetic no Reading? Wayeb Notes No. 15:1-3. Click here to read.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2004. Discourse Structure and Coordinate Constructions in Classic Lowland Mayan Texts. In The Linguistics of the Maya Script, edited by Søren Wichmann, pp. 339-364. University of Utah Press.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2003. The Origin of Mayan Syllabograms and Orthographic Conventions. Written Language and Literacy 6(2):193-237. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2003. Historical Reconstruction of Mayan Applicative and Antidative Constructions. International Journal of American Linguistics 69(2):186-228. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2000. The Syllabic Value of Mayan T77 as k’i. Research Reports on Ancient Maya Writing 46:8-45. Click here to read paper.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 1999. Los escribanos en Yucatán y Atitlán. In Ukab’ Umolib’ Chikixol Ajnajo’j puwi’ Pop wuj, Memorias del Segundo Congreso Internacional Sobre El Pop Vuh, directed by Juan Everardo Chuc Xum, Robert Carmack, and Víctor Montejo, pp. 201-218. Quetzaltenango, Guatemala: Centro de Estudios Mayas—Timach—and Talleres Offset de Xelapublicidad.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 1997. The Origins of Maya Writing: The Case for Portable Objects. In U Mut Maya VII, edited by Tom and Carolyn Jones, pp. 133-164. Arcata: Humboldt State University. Click here to read (this paper is rather out of date; I wrote it in 1995, and served as the core idea behind my PhD thesis).

Co-authored publications:

• Douglas J. Kennett*, Mark Lipson*, Keith M. Prufer*, David Mora-Marín, Richard J. George, Nadin Rohland, Mark Robinson, Willa R. Trask, Heather H.J. Edgar, Ethan C. Hill, Erin E. Ray, Paige Lynch, Emily Moes, Lexi O’Donnell, Thomas K. Harper, Emily J. Kate, Josue Ramos, John Morris, Said M. Gutierrez, Timothy M. Ryan, Brendan J. Culleton, Jaime J. Awe, & David Reich*. 2022. South-to-North Migration Preceded the Advent of Intensive Farming in the Maya Region. Nature Communications 13:1530. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29158-y.

• Mora-Marín, David F., and Melissa Frazier. 2021. The Historical Reconstruction of Greater Tzeltalan (Mayan) Vowel Assimilation and Vowel Raising Patterns. Transactions of the Philological Society 119:182–240.

• Hoopes, John W., David Mora-Marín, Brigitte Kovacevich. 2021. Jadeworking. In Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, edited by John Hoopes and Colin McEwan, pp. 29-46. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

• Doyle, James, John Hoopes, and David Mora-Marín. 2021. Shining Stones and Brilliant Regalia. Connections between Classic Mesoamerica and Central America and Colombia. In Pre-Columbian Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador, edited by John Hoopes and Colin McEwan, pp. 89–100. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

• Doyle, James, John Hoopes, and David Mora-Marín. 2021. A Noninvasive Approach to the Study of Jade Artifacts from Central America. In Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, edited by John Hoopes and Colin McEwan, pp. 61–73. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

• Hoopes, John W., and David F. Mora-Marín. 2009. Violent Acts of Curing: Precolumbian Metaphors of Birth and Sacrifice in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Illness “Writ Large”. In Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, edited by Heather Orr and Rex Koontz, pp. 291-330. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

• Mora-Marín, David F., Nicholas Hopkins, and Kathryn Josserand. 2009. The Linguistic Affiliation of Classic Lowland Mayan Writing and the Historical Sociolinguistic Geography of the Mayan Lowlands. In The Ch’orti’ Area: Past and Present on the Southeastern Maya Periphery, edited by Brent E. Metz, Cameron L. McNeil, and Kerry Hull, pp. 15-28. University Press of Florida. Co-authored with Nicholas Hopkins and Kathryn Josserand.

• Freidel, David, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and David F. Mora-Marín. 2002. The Origins of Maya Civilization: The Old Shell Game, Commodity, Treasure, and Kingship. In Ancient Maya Political Economies, edited by Marilyn Masson and David Freidel, pp. 41-86. New York: Altamira Press. Co-authored by: David Freidel, Kathryn Reese-Taylor, and David Mora-Marín.

FAMSI Research Project Reports:

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2004. Final FAMSI Grant Report: The Primary Standard Sequence: Database Compilation, Grammatical Analysis, and Primary Documentation. Click here to read (scroll down, you’ll find a link to a PDF file).

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2001. Final FAMSI Grant Report: Late Preclassic Documentation Project. Click here to read (scroll down, you’ll find a link to a PDF file).

Unpublished Ms. on PSS:

• Mora-Marín, David F. 1999. The Structure of the Dedicatory Formula in Classic Lowland Mayan Texts: A Preliminary Typology. Unpublished manuscript. Basis for Chapter IV of my PhD thesis, and for my FAMSI research project on the PSS. Click here to read (note that some aspects of this work will be out-of-date and have been revised in subsequent work, or require revision).

Unpublished Ms. on Mayan-Mijesokean Hypothesis:

• Further Analysis of Lexical and Morphological Comparanda Pertaining to the Proto-Mayan-Mijesokean Hypothesis. Unpublished manuscript, current version May 2023. Click here to read.

Unpublished Ms. on unusual Yucatecan sound correspondence:

• Proto-Yucatecan *tʃ(’) from Proto-Mayan *ts(’): Sound Change or Borrowing from Huastecan? Unpublished manuscript, current version dated Nov/Dec 2023. Click here to read.

Unpublished PhD Dissertation:

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2001. The Grammar, Orthography, Content, and Social Context of Late Preclassic Portable Texts. Unpublished PhD thesis, SUNY-Albany. (Many of the figures did not reproduce with adequate resolution in the PDF version.) Click here for Part I (searchable text section), here for Part II (tables), here for Part III-A (Figures), and here for Part III-B (more Figures).

Invited presentations:

Selected unpublished conference papers:

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2025. Zooming In, Zooming Out: The Spread of Linguistic Variables in Epigraphic Mayan Seen from Multiple Perspectives. Paper presented at the The North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics (NARNiHS) Research Incubator, Friday, April 25, 2025. Program: https://narnihs.org/?page_id=3075. 2025.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2025. A Historical Sociolinguistic Study of Four Linguistic Variables in Epigraphic Mayan Texts. Paper presented at the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Sunday, January 26th, 2025. Program: https://tinyurl.com/2s4j5ens. Remote (Zoom) presentation. 2025.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2023. El “Signo Inicial” de la SEP como ʔAY ‘partícula existencial’: Predicación posesiva y predicación evidencial fáctica. Paper presented at the Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, Friday, July 21, 2023. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2023. Evolution of Mayan Spelling Practices from the Late Preclassic Through the Late Classic Periods. Presented at the Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson Symposium at the Society for American Archaeology, Friday, March 31st, 2023. 2023.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2023. . Putting It All Together: Sociopolitical Interactions and the Distribution of Linguistic Variables in Mayan Writing. Paper presented at the Fifth Annual Meeting of The North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics, A Sister Society of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), January 7, 2023. 2023. Final Program: https://narnihs.org/?page_id=2291. 2023. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Graphic, Graphemic, Orthographic, and Linguistic Variables: A Close look at Accession Statements in Classic Mayan Texts. Paper presented at The North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics 2022 Research Incubator at KFLC: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Conference, April 22, 2022. Preliminary program: https://narnihs.org/?page_id=2053. 2022. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. The Nature of the *k > ch Shift in Yucatecan and Greater Q’anjob’alan (Mayan). Paper presented at the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Annual Winter Meeting, 21–23 January 2022. Program: https://www.ssila.org/en/meeting-2022. 2022. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. A survey of systematic spelling practices and conventions in Mayan writing. Presented at the 13th International Workshop on Writing Systems and Literacy online, “On the systematic nature of writing systems,” hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, October 21-23, 2021. 2021. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. La paleografía de la escritura maya: resultados preliminaries del studio de T1 ʔu, T126 ya y T168 ʔAJAW ‘señor, gobernante’, tres grafemas de gran frecuencia. Ponencia expuesta en el 34 Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, martes 27 de julio del 2021. 2021. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. Historical Sociolinguistics of Mayan Writing: Graphic Designs of Syllabogram ʔu and Parameters of Variation. Presented at The North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics 2021 Research Incubator at KFLC: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Conference, April 22-24, 2021. Preliminary program: https://narnihs.org/?page_id=1513. 2021. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2021. Historical Sociolinguistics of Mayan Writing: Graphic and Graphemic Variation and Change. Presented at the Third Annual Meeting North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics A Sister Society of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) 8-11 January 2021. 2021. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2020. Prerequisites for A Historical Sociolinguistics of Ancient Mayan Hieroglyphic Texts. Presented at the The North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics 2020 Research Incubator at KFLC: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Conference, April 16-18, 2020, University of Kentucky, Lexington. 2020. Remote (Zoom) presentation.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2019. Framing the Historical Sociolinguistics of the Maya Lowlands (Southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras) during the Classic Period (ca. 200-900 CE). Presented at the The North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics 2010 Research Incubator at KFLC: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Conference, April 11-13, 2019, University of Kentucky, Lexington. 2019.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2019. Orthographic Conventions in Mayan Writing: Problems with Disharmony and Morphosyllables, Benefits of More Plausible Alternatives. Paper presented at the South-Central Conference on Mesoamerica, Saturday, October 19th, 2019. 2019.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2018. El intercambio de jade a larga distancia y el estudio epigráfico e iconográfico de las placas de jade y discos de pizarra mayas encontrados en Costa Rica. Presented at Ciclo de Conferencias Jade, ámbar, conchas y cacao: intercambio e interacción cultural en el sur de Mesoamérica, November 12-14, 2018, Aula Magna, Instituto de Investigaciones, UNAM, Ciudad de México. Authors: Dorie Reents-Budet and David Mora-Marín. 2018.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2017. An Historical Sociolinguistic Approach to Classic Mayan Writing: A study of Two Morphological Innovations, -(a)wan ‘intransitivizer of positionals’ and –(V)lel ‘abstractivizer of nouns’. Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Session on Historical Sociolinguistics of the Maya Lowlands, organized by Marc Zender, Saturday, December 2nd, 2017. 2017.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2017. Avances recientes en el estudio epigráfico de los jades y discos de pizarra mayas de Costa Rica. Presented at the Simposio: Consideraciones recientes sobre la producción de jade en México, Centroamérica y el Caribe Insular, XI Congreso de la Red Centroamericana de Antropología, March 2nd, 2017. 2017.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2017. Problemas metodológicos para la investigación de relaciones filolingüísticas remotas: historia y estado actual de la teoría Macro-Mayense. Paper presented at the Simposio: Nuevas orientaciones metodológicas en antropología, XI Congreso de la Red Centroamericana de Antropología, March 1st, 2017. 2017.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2016. Orthographic and Visual Clues to Metalinguistic Knowledge, Script Acquisition, and the Cognition of Reading and Writing of Ancient Mayan Scribes. Presented at the Tenth International Workshop on Writing Systems and Literacy sponsored by Radboud University, Friday, May 13th, 2016. 2016.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2015. The Social and Cultural Context of Early Mayan Writing and the Development of Logographic and Logosyllabic Spelling Practices. Paper presented at the International Conference on The Chinese Writing System and Its Dialogue with Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mesoamerican Writing Systems at Rutgers University, May 29-31, 2015. 2015.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2015. Measures of Intertextuality in the Language of Ritual in Late Preclassic Mayan Texts. Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, April 15-19, 2015, San Francisco, California. 2015.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2015. Possession Classification Systems Across Mesoamerica: Implications for Historical Reconstruction and Language Contact. Keynote talk presented at the 2nd International Congress on Mesoamerican Linguistics at UCLA, Friday, March 6th, 2015. 2015.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2014. Mayan Paleographic Analysis: The Origin of the Syllabogram T130/2S2 wa. Paper to be presented at the 5th Annual South-Central Conference on Mesoamerica, Saturday, October 25th, 2014, at Tulane University, New Orleans, Lousiana. 2014.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2013. Language Contact Between Spanish and Indigenous Mesoamerican Languages: A Few Examples from Mayan Languages. Paper presented at the Carolina Conference on Romance Literatures, Friday, April 5th, 2013, Student Union 3409. 2013.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2013. Reconstructing Possession Morphology in Mayan Languages. Paper presented at the First International Conference on Mesoamerican Linguistics, CSU-Fullerton, California, Friday, February 22nd, 2013. 2013.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2011. The Proto-Maya-Mijesokean Hypothesis: Change and Transformation in Approaches to An Old Problem. Paper presented at the 44^th Annual Chacmool Archaeological Conference, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Saturday, November 12^th, 2011.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2011. A Historical Sociolinguistic Study of Two Morphological Markers in Classic Lowland Mayan Inscriptions. Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology Conference Session on Research Utilizing the Maya Hieroglyphic Data Base, Friday, April 1^st, 2011.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2008. The Historical Reconstruction of Ch’olan-Tzeltalan (Mayan) Vowel Assimilation Patterns. Paper presented as part of the Recent Topics in Mayan Linguistics session of the American Anthropological Association Conference, November of 2008, San Francisco.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2007. Reconstruction of Proto-Ch’olan Independent Pronouns: Grammaticalization and Evidence for Sociolinguistic Variation. Paper presented at the SSILA/LSA Conference, Historical Linguistics Session, Anaheim, California.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2006. A Historical Sociolinguistic Perspective on the Dedicatory Genre of Mayan Texts. Invited paper for session on “Critical Intersections: Social Change, Language Change,” Society for Linguistic Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, San Jose, California.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2005. Affixation Conventionalization Hypothesis: Explanation of Mayan Spelling Practices. Paper presented at the 43th Conference on American Indian Languages in Oakland. Click here to read. (This presentation was based on a paper I wrote in the Spring of 2002, which eventually evolved into Mora-Marín 2010, published in Written Language and Literacy.)

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2005. Proto-Ch’olan as the standard language of Classic Lowland Mayan texts. Click here to read (this paper, a longer version of the conference paper below, evolved into Mora-Marín 2009, published in IJAL).

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2003. Pre-Ch’olan as the Standard Language of Classic Lowland Mayan Texts. 41st Conference on American Indian Languages in Atlanta, Georgia. Click here to read (this paper evolved into Mora-Marín 2009, published in IJAL).

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2002. The Preferred Argument Structure of Classic Mayan Texts. Paper presented at the 40th Conference on American Indian Languages in San Francisco.

• Mora-Marín, David F. 2000. Pivot-chaining Constructions and Antipassive Clauses in Classic Mayan Texts. Paper presented at the 39th Conference on American Indian Languages in San Francisco.

Major Resources

Maya Hieroglyphic Database (MHD): https://www.mayadatabase.org/

Mesoweb: https://www.mesoweb.com

FAMSI: http://www.famsi.org

Maya Map (University of Wyoming): http://www.mayamap.org

Mayan Sites/Ruinas Mayas: https://adaptwest.databasin.org/datasets/3aa6b24c882144d6a4197bd277ae753d/

Textdatenbank und Wörterbuch des Klassischen Maya: https://classicmayan.org/portal/

Glottolog: https://glottolog.org

Grambank: https://grambank.clld.org

World Atlas of Linguistic Structures: https://wals.info

Automated Similarity Judgment Program (ASJP) Database: https://asjp.clld.org

Spoken Yucatec Maya Course: https://lucy.lib.uchicago.edu

Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications: https://clics.clld.org

U koorpusil maaya t’aan: https://yucatecmaya.github.io/LingView/#/about

Association for Written Language and Literacy: http://faculty-sgs.tama.ac.jp/terry/awll/community.html

The World Loanword Database: https://wold.clld.org

Centro de Estudios Mayas Yuri Knorozov: https://cemyk.org/

Additional Resources

numiqo Statistics Calculator (formerly DATAtab): The Statistics Calculator numiqo is an online tool designed for performing statistical evaluations. It supports tasks such as descriptive statistics, hypothesis testing, and regression analysis in an accessible and straightforward way. There is a free version called Statisty.

Voyant Tools: https://voyant-tools.org

Tools for Corpus Linguistics: https://corpus-analysis.com

Online Journals

Contributions in New World Archaeology: https://cnwa.journal.uj.edu.pl

Glyph Dwellers: http://glyphdwellers.com

The PARI Journal (Mesoweb): http://www.precolumbia.org/pari/journal.html

David Stuart’s Maya Decipherment Blog: https://mayadecipherment.com

Bruce Love’s Contributions to Mesoamerican Studies: https://brucelove.com

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