Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: Some Poqomchi' Mayan communities in Guatemala actually practice traditional offering ceremonies.Through the mediation of a ritual specialist, they provide humans with an opportunity to submit requests to divine authorities for something they wish to obtain.The language used during this ritual communication differs from everyday Poqomchi' in certain lexical, grammatical and discursive respects.Based on primary fieldwork data, this paper discusses parallel syntactic constructions, the metaphorical use of certain lexemes, the functions of loanwords and the unexpected choice of tense/aspect/mood categories, among other features.In addition, this article presents morphologically annotated and translated textual extracts from three offering ceremonies, which may be useful for further studies on Poqomchi' ritual communication.
Source: Amerindia
DOI: 10.56551/flfg6877
Author: Igor Vinogradov
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4312751392