Introducing Classic Maya WritingģThe subject of our work is the written language of the Classic Maya culture on the Yucatán Peninsula, whose cultural area extended over the territory of the present-day states of Guatemala, Belize, and parts of Honduras and Mexico. We conclude by discussing our approach to an ontological corpus. Toward the end, we look at the data-linking mechanisms connecting other information sources to the corpus. Then we present and discuss our TEI encoding strategy for the corpus. However, the machine-readable corpus is the central part of the virtual environment: it is enriched by the other information resources using stand-off markup and data-linking mechanisms.ĢIn the first two sections of the paper, we present the complex writing system of Classic Maya culture. The dictionary will be a highly concentrated extract of all these information sources. To create a holistic environment that provides a solid information base for the dictionary, we have also developed additional resources and tools: a documentation of the text carriers, a classification of the Maya signs, and a tool for linguistic annotation and analysis, as well as supplementary archival materials and a bibliography. For this purpose, we will compile a machine-readable corpus of all known Maya texts, which are written on about ten thousand text carriers and four codices made of bark paper. The aim is to create a dictionary of Classic Mayan, a language whose script has not yet been completely deciphered. The project intends to use digital methods and technologies to compile the epigraphic contents and object histories of all known hieroglyphic texts. Text Database and Dictionary of Classic MayanġIn 2014, the project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan was established at the University of Bonn by the North Rhine–Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Arts and the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities to research the written language of the pre-Columbian Maya. In this paper, we focus on the TEI schema and highlight our strategy for encoding hieroglyphs without using linguistic transliterations and transcriptions. Using different formats (RDF, XML) and standards (CIDOC CRM, TEI P5), the inscriptions are encoded in a multilevel corpus: (1) a tei_all-compliant schema defining values and rules for the encoding of the text’s topological and structural features, (2) a “Sign Catalogue” for the classification of Maya hieroglyphs, and (3) the tool ALMAH (Annotator for the Linguistic analysis of MAya Hieroglyphs) for linguistic analyses. The project Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan approaches this challenge with an encoding strategy relying on stand-off markup, which is enriched with additional information sources. Because of its incomplete state of decipherment, complexity and variation in graphematics, and partially lost lexicon, transliterations cannot be used within the encoding. Maya hieroglyphic script (300 BCE–1500 CE) is a semi-deciphered logographic and syllabic autochthonous writing system from the Americas and is one of the most significant writing traditions of the ancient world.
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