lahun tu kal. This was a regular pattern in Yucatecan Maya, both during the Colonial period and afterward
as late as 1851. In other words, the numbers between twenty and thirty-one represent two principles of
counting: (1) overcounting on the current score (with the tu/tuc particle) and (2) anticipatory counting on
NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS 235
Figure 9-1. Hieroglyphic Spellings of Numbers Between “20” and “40” on Pages 26c-28c of
the Dresden Codex. a. “29.” b. “36.” c. “35.” After Villacorta C. and Villacorta (1976:62, 64, 66).
the next score (“ten toward forty” instead of “ten plus twenty”). The same is true of the expression for “fifty,”
which was lahu[n] y ox kal ‘ten toward sixty,’ instead of lahu[n] tu(c) ca kal ‘ten plus forty.’
There are no examples of the numbers between thirty and forty in my documentary database, nor,
except for the lahu y ox kal example mentioned above, of the intervening numbers for scores above forty.
Page 153 of the grammar published by Pedro Beltrán de Santa Rosa María in 1746 lists holhu ca kal ‘fifteen
toward forty’ as the equivalent of “thirty-five.” There are, then, two examples of anticipatory counting in
the numbers from twenty to forty, both of which fall during the second half of the score. They, plus the use
of tuc in ho tuc kal, mark the quarter points of the score (25, 30, 35). The remaining numbers in the score
employ simple overcounting on the twenty base.
This pattern of marking the quarter points of the score is consistent with the attention paid to the quar-
ter points of the katun (a contraction of kal tun ‘20 tuns’) in Precolumbian times. The tun of 360 days was
one of the building blocks of the Classic Maya calendar. The ka(l)tun composed of twenty tuns was divided
into five-tun quarters, at the end of which commemorative stelae were erected. It is probably no accident
that this quadripartite division of the twenty-tun period is echoed in the terms for the numbers of which
the score is composed.
Anticipatory counting also employed words referring to “half” (tancoch and xel) in Colonial Yucatec:
(5a)
tancoch t u ca ppel lub
‘one and one-half leagues [literally, one half in the second league]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 411v)
(5b)
tancoch t uy ox ppel lub
‘two and one-half leagues [literally, one half in the third league]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 411v)
(5c)
xel v ca cuch
‘one and one-half loads [literally, one half is its second load]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?: fol. 456v)1
Anticipatory counting could also involve less than one half the distance between one league and the next:
(5d)
yan t u ca lub
‘there is a little more than one league [literally, it exists in the second league]’ Ciudad Real 1600?:
fol. 215v)
(5e)
yan t uy ox lub
‘there is a little more than two leagues [literally, it exists in the third league]’ (Ciudad Real 1600?:
fol. 215v)
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NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS
The phrases in (5a–e) also show that ordinal numbers were constructed by prefixing the third-person pos-
sessive pronoun to the number: u before consonant-initial numbers (t u ca ppel in [5a], u ca cuch in [5c],
and t u ca lub in [5d]) and (u)y before vowel-initial numbers (uy ox ppel in [5b] and t uy ox lub in [5e]).
During the Colonial period, the Maya terms for numbers were gradually replaced by the Spanish
ones. This is particularly evident in the dates with which Maya documents began or ended. Most of the
dated sixteenth- century documents in my possession referred to dates in the European month with Maya
numbers:
(6a)
t u cahal Mani t u hol=hun piz v kinil v agosto
‘on the fifteenth count of the day of the month of August
ychil y aabil de mil y quinientos y cincuenta y siete años
in the year of 1557 years’ (MA557-001A-C)
(6b)
hele t u vac=lahun ppiz v kinil v marzo de 1569 años hab
‘today, on the sixteenth count of the day of the month of March of 1569 years year’ (DZ569-001)
(6c)
t u uaxac [p]pel v kinil v octubre 1590 años
‘on the eighth day of the month of October, 1590 years’ (TK590A-003A-B)
(6d)
heleac t u bolon pis u kinil u octubre de 1590 años
‘today, on the ninth count of the days of the month of October of 1590 years’ (TK590C-201A-C)
(6e)
t u cahal Mani t u lahun ca kal u kinil uy uil mayo
‘in the town of Mani on the thirtieth day of the month of May
ychil y abil de mil quinientos noventa y seis años
in the year of 1596 years’ (SB596A-001A-E)
However, by the end of that century, there were already documents in which the entire date was written
in Spanish:
(7a)
helel en dies y seis de março de mil cinientos y nobenta y sinco años
‘today on the sixteenth of March of 1595 years’ (OX595-041A-C)
(7b) a
18 dias del mes de o(c)tubre 1593 años
‘on eighteen days of the month of October, 1593 years’ (DZ593A-024A-B)
Nevertheless, Maya numbers continued to be used in other domains, such as measuring land, commer-
cial transactions, and agriculture well into the eighteenth century and to some degree in the nineteenth
century:2
(8a)
ca ti ɔoci v kamicob ho tuc kal peso alcaldes y. regidores
‘and the magistrates and town councilmen finished receiving twenty five pesos’ (MA733E-540A-C)
(8b)
y u hoch-ciob ho tu kal huhun tul tiob
‘and each one of them rasped twenty five henequen leaves’ (HB784B-117A-B)
NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS 237
(8c)
bay xan ti nohol lae vuc ppel v ho kalil v sapal ca tac can tu kal
‘thus also in the south: seven are the one hundred of its fathoms plus twenty four’ (PS791A-022A-C)
(8d)
t u ox tu kal u xocol u kinil y uil ... habil mil setesientos sesenta y seis
‘on the twenty third of the count of the month ... year, 1776’ (XIU766B)
(8e) u
buluc ppel multun cħich lum
‘the eleventh mound is on gravelly land’ (EBT833A)
However, ultimately the Spanish numbers replaced the Maya numbers in those domains as well, so that,
by 1970, when I taught my first course in Spoken Yucatecan Maya at Tulane, only the numbers — hun ‘one,’
káʔah ‘two,’ and ʔòoš ‘three’ — were still in common use in most towns in the Yucatan peninsula. A few
towns still used kàan ‘four,’ and even fewer used hóʔoh ‘five.’ Only local savants knew about the use of wáak
‘six,’ wúuk ‘seven,’ wašak ‘eight,’ b’olon ‘nine,’ lahun ‘ten,’ and k’áal ‘twenty’; it is for this reason that we were
able to include these terms in the Hocaba dictionary (V. Bricker et al. 1998).
2. NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS
The earliest, and most comprehensive work on numeral classifiers was carried out by Helga-Maria Miram
in the towns of Tinum and Pixoy near Ebtun between 1976 and 1980. Her book contains a description of
225 numeral classifiers that she elicited in Pixoy (Miram 1983). The 230 numeral classifiers used today in
Hocaba are included in V. Bricker et al. (1998).3
The Calepino de Motul (Ciudad Real 1600?) is the best source of numeral classifiers
in Colonial Yucatec.
Many of them are not treated as head words, but are listed as compounds with hun ‘one’ on folios 196r-202r
in that work. Others appear as head words and/or in example sentences elsewhere in the Calepino.
2.1. THE STRUCTURE OF NUMERAL CLASSIFIER PHRASES. Numeral classifiers are bound to numerals in
quantifier expressions.4 Unlike English (or Spanish), where it is acceptable to say “one man” (or un hom-
bre), the noun that is quantified could not immediately follow the Maya numeral in Colonial Yucatec, and
the same is true of Modern Yucatec. Another word, known as the “numeral classifier,” must be placed
between the two words. Thus *can vinic was not a grammatically correct translation of “four men” in Co-
lonial Yucatec, nor is *kàan wíinik a possible translation of this expression in Modern Yucatec. A numeral
classifier, tul in Colonial Yucatec and its cognate túul in Modern Yucatec, must follow the number, yielding
can tul vinic (in the former) and kàan túul wíinik (in the latter). And because the semantic component of
this numeral classifier is “animate,” it can be used for animals as well as people, as in ox tul pek (Colonial)
or ʔòoš túul pèek’ (Modern) ‘three dogs.’ Plants have their own numeral classifier (cul or kúul), because
even though they are also alive, they are inanimate: hun cul copo (Colonial) or hun kúul kóopoʔ (Modern)
‘one ficus tree.’
Not only can some numeral classifiers quantify more than one kind of noun, but some nouns can be
quantified by more than one numeral classifier. The noun, háʔas ‘banana’ can appear in phrases with at
least seven numeral classifiers in Modern Yucatec:
(9)
ȼ’íit (referring to the elongated shape of the banana)
b’áab’ (referring to an entire stem of bananas)
múuč (referring to a cluster of four or more bananas)
šóot’ (referring to a chunk of banana)
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NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS
šéet’ (referring to a torn piece of banana)
kùup (referring to a slice of banana)
táah (referring to a slab of banana)
níič’ (referring to a bite of banana)
The fine discriminations made by these numeral classifiers permit the speaker to state very precisely which
aspect of the banana is intended. In this respect, numeral classifiers have a qualifying or adjectival function
in the language.
The examples in (9) suggest three general categories into which numeral classifiers can be grouped:
shape (elongated), aggregates of wholes (stem, cluster), and portions of wholes (chunk, torn piece, slice,
slab, bite) (these categories come from Lucy [1992:49, Table 9]). Other shapes implied by numeral classi-
fiers in Modern Yucatec include:
(10)
ȼ’úuk ‘lump [dough, mud]’
č’òot ‘twist’
kòoȼ’ ‘roll’
kóop ‘coil’
k’oʔ ‘loop [of rope]’
méʔet ‘trivet, circular base, stand’
mòok ‘knot’
pùuk’ ‘ball’
wóol ‘ball, circle’
Other numeral classifiers that refer to aggregates of wholes in Modern Yucatec besides those listed in (9)
include:
(11)
ʔóok ‘clutch [of eggs]’
b’anab’ ‘flock or herd’
ȼ’áan ~ ȼ’áam ‘pair’
ȼ’àap ~ ȼ’áap ~ ȼ’apab’ ‘stack’
čáač ‘handful [of paper]’
čóoh ‘cluster’
k’áaš ‘tied bundle [of green beans]’
méek’ ‘armful’
p’óoč ‘bunch, cluster’
Still other numeral classifiers refer to portions of wholes, in addition to those listed in (9):
(12)
b’àab’ ‘piece [continuous]’
b’úuh ‘half’
ȼéeh ‘sliver’
ȼíil ‘shred’
ȼúuk ‘lump, fragment; small pile [of shreds]’
ȼ’éeh ‘chip [glass]’
hàaȼ ‘part, group, division’
háap’ ‘chip’
háat ‘piece [torn carefully]’
NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS
239
háaw ‘half [of gourd or melon]’
héek’ ‘branch’
híil ‘strand’
káač ‘sliver, splinter’
kóoȼ ‘piece [of rope]’
p’áay ‘shred, crumb’
p’éeh ‘chip’
p’íik ‘joint (finger), addition, storey (house [not counting base])’
p’úuy ‘chip, shred, fragment’
šúʔuk’ ‘subdivision of mecate’
táankuč ‘half’
t’áah ‘drop, bit’
A number of numeral classifiers are concerned with measurement of one kind or another:
(13)
ʔáak ‘lot [of land]’
ʔáawtil ‘half a league shouting distance’
bìiš ‘eight-day period, week’
ȼ’áak ‘twenty square meters; unit of work’
k’àan ‘mecate [twenty square meters]’
lúub’ ‘league [ca. four kilometers]’
mùut ‘measure [of grain]’
náab’ ‘handspan’
píiš ‘knee-high’
p’ìis ‘load, measure [corn, beans, rice]’
p’íit ‘bit’
p’úʔuk ‘mouthful’
sáap ‘fathom’
súutuk ‘moment’
šáak’ab’ ‘pace, step, leap’
t’úuč ‘moment’
wùuȼ’ ‘measure [1/4 almud]; kilogram’
The same categories of numeral classifiers existed in Colonial Yucatec, with examples in the Calepino
de Motul and notarial documents. The most comon numeral classifier used for enumerating the day of the
month was piz or pis (as in [6a] and [6d]), which was sometimes misspelled as ppiz (as in [6b]). For measur-
ing land, Colonial scribes used sap or sapal ‘fathom’ (as in [8c]).
For counting trees, they used either cul or xec:
(14a) can xec v cheel haaz v tiyal cuchi
‘four were his banana trees that belonged to him then’ (DZ587A-027A-B)
(14b) bay xan uaxac xec ox t ɔah ti Maria Camal
‘thus also, eight were the breadnut trees that we gave to María Camal
y hun cul copo y hun xec luch y ho cul xan
and one fig tree, and one calabash tree, and five palm trees’ (EBT812C)
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NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS
And for counting people and animals, they used tul:
(15a) yan ix viɔinob ox tul cħuplalob Mensia Pox Ma Pox Beatriz Pox
‘and there are my younger sisters, three women: Mensia Pox, María Pox, and Beatrice Pox’
(DZ587A-015A-E)
(15b) uaxac
tul tzimin c u tzentabal t u men ca tulili h semanaob
‘eight horses are fed by only two weekly workers’ (HB784C-217B-D)
There was another general numeral classifier besides cul and tul that could be used for quantifying
objects that were neither animate nor plants, namely ppel (phonetic [p’éel]). In notarial documents, it
co-occurs with references to days and years, as in (6c) and (16) below:
(16)
lic ix c alic v hahil hi bicil v uuc [p]pel haab ho[p]poc v meyahtabal t u men Jua Uc
‘and we say the truth how seven years ago, he began to be served by Juana Uc’ (XIU688B)
It was also used for referring to mounds encountered during land surveys, as in (8e) and (17a–b) below:
/>
(17a) ca kuchuc t uy ox ppel alcab multun t kancab
‘when he might arrive at the third running mound in red soil’ (EBT787A)
(17b) ca tun xic ti xaman t u can [p]pel noh multun t u nak v solar ah camal
‘and then it might go to the north of the fourth great mound beside the house plot of the Camal
people’ (EBT813A)
But its principal use during the Colonial period was for quantifying nouns of Spanish origin, especially those
referring to coins (peso, tomin, toston), measures (almud, arroba, limeta), legal documents (conosimiento), and household objects (banco ‘bench,’ bara ‘staff,’ botijuela ‘small jar,’ caja ‘chest, cajuela ‘small box,’ cama
‘bed,’ carreta ‘cart,’ cuchara ‘spoon,’ mesa ‘table,’ plato ‘plate,’ puerta ‘door,’ silla ‘chair’): (18a) c alic u hahil bicil c u yantal c ɔaic lai conosimiento ti yn yum batab Dn Pablo Balam
‘we say the truth how we give this bill to my father, the leader, Don Pablo Balam;
u hahil bicil t u habil 92 t u manah hun ppel kax ti al=mexen Manuel Ek
it is true how in the year [17]92, he bought one forest from the noble, Manuel Ek,
y oklal ho ppel toxtones 20 rrs
for five tostones and twenty reales’ (KAN813C)
(18b) c in chicantal vay ti audiensia in ɔae hun ppel v conosimientoil
‘I appear here in the town hall that I might give a bill of sale
hun xet[ħ] solar ti almehen Lorenso Camal
for one piece of a house lot to the noble, Lorenzo Camal’ (EBT813D)
(18c) lic ix yn ɔayic hun ppel v pueltayl v hol na t inv atan Clara Ake
‘and I give one door, the door, to my wife, Clara Ake’ ((TK725A)
NUMBERS AND NUMERAL CLASSIFIERS
241
(18d) bay xan c in ɔayc hun [p]pel caja t inv al Ma Balam
‘thus also, I give one chest to my daughter María Balam’ (TK734B)
However, the example of hun xetħ solar ‘one piece of a house lot’ in (18b) suggests that solar ‘house
lot’ (also spelled soral and solal) was one Spanish loan that could co-occur with numeral classifiers other
than ppel. It occurred most frequently with ac, but there are also occasional examples of its use with pet
and ppel:
(19a) bay xan yan hun ac yn solar c i[n] kubic ti yn mehen Gregorio Chan
‘thus also, there is one house lot of mine that I transferred to my son, Gregorio Chan’ (PS802-008A-C)
(19b) hun pet solal vay lae v tial in mejen Juo Ek
A Historical Grammar of the Maya Language of Yucatan (1557-2000) Page 40