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Liquor and Medicine: A Mayan Case Study in Diachronic Semantics
Author(s) -
Maffi Luisa
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1525/jlin.1996.6.1.27
Subject(s) - reinterpretation , semantic change , linguistics , maya , acculturation , sociocultural evolution , history , meaning (existential) , context (archaeology) , sociology , anthropology , epistemology , archaeology , philosophy , aesthetics , ethnic group
This article discusses processes of semantic change in the context of a Mayan case study. It presents a diachronic analysis of the meaning of the Tzeltal and Tzotzil Maya word pox—synchronically used to refer to sugarcane liquor (aguardiente) in various dialects of these two languages of southern Mexico—as well as of its relationship with the derived word poxil 'medicine'. The article argues for a dynamic of semantic change in which abstract meaning persists over time, through shifts in concrete referents due to sociocultural change. A specific semantic derivational process, involving extension from a prototype, is described in this connection. On these bases, the article also proposes a reinterpretation of the relationship between pox as 'sugarcane liquor' and poxil as 'medicine' (normally understood in terms of the synchronically observable major role of the alcoholic beverage in ritual and curing in the Mayan Highlands). Historical linguistic data, colonial sources, and historical and ethnohistorical elements are brought to bear on this claim, and the significance of this reinterpretation for Highland Mayan ethnography is suggested, as well as vis‐à‐vis diachronic versus synchronic explanation, issues of lexical acculturation, and the role of cognitive processes in affecting lexical change