Danny Law
Biographic Data
| ID | 143298 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Danny Law |
| GIVEN NAMES | Danny |
| FAMILY NAME | Law |
| SIGNATURE | LAW D |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9406-7377 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Sequential structure and diachronic assimilation in signed languages
Assimilatory processes are generally understood to rely on sequential structure: a target element adopts features of a preceding or following element. While signed languages arguably show less sequential structure than spoken languages, there are several areas of the grammar of signed languages where sequential structure is evident and the conditions for assimilatory processes are available. Previous work has explored coarticulatory effects in si…
Advances in the Historical Linguistics of Signed Languages
Scholarship in the field of sign historical linguistics has made important progress in recent years. Here we survey this progress in three areas of research that have received the most attention to date, namely, (i) qualitative approaches to understanding the typical pathways of diachronic change in signed languages, (ii) quantitative approaches to signed language classification, and (iii) archival approaches to historical sociolinguistic researc…
Regular change and signed languages
This paper responds to commentaries by several authors on our target article, ‘Bringing signed languages into the study of regular sound change’ (Law et al. 2025a). We provide some additional context on the research program that spurred the target article and draw on several themes discussed in both the target article and commentaries, specifically (i) the affordances and effects of modality in (theories of) language change, (ii) iconicity (and i…
Bringing signed languages into the study of regular sound change
We contend that attention to signed languages is crucial for a fuller understanding of the processes and mechanisms behind regular sound change in spoken languages. While the label 'regular sound change' would seem to limit the object of study to language change in the auditory-vocal channel, a typical assumption is that a visual-gestural modality correlate to regular sound change exists. At the same time, there exists a conflicting position that…
The Pedagogical Tipiṭaka
Ancient languages present a unique teaching challenge: for spoken languages, common pedagogy recommends engaging students via dialogue; for ancient languages, no speakers survive with whom to practise. This paper highlights how the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin has approached this challenge by creating the Early Indo-European OnLine (EIEOL) collection, an online educational resource whose lesson series present e…
Pattern borrowing, linguistic similarity, and new categories
Clifton Pye. The comparative method of language acquisition research
Discourse in the Longue Durée
Discourse is dynamic and emergent, yet certain elements of discourse can appear remarkably stable, enduring across centuries. This discursive inertia gives us evidence of discourse in the past, allowing us to put current discursive moments in a longue durée context. Discursive inertia also begs avenues of investigation in its own right. We here discuss the common poetic patterns of chiasmus and difrasismo on one branch of the Mayan language famil…
Language Contacts with(in) Mayan
It is increasingly clear that the history of Mayan languages is one of almost constant vigorous, and at times turbulent, linguistic exchange. The outcomes of that history have varied according to the languages involved and the sociohistorical context of the linguistic contact. Documented linguistic outcomes include not only borrowed lexical items, but also the direct transfer of grammatical morphology, phonological innovations, and morphosyntacti…
Language mixing and genetic similarity
Definitions of ‘mixed’ or ‘intertwined’ languages derive almost entirely from studies of languages that combine elements from genetically unrelated sources. The Mayan language Tojol-ab’al displays a mixture of linguistic features from two related Mayan languages, Chuj and Tseltal. The systematic similarities found in related languages not only make it methodologically difficult to identify the source of specific linguistic features but also mean …
Classic Mayan
This essay provides an overview of the language attested in ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing, or what we choose to call Classic Mayan. 1 The writing system was in use for nearly two thousand years, beginning in what archaeologists call the Late Preclassic period (ca. 300 B.C.) and lasting until the time of European conquest and domination. In this period the hieroglyphic script was used throughout the region we traditionally know as the “Lowland…
The Cambridge World History
From the fourth millennium BCE to the early second millennium CE the world became a world of cities. This volume explores this critical transformation, from the appearance of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the rise of cities in Asia and the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Americas. Through case studies and comparative accounts of key cities across the world, leading scholars chart the ways in which these cities grew as nodal…
Areal Shifts in Classic Mayan Phonology
Advances in hieroglyphic decipherment and in language contact typology provide new data and theories with which to investigate and reassess prior interpretations of Mayan linguistic history. The present study considers the shift from proto-Mayan*kand *k'to /ch/ and /ch'/, a sound change that affected several Mayan languages in different phonological contexts. This sound change, with a very particular set of conditions, has been highlighted as a d…
Inherited similarity and contact-induced change in Mayan Languages
Similarity has been cited, generally anecdotally, as a significant factor shaping the outcomes of language contact. A detailed investigation of long-term contact among more than a dozen related Lowland Mayan languages has yielded specific examples of contact-induced language changes that, I argue, were facilitated by the systematic similarities shared by these languages because of genetic relatedness. Three factors that seem to have been particul…
Mayan Historical Linguistics in a New Age
Mayan historical linguistic research has progressed at a healthy pace since the 1970s. The recent decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing and the publication, in the last decade, of a large cohort of high quality linguistic descriptions of several Mayan languages, many of them written by native speakers of those languages, have opened a floodgate of new linguistic data that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the history of t…
Reading in Context
The interpretation of deixis in language is heavily context-dependent. In spoken language, the addressee(s) have the context of an utterance to aid in its interpretation. In writing, however, language can become separated from both its creator and the context of its creation. This article investigates the use of certain deictics-first and second person markers-in ancient Maya hieroglyphics (circa AD 250-900). The temporal and cultural gap that se…
Pronominal borrowing among the Maya
A central concern in the study of language contact phenomena is the question of what linguistic features are more or less likely to be borrowed, and why. Pronominal borrowing, at least the direct borrowing of the phonological forms, is often ranked among the least common outcomes of language contact. This paper presents an extended case study of contact-induced changes in the system of person markers in several Mayan languages over nearly two tho…
From Valency to Aspect in the Ch'olan-Tzeltalan Family of Mayan
This paper traces the evolution of the Common Mayan derivational suffixes *-V-ng and *-V-j into their descendant forms in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages. Specifically, the paper outlines a remarkable but markedly consistent shift from a transitivizing, derivational morpheme to an aspectual, inflectional suffix, whose most far-reaching fate is a negative future marker in Ch’orti’. It is only by firmly focusing on the systems of grammatical relati…
Split Ergativity in the History of the Ch'olan Branch of the Mayan Language Family
An unchallenged assumption regarding the linguistic history of the Ch’olan branch of the Mayan language family is that this common language was “split ergative”—demonstrating an ergative/absolutive pattern of pronominal inflection in the completive aspect and a nominative/accusative pattern in the incompletive. Such a hypothesis is untenable in light of the data, which show that the Ch’olti’an branch of Ch’olan did not share in the split ergative…
Split Ergativity in the History of the Ch'olan Branch of the Mayan Language Family
An unchallenged assumption regarding the linguistic history of the Ch’olan branch of the Mayan language family is that this common language was “split ergative”—demonstrating an ergative/absolutive pattern of pronominal inflection in the completive aspect and a nominative/accusative pattern in the incompletive. Such a hypothesis is untenable in light of the data, which show that the Ch’olti’an branch of Ch’olan did not share in the split ergative…
Mayan Historical Linguistics in a New Age
Mayan historical linguistic research has progressed at a healthy pace since the 1970s. The recent decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing and the publication, in the last decade, of a large cohort of high quality linguistic descriptions of several Mayan languages, many of them written by native speakers of those languages, have opened a floodgate of new linguistic data that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the history of t…
Reading in Context
The interpretation of deixis in language is heavily context-dependent. In spoken language, the addressee(s) have the context of an utterance to aid in its interpretation. In writing, however, language can become separated from both its creator and the context of its creation. This article investigates the use of certain deictics-first and second person markers-in ancient Maya hieroglyphics (circa AD 250-900). The temporal and cultural gap that se…
Areal Shifts in Classic Mayan Phonology
Advances in hieroglyphic decipherment and in language contact typology provide new data and theories with which to investigate and reassess prior interpretations of Mayan linguistic history. The present study considers the shift from proto-Mayan*kand *k'to /ch/ and /ch'/, a sound change that affected several Mayan languages in different phonological contexts. This sound change, with a very particular set of conditions, has been highlighted as a d…
From Valency to Aspect in the Ch'olan-Tzeltalan Family of Mayan
This paper traces the evolution of the Common Mayan derivational suffixes *-V-ng and *-V-j into their descendant forms in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages. Specifically, the paper outlines a remarkable but markedly consistent shift from a transitivizing, derivational morpheme to an aspectual, inflectional suffix, whose most far-reaching fate is a negative future marker in Ch’orti’. It is only by firmly focusing on the systems of grammatical relati…
Inherited similarity and contact-induced change in Mayan Languages
Similarity has been cited, generally anecdotally, as a significant factor shaping the outcomes of language contact. A detailed investigation of long-term contact among more than a dozen related Lowland Mayan languages has yielded specific examples of contact-induced language changes that, I argue, were facilitated by the systematic similarities shared by these languages because of genetic relatedness. Three factors that seem to have been particul…
Pattern borrowing, linguistic similarity, and new categories
Bringing signed languages into the study of regular sound change
We contend that attention to signed languages is crucial for a fuller understanding of the processes and mechanisms behind regular sound change in spoken languages. While the label 'regular sound change' would seem to limit the object of study to language change in the auditory-vocal channel, a typical assumption is that a visual-gestural modality correlate to regular sound change exists. At the same time, there exists a conflicting position that…
Discourse in the Longue Durée
Discourse is dynamic and emergent, yet certain elements of discourse can appear remarkably stable, enduring across centuries. This discursive inertia gives us evidence of discourse in the past, allowing us to put current discursive moments in a longue durée context. Discursive inertia also begs avenues of investigation in its own right. We here discuss the common poetic patterns of chiasmus and difrasismo on one branch of the Mayan language famil…
Split Ergativity in the History of the Ch'olan Branch of the Mayan Language Family
An unchallenged assumption regarding the linguistic history of the Ch’olan branch of the Mayan language family is that this common language was “split ergative”—demonstrating an ergative/absolutive pattern of pronominal inflection in the completive aspect and a nominative/accusative pattern in the incompletive. Such a hypothesis is untenable in light of the data, which show that the Ch’olti’an branch of Ch’olan did not share in the split ergative…
Pronominal borrowing among the Maya
A central concern in the study of language contact phenomena is the question of what linguistic features are more or less likely to be borrowed, and why. Pronominal borrowing, at least the direct borrowing of the phonological forms, is often ranked among the least common outcomes of language contact. This paper presents an extended case study of contact-induced changes in the system of person markers in several Mayan languages over nearly two tho…
From Valency to Aspect in the Ch'olan-Tzeltalan Family of Mayan
This paper traces the evolution of the Common Mayan derivational suffixes *-V-ng and *-V-j into their descendant forms in the Ch’olan-Tzeltalan languages. Specifically, the paper outlines a remarkable but markedly consistent shift from a transitivizing, derivational morpheme to an aspectual, inflectional suffix, whose most far-reaching fate is a negative future marker in Ch’orti’. It is only by firmly focusing on the systems of grammatical relati…
Inherited similarity and contact-induced change in Mayan Languages
Similarity has been cited, generally anecdotally, as a significant factor shaping the outcomes of language contact. A detailed investigation of long-term contact among more than a dozen related Lowland Mayan languages has yielded specific examples of contact-induced language changes that, I argue, were facilitated by the systematic similarities shared by these languages because of genetic relatedness. Three factors that seem to have been particul…
Mayan Historical Linguistics in a New Age
Mayan historical linguistic research has progressed at a healthy pace since the 1970s. The recent decipherment of ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing and the publication, in the last decade, of a large cohort of high quality linguistic descriptions of several Mayan languages, many of them written by native speakers of those languages, have opened a floodgate of new linguistic data that promises to revolutionize our understanding of the history of t…
Reading in Context
The interpretation of deixis in language is heavily context-dependent. In spoken language, the addressee(s) have the context of an utterance to aid in its interpretation. In writing, however, language can become separated from both its creator and the context of its creation. This article investigates the use of certain deictics-first and second person markers-in ancient Maya hieroglyphics (circa AD 250-900). The temporal and cultural gap that se…
Areal Shifts in Classic Mayan Phonology
Advances in hieroglyphic decipherment and in language contact typology provide new data and theories with which to investigate and reassess prior interpretations of Mayan linguistic history. The present study considers the shift from proto-Mayan*kand *k'to /ch/ and /ch'/, a sound change that affected several Mayan languages in different phonological contexts. This sound change, with a very particular set of conditions, has been highlighted as a d…
The Cambridge World History
From the fourth millennium BCE to the early second millennium CE the world became a world of cities. This volume explores this critical transformation, from the appearance of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the rise of cities in Asia and the Mediterranean world, Africa, and the Americas. Through case studies and comparative accounts of key cities across the world, leading scholars chart the ways in which these cities grew as nodal…
Language Contacts with(in) Mayan
It is increasingly clear that the history of Mayan languages is one of almost constant vigorous, and at times turbulent, linguistic exchange. The outcomes of that history have varied according to the languages involved and the sociohistorical context of the linguistic contact. Documented linguistic outcomes include not only borrowed lexical items, but also the direct transfer of grammatical morphology, phonological innovations, and morphosyntacti…
Language mixing and genetic similarity
Definitions of ‘mixed’ or ‘intertwined’ languages derive almost entirely from studies of languages that combine elements from genetically unrelated sources. The Mayan language Tojol-ab’al displays a mixture of linguistic features from two related Mayan languages, Chuj and Tseltal. The systematic similarities found in related languages not only make it methodologically difficult to identify the source of specific linguistic features but also mean …
Classic Mayan
This essay provides an overview of the language attested in ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing, or what we choose to call Classic Mayan. 1 The writing system was in use for nearly two thousand years, beginning in what archaeologists call the Late Preclassic period (ca. 300 B.C.) and lasting until the time of European conquest and domination. In this period the hieroglyphic script was used throughout the region we traditionally know as the “Lowland…
Clifton Pye. The comparative method of language acquisition research
Discourse in the Longue Durée
Discourse is dynamic and emergent, yet certain elements of discourse can appear remarkably stable, enduring across centuries. This discursive inertia gives us evidence of discourse in the past, allowing us to put current discursive moments in a longue durée context. Discursive inertia also begs avenues of investigation in its own right. We here discuss the common poetic patterns of chiasmus and difrasismo on one branch of the Mayan language famil…
Pattern borrowing, linguistic similarity, and new categories
The Pedagogical Tipiṭaka
Ancient languages present a unique teaching challenge: for spoken languages, common pedagogy recommends engaging students via dialogue; for ancient languages, no speakers survive with whom to practise. This paper highlights how the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin has approached this challenge by creating the Early Indo-European OnLine (EIEOL) collection, an online educational resource whose lesson series present e…
Advances in the Historical Linguistics of Signed Languages
Scholarship in the field of sign historical linguistics has made important progress in recent years. Here we survey this progress in three areas of research that have received the most attention to date, namely, (i) qualitative approaches to understanding the typical pathways of diachronic change in signed languages, (ii) quantitative approaches to signed language classification, and (iii) archival approaches to historical sociolinguistic researc…
Regular change and signed languages
This paper responds to commentaries by several authors on our target article, ‘Bringing signed languages into the study of regular sound change’ (Law et al. 2025a). We provide some additional context on the research program that spurred the target article and draw on several themes discussed in both the target article and commentaries, specifically (i) the affordances and effects of modality in (theories of) language change, (ii) iconicity (and i…
Bringing signed languages into the study of regular sound change
We contend that attention to signed languages is crucial for a fuller understanding of the processes and mechanisms behind regular sound change in spoken languages. While the label 'regular sound change' would seem to limit the object of study to language change in the auditory-vocal channel, a typical assumption is that a visual-gestural modality correlate to regular sound change exists. At the same time, there exists a conflicting position that…
Sequential structure and diachronic assimilation in signed languages
Assimilatory processes are generally understood to rely on sequential structure: a target element adopts features of a preceding or following element. While signed languages arguably show less sequential structure than spoken languages, there are several areas of the grammar of signed languages where sequential structure is evident and the conditions for assimilatory processes are available. Previous work has explored coarticulatory effects in si…
Linguistics (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Spanish Linguistics and Language Studies (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · History (8 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (8 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · Language contact (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Historical linguistics (3 works)