THE SHIFTING NOW - ASPECT, DEIXIS, AND NARRATIVE IN CLASSIC MAYA TEXTS

Abundant and complex, Maya hieroglyphic texts serve as a crucial resou rce for understanding preColumbian narrative. This essay documents and discusses the discursive structure of Maya texts. New evidence on gly phic aspect and deixis show the presence of a ''shifting now'' or ''al ternating historical incompletive'' in Classic narratives. There were two possible motivations for this pattern: to sequence events and esta blish textual boundaries between incompletive events and, more specula tively, to provide performance cues from hieroglyphic inscriptions.