About Me
I am a linguist who studies Mayan languages, with a special focus on historical morphology, language contact, and colonial texts. I completed my Ph.D. in Linguistics at The University of Texas at Austin in August 2023. Besides my historical-comparative and archival work, I have direct field experience with languages of the K'iche'an branch, particularly K'iche' and Poqomchi', and to a lesser extent Q'eqchi' and Uspanteko. I also have extensive experience with constructed languages and have done commission work before - if this is a service you are interested in, please contact me at the email listed below.
Recent Activities
In April 2025, I gave a talk at the NARNiHS Research Incubator about grammatical changes observed in short liturgical texts across the Colonial Poqomchi' manuscript corpus.
My November 2023 article in Transactions of the Philological Society identified what I call the "Sacapulas Corridor," a localized zone of language contact along a pre-Columbian trade route in the Cuchumatán highlands of Guatemala. I present both linguistic and ethnohistorical evidence for this contact area.
My August 2023 dissertation discussed the reconstruction of perfect participle morphology in proto-Mayan, and the historical changes (including extensive language contact) that led to the diversification of perfect morphology across Mayan languages.
Watch my July 2022 interview about Mayan languages with Dr. Colin Gorrie!
For a full list of my recent work, see my publications and presentations.
Contact
Contact me at: jtandy at utexas dot edu.
Photo: At the Iglesia Cristo de Chi-Ixim, overlooking Tactic, Guatemala. Photo credit: América Ixim de Mó.