Doctoral Dissertation Research: Voice and Honorifics in K'iche'-Spanish Language Change

最近的文献认为，语言形式和这些形式的社会语言学分布是由语言意识形态介导的，语言的变化在很大程度上是语言的社会使用和社会结构之间动态相互作用的结果。这里的研究将通过系统地考虑K'iche' Maya中相互关联的语法、词汇和形态特征的社会文化维度，通过其先前未被研究的敬语语域现象来丰富这一观点。语言的社会使用在敬语语域中最为明显——语言形式、代词、名词或其他语言手段的约定俗成的共同出现，表明对被称呼的人的尊重。词汇、语法和形态手段用来表示对指称者、收件人或旁观者的尊重或服从。玛雅语的几个变体有两套完整的第二人称代词，它们在形式上有所不同，还有两个分别用于男性和女性专有名称之前的前缀。此外，在一些kiche方言中，敬语似乎以有趣的方式涉及语音系统。这项研究试图通过逐渐的、实用主义驱动的替代，确定玛雅语和西班牙语之间的社会语言学关系在地方层面上是如何以及在多大程度上复制的。由于西班牙语是危地马拉的国家语言，而说K‘iche’的社区现在是不同的双语，因此敬语是语际语用（功能）重叠的一个点，并作为K'iche' -西班牙语变化的重要中介语域。

Recent literature has argued that linguistic form and the sociolinguistic distribution of these forms are mediated by linguistic ideology, and that linguistic change is largely a result of a dynamic interaction between the social use of language and social structures. The research here will enrich this view by systematically considering the sociocultural dimensions of use of interrelated grammatical, lexical and morphological features in K'iche' Maya, through its previously unexamined honorific register phenomena. The social use of language is nowhere more apparent than in honorific registers -- conventionalized cooccurrences of linguistic forms, pronouns, nouns or other linguistic devices which index deference or respect towards the person addressed. Lexical, grammatical and morphological means are used to index respect or deference to referent, addressee or bystander. Several varieties of K'iche' Maya have two full sets of second person pronouns that differ in formality, as well as two prefixes used before proper names of males and females, respectively. In addition, honorification in some dialects of K'iche' appears to involve the voice system in interesting ways. The research seeks to determine how and to what extent a replication at the local level of the sociolinguistic relationship between Mayan and Spanish, by means of gradual, pragmatically-driven replacement, may be occurring. Since Spanish is the national language of Guatemala, and K'iche' speaking communities are now variously bilingual, honorifics are a point of interlingual pragmatic (functional) overlap and serve as an important mediating register for K'iche' - Spanish language change.