The Morphosyntax of Verbs in Arizona Yaqui

人类语言中任何句子的核心都是动词。当说话者选择一个特定的动词时，句子其余部分的结构通常会自动跟随。动词似乎掌握着理解人类语言的核心表达可能性的钥匙。有趣的是，英语中动词的结构选择相对较少：它们可以接受或拒绝主语、宾语和/或间接宾语的存在，但除此之外就不多了。在英语中，具有相同核心意义的动词在它们所接受的句子结构中通常是相似的。这些核心意义可以让我们洞悉人类思维的普遍结构——或者只能让我们洞悉说英语的人的思维结构。我们不知道，因为除了英语之外，目前还没有对任何语言的动词结构属性进行系统的分类。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，海蒂·哈雷博士和杰森·豪根博士将试图通过记录美国西南部土著语言雅基语的动词来填补这一空白。雅魁语与英语的显著区别在于，雅魁语的动词可以加多种后缀。这些后缀改变了动词所要求的句子结构。通过发现哪些后缀可以附加到哪些雅葵动词上，研究者将确定动词词根的核心意义是否像在英语中那样影响句子结构——更重要的是，将发现定义英语动词类别的相同类型的核心意义是否也在雅葵中起作用。调查人员将与说雅葵语的人合作，建立一个大型数据库，其中包含雅葵语动词和使用这些动词的例句，其中有或没有每个动词后缀。在研究结束时，我们应该清楚的是，对于英语动词类来说重要的核心意义在雅趣动词的分类中是否也很重要。使用濒危的、未被充分研究的雅基语作为主题语言将提供双重好处，而不像研究一种被广泛研究的、具有类似后缀特性的活语言。该项目将首次为雅基语语法的许多重要方面提供广泛的文档，为我们的人类语言知识库提供新的数据，否则这些数据可能会永远消失在科学和人类的视野中。此外，雅基族语言教学社区将能够在语言课堂上使用这项研究产生的材料，并将其作为语言遗产的文件。这些材料将支持部落在语言维护和振兴的紧急舞台上的积极努力。

The nucleus of any sentence of any human language is the verb. When a speaker chooses a particular verb, the structure of the rest of the sentence usually follows automatically. Verbs seem to hold the key to understanding the central expressive possibilities of human language. Interestingly, there are relatively few structural options for verbs in English: they can accept or reject the presence of a subject, an object, and/or an indirect object, but not much else. In English, verbs that share a core meaning usually pattern alike in the sentence structure(s) they accept. These core meanings may give us insight into the universal structure of human thought - or may only give us insight into the structure of thought of speakers of English. We don't know because no systematic classification of the structural properties of the verbs of any language other than English currently exists. With support from the National Science Foundation Dr. Heidi Harley and Dr. Jason Haugen will attempt to fill this gap by documenting the verbs of Yaqui, a Native American language of the southwest. Yaqui differs from English significantly in that many kinds of suffixes can be added to its verbs. These suffixes change the sentence structures that the verbs require. By discovering which suffixes can attach to which verbs of Yaqui, the investigators will establish whether the verb root's core meaning affects sentence structure in the same way that it does in English - and more importantly, will discover whether the same types of core meanings that define English verb classes are also at work in Yaqui. The investigators will work with speakers of Yaqui to create a large database of Yaqui verbs and example sentences using them, with and without each verbal suffix. By the end of the study, it should be clear whether the core meanings that matter for English verb classes are also important in the classification of Yaqui verbs.Using endangered, understudied Yaqui as the subject language will provide a dual benefit, unlike a study of a widely-studied living language with similar suffixing properties. This project will provide extensive documentation of many important aspects of Yaqui grammar for the first time, contributing new data to our store of knowledge about human language-data that may well otherwise be lost to science and humanity forever. In addition, the Yaqui language teaching community will be able to employ the materials produced by the study in language classes, and as documentation of their linguistic heritage. These materials will support the tribe's active efforts in the urgent arena of language maintenance and revitalization.