Documenting Mayan Language Acquisition

记录玛雅语言习得

• 批准号: 0613120
• 负责人: Clifton Pye
• 金额: $ 23.8万
• 依托单位: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0613120&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Documenting; Mayan; Language; Acquisition

Children have the astonishing capacity to acquire any human language. This capacity far outstrips the ability of today's fastest supercomputers, and is especially surprising in light of fundamental structural differences that separate the world's languages. The language acquisition phenomenon is a central motivation in linguists' search for language universals, but this search cannot succeed without careful documentation of the variation that presently exists among the world's languages. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the world's languages will go extinct in a generation. The documentation of these endangered languages will help preserve a unique product of human intellectual achievement as well as support a deeper understanding of children's amazing linguistic feat. This project will document the acquisition process in three Mayan languages. This is a critical time to document the acquisition of Mayan languages while there are still children acquiring them in traditional settings. Mayan languages differ from European languages on many key linguistic dimensions. Of prime importance is the Mayan system of ergative agreement which marks the subject of transitive verbs differently from the subject of intransitive verbs. The project will establish a linguistic infrastructure for recording and transcribing samples of children's language in three Mayan communities. Students with linguistic training who come from the targeted communities and who speak the language(s) of their community will be responsible for conducting the research. A further goal of the project is to establish a comparative acquisition base for the Mayan languages to facilitate comparison between processes of historical change and language acquisition.

孩子们有惊人的能力来学习任何人类语言。这种能力远远超过了当今最快的超级计算机的能力，考虑到世界语言之间的基本结构差异，这一点尤其令人惊讶。语言习得现象是语言学家寻找语言共性的核心动机，但如果没有对目前世界语言之间存在的差异进行仔细的记录，这种寻找就无法成功。不幸的是，世界上绝大多数语言将在一代人的时间内灭绝。记录这些濒危语言将有助于保护人类智力成就的独特产物，并支持更深入地了解儿童惊人的语言壮举。该项目将用三种玛雅语言记录采集过程。这是记录玛雅语言习得的关键时刻，因为仍有儿童在传统环境中习得这些语言。玛雅语言在许多关键的语言层面上与欧洲语言不同。最重要的是玛雅作格一致系统，它将及物动词的主语标记为不同于不及物动词的主语。该项目将建立一个语言基础设施，用于记录和转录三个玛雅社区儿童语言的样本。来自目标社区并讲其社区语言的受过语言培训的学生将负责进行研究。该项目的另一个目标是为玛雅语言建立一个比较习得基础，以促进历史变化和语言习得过程之间的比较。