Doctoral Dissertation Research: Acquisition of Complex Verb Constructions in Q'anjob'al (Maya)

这篇论文记录了Q‘anjob’al Maya中动词复合体的习得。该项目将由以Q‘anjob’al为母语的Mateo Pedro在Clifton Pye博士的指导下进行。Q‘anjob’al是一种记录不足的濒危语言，危地马拉四个社区约有99211人说这种语言。Q‘anjob’al使用作格前缀来交叉指代及物动词的主语，使用绝对标记来交叉指代不及物动词的主语。在无体从属从句中，作格前缀交叉指代不及物动词的主语，Q‘anjob’al将作格分为两类。同一无体从属语境中的及物动词带有不及物后缀。方面由单独的前缀标记。该论文项目将使用Q‘anjob’al数据来评估根不定式假设(Wexler 1998)。这一假设认为，即使儿童知道限定从句的上下文，他们也可以选择在根子句中使用非限定动词形式。词根不定式假说研究的一个明显弱点是缺乏来自具有粘合屈折系统的语言的习得数据。当儿童用一种或另一种成人动词形式代替有体标的动词时，或者干脆省略一部分动词形态而产生非成人形式时，Q‘anjob’al的粘着性形态就会变得明显起来。更重要的是，这个项目将大大增加我们对儿童在习得玛雅语言时产生的动词形式星座的了解。该项目的另一个目标是培训以Q‘anjob’al为母语的人对Q‘anjob’al儿童数据的形态语法进行编码，并通过adquisición de Lenguas Mayas档案(www.almaya.org)向其他学者和Q‘anjob’al社区提供编码抄本。

This dissertation project documents the acquisition of the verbal complex in Q'anjob'al Maya. The project will be conducted by Mateo Pedro, a native speaker of Q'anjob'al, under the direction of Dr. Clifton Pye. Q'anjob'al is an under-documented and endangered language spoken by spoken by approximately 99,211 people in four Guatemalan communities. Q'anjob'al uses ergative prefixes to cross-reference the subject of transitive verbs and absolutive markers to cross-reference the subjects of intransitive verbs. Q'anjob'al has split ergativity in aspectless dependent clauses, in which the ergative prefixes cross-reference the subjects of intransitive verbs. Transitive verbs in the same aspectless dependent contexts take an intransitive suffix. Aspect is marked by a separate prefix. The dissertation project will use the Q'anjob'al data to evaluate the Root Infinitive Hypothesis (Wexler 1998). This hypothesis argues that even though children know the contexts of finite clauses, they optionally use nonfinite verb forms in root clauses. A conspicuous weakness of work on the Root Infinitive Hypothesis has been the lack of acquisition data from languages with agglutinative inflectional systems. The agglutinative morphology of Q'anjob'al will make it obvious when children produce one or another adult verb form in place of an aspectualy marked verb, or simply omit part of the verbal morphology and produce a non-adult form. More importantly, this project will add significantly to our knowledge of the constellation of verb forms that children produce when acquiring Mayan languages. Another goal of the project is to train native speakers of Q'anjob'al to code the morphosyntax of the Q'anjob'al child data, and make the coded transcriptions available to other scholars and the Q'anjob'al community via the Adquisición de Lenguas Mayas archive (www.almaya.org).