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

博士论文研究：Qanjobal（玛雅语）复杂动词结构的习得

• 批准号: 0948638
• 负责人: Clifton Pye
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-02-15 至 2012-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0948638&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Acquisition; Complex

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).

本论文项目记录了Q'anjob'al Maya语言复合体的获得。该项目将在克利夫顿·派伊博士的指导下，由Q'anjob'al的母语人士Mateo Pedro主持。Q'anjob'al是危地马拉四个社区约99，211人使用的一种记录不足且濒临灭绝的语言。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。Q'anjob'al在无体从句中有分裂作格，作格前缀与不及物动词的主语互指。及物动词在相同的无体依存语境中加不及物后缀。方面由单独的前缀标记。本论文项目将使用Q'anjob'al数据来评估根不定式假设（Wexler 1998）。这一假设认为，即使儿童知道限定分句的上下文，他们也会选择在根分句中使用非限定动词形式。词根不定式假设的一个明显的弱点是缺乏从具有粘着屈折系统的语言中习得的数据。Q'anjob'al的黏着形态学在儿童用一种或另一种成人动词形式代替体标记动词，或者只是省略部分动词形态而产生非成人形式时会变得明显。更重要的是，这个项目将大大增加我们对儿童在学习玛雅语言时产生的动词形式的知识。 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儿童数据的形态句法进行编码，并通过Adquisición de Lenguas Mayas档案（www.almaya.org）向其他学者和Q'anjob'al社区提供编码后的译文。