Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting information structure in Isthmus Zapotec

博士论文研究：记录萨波特克地峡的信息结构

• 批准号: 1064624
• 负责人: Lenore Grenoble
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-15 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1064624&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Documenting; information

Isthmus Zapotec (ZAI) is a Zapotecan language of the Otomanguean stock spoken by approximately 80,000 people in and around Juchitán de Zaragoza, in southern Oaxaca, Mexico. Although the percentage of residents of Juchitán older than 50 who speak ZAI is quite high (more than 80%), the percentage of children who are growing up speaking the language is much lower, hovering around 50%. Thus, while stable Spanish-ZAI bilingualism has been the norm for several centuries, the language shift from ZAI to Spanish is now occurring very quickly (as is common in the majority of indigenous communities throughout Mexico). Given that the long-term viability of the language is uncertain, it is important to document spontaneous language use in a variety of natural contexts.The main objective of this project is to document information structure in the language by recording, transcribing, annotating, and analyzing spoken texts from spontaneous life narratives. In addition, native speaker judgments of constructed examples will be elicited. Information structure is understood as the study of the ways that the different components of sentences -- intonation, morphology, and syntax -- are organized by speakers in order to communicate certain kinds of information. Although the available linguistic documentation on ZAI is greater than that of most other Mexican indigenous languages, particularly those outside of the Mayan language family, no documentation of information structure or discourse phenomena exists for this language. The documentary corpus to be obtained will thus allow for a more complete understanding of the range of constructions that are available to IZ speakers and how they are employed to respond to specific discourse motivations. These materials promise to bring novel data to Mesoamerican linguistics and will provide new grounds from which to evaluate and inform theoretical work on information structure and narrative.Proper linguistic documentation and, in particular, the documentation of discourse can be an important tool in forging effective language maintenance efforts in the ZAI community. The recordings and transcriptions will be made available to the community, thereby contributing to ZAI language teaching and learning. The documentation of ZAI oral genres could have an especially positive effect, since local schools lack materials derived from their own oral traditions and/or from naturally-occurring speech.

萨波特克地峡语（英语：Isthmus Zapotec，缩写为ZAI）是一种萨波特康语，属于奥托曼吉亚语系，在墨西哥南部的瓦哈卡的胡奇坦-德萨拉戈萨及其周边地区约有80，000人使用。虽然50岁以上的居民中说ZAI的比例很高（超过80%），但在成长过程中说ZAI的儿童比例要低得多，徘徊在50%左右。因此，虽然稳定的西班牙语-ZAI双语已经成为几个世纪的规范，但从ZAI到西班牙语的语言转变现在正在迅速发生（在墨西哥各地的大多数土著社区中很常见）。鉴于语言的长期生存能力是不确定的，重要的是要记录在各种自然语境中自发的语言使用。本项目的主要目标是通过记录，转录，注释和分析来自自发生活叙事的口语文本来记录语言中的信息结构。 此外，本族语者的判断构建的例子将被引出。信息结构被理解为研究说话者为了传达某种信息而组织句子的不同成分-语调，形态和句法-的方式。虽然关于ZAI的可用语言文献比大多数其他墨西哥土著语言，特别是玛雅语系以外的语言文献要多，但这种语言没有信息结构或话语现象的文献。因此，获得的文献语料库将允许更全面地了解IZ发言者可用的结构范围以及它们如何被用来响应特定的话语动机。这些材料有望为中美洲语言学带来新的数据，并将提供新的基础，从其中评估和信息结构和narrative.Proper语言文档，特别是文档的话语理论工作可以锻造有效的语言维护努力在ZAI社区的重要工具。录音和翻译将提供给社区，从而有助于再鼎国际的语言教学和学习。ZAI口语类型的记录可能会产生特别积极的影响，因为当地学校缺乏来自他们自己的口语传统和/或自然发生的演讲的材料。