Investigating Endangered Language Contact for Awakateko and K'iche', two Mayan languages

当至少两种语言或变体相互作用时，就会出现语言接触的情况。 语言学家知道，在这些情况下会发生各种各样的结果。例如，有时只有几个词是借来的，或者可能是全新的语言出现，或者说话者使用两种语言，并以系统的模式在它们之间切换和混合。 关于语言接触情况的现有知识存在重大差距，当考虑到涉及两种或两种以上濒危语言的接触情况时，这些差距甚至更大。 濒危的语言接触提出了关于语言“生命力”的问题，即谁、如何以及在哪里使用这些语言。在这种接触情况下，儿童的语言习得研究得更少。 该项目将记录濒危语言接触地区儿童和成人的语言使用情况。 更广泛的影响包括为研究生提供国际研究和培训机会，并促进美国和外国学术机构之间的新的国际合作。国家科学基金会国际科学与工程办公室正在为与该项目相关的国际活动提供支持。在345，937平方公里的面积上，约有300万人使用30多种玛雅语言，其中许多语言都在接触，导致多语言使用者。虽然已经对几种玛雅语言进行了文献项目，但尚未广泛研究它们在接触下的相互作用。了解接触引起的变化的原则将使语言科学家能够更好地记录这些语言，并就其维护提出建议。该小组将重点研究来自危地马拉西部韦韦特南戈地区的两种濒临灭绝的玛雅语言--觉醒语和基切语。这个项目将调查以下主要问题：儿童如何获得这两种语言中的一种或两种使用它们，是什么决定了哪种语言更占主导地位？这一地区的成年人日常使用觉醒歌和K 'iche'的模式是什么？哪些因素决定了一种语言的相对重要性？ 由马里兰州大学语言学家玛丽亚·波林斯基领导的这项合作包括两个美国-此外，还有两名训练有素的语言学家Pedro Mateo Pedro博士和Ajb'ee Jiménez Sánchez博士，两人都是玛雅语言的母语使用者，也有关于玛雅语言和其他玛雅语言的语言实地工作经验。该小组是独特的定位进行这项调查，鉴于他们的集体专业知识遗产语言，句法理论，玛雅语言，语言接触，和儿童语言习得。该项目将侧重于一系列语音和形态句法现象：重音;腭化;数词分类器和去及物化手段（即，反被动和代理焦点）。此外，该项目还将建立一个由双语和多语种使用者转录、注释的自然发生的数据（叙述和对话）语料库，供其他研究人员和公众使用。 该项目有一个强有力的培训部分，将吸引两种语言的母语者，这些受过培训的母语公民科学家将在数据收集中发挥主要作用。

Language contact situations arise when at least two languages or varieties interact. Linguists know that there are a wide variety of outcomes that occur in these situations. For example, sometimes only a few words are borrowed, or perhaps entirely new languages emerge, or speakers use both languages and switch and mix between them in systematic, patterned ways. There are significant gaps in existing knowledge about language contact situations, and those gaps are even larger when considering contact situations involving two or more endangered languages. Endangered language contact raises questions on language 'vitality,' that is, who, how and where the languages are in use. Even more understudied is child language acquisition in such contact situations. This project will document the language usage by children and adults in a region where endangered languages are in contact. Broader impacts include providing graduate students with international research and training opportunities and fostering a new international collaboration between U.S. and foreign academic institutions. The NSF Office of International Science and Engineering is providing support for international activities associated with this project.With more than 30 Mayan languages are spoken by about 3 million people in an area of 345,937 square kilometers, many of these languages are in contact, resulting in multilingual speakers. Although documentation projects have been carried out on several Mayan languages, their interaction under contact has not been studied extensively. Understanding the principles of contact-induced change will allow language scientists to better document these languages and to make suggestions concerning their maintenance. The team will focus on Awakateko and K'iche', two endangered Mayan languages from the Huehuetenango region of western Guatemala. This project will investigate the following main questions: How do children acquiring one or both of these languages use them, and what determines which language is more dominant? What are the patterns of everyday use of Awakateko and K'iche' by adult speakers in this area? What factors determine the relative importance of one of the languages? Led by University of Maryland linguist Maria Polinsky, the collaboration includes two U.S.-trained linguists, Dr. Pedro Mateo Pedro and Dr. Ajb'ee Jiménez Sánchez, both of whom are native speakers of Mayan languages and are also experienced in linguistic fieldwork on their own and other Mayan languages. The team is uniquely positioned to carry out this investigation, given their collective expertise on heritage languages, syntactic theory, Mayan languages, language contact, and child language acquisition. The project will focus on a set of phonological and morphosyntactic phenomena: stress; palatalization; numeral classifiers and detransitivization means (i.e., antipassive and agent focus). In addition, the project will construct a transcribed, annotated corpus of naturally occurring data (narratives and dialogues) with bilingual and multilingual speakers which will be accessible to other researchers and the general public. The project has a strong training component that will engage native speakers of both languages, and these trained native-speaker citizen scientists will play the primary role in data collection.