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

当至少有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，在这些情况下会出现各种各样的结果。例如，有时只有几个单词被借用，或者可能出现了全新的语言，或者说话者同时使用两种语言，并以系统的、模式化的方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很大差距，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。濒临灭绝的语言接触引发了人们对语言“生命力”的质疑，即语言的使用对象、使用方式和使用地点。更未被研究的是儿童在这种接触情境中的语言习得。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，以及促进美国和外国学术机构之间的新的国际合作。NSF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平方公里的区域内，约3500,937平方公里的约300万人使用30多种玛雅语言，其中许多语言相互接触，导致会说多种语言。尽管已经开展了几种玛雅语言的文件项目，但它们在接触中的相互作用还没有得到广泛研究。了解接触诱导变化的原理将使语言科学家能够更好地记录这些语言，并就它们的维护提出建议。该小组将专注于Awakateko和K‘iche，这两种濒危的玛雅语言来自危地马拉西部的Huehuetenango地区。这个项目将调查以下主要问题：习得这两种语言中的一种或两种的儿童是如何使用它们的，是什么决定了哪种语言更占优势？这一地区成年说话者每天使用Awakateko和K‘iche的方式是什么？哪些因素决定了其中一种语言的相对重要性？由马里兰大学语言学家Maria Polinsky领导的合作项目包括两位在美国接受培训的语言学家Pedro Mateo Pedro博士和AJB‘ee Jiménez Sánchez博士，他们都是以玛雅语言为母语的人，对自己的语言和其他玛雅语言的实地考察也很有经验。考虑到他们在遗产语言、句法理论、玛雅语言、语言接触和儿童语言习得方面的集体专长，该小组在开展这项调查方面处于独特的地位。该项目将集中于一系列语音和形态句法现象：重音、舌化、数字量词和非及物化手段(即反被动和施事焦点)。此外，该项目将建立一个自然产生的数据(叙述和对话)的转录和注释语料库，其中有双语和多语种发言者，其他研究人员和普通公众都可以使用。该项目有一个强大的培训部分，将使两种语言的母语者参与进来，这些训练有素的母语为母语的公民科学家将在数据收集方面发挥主要作用。

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.