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

本论文项目记录了qanjob 'al玛雅语言复合体的获取情况。该项目将由母语为qanjob 'al语的Mateo Pedro在Clifton Pye博士的指导下进行。Q'anjob'al是危地马拉四个社区约99211人使用的一种未被充分记录的濒危语言。Q'anjob'al用否定前缀指代及物动词的主语，用绝对标记指代不及物动词的主语。Q'anjob'al在无方面从属句中具有分裂性，即否定前缀与不及物动词的主语相互指涉。及物动词在相同的无方面从属上下文中使用不及物后缀。Aspect用一个单独的前缀来标记。论文项目将使用Q'anjob'al数据来评估根不定式假设（weexler 1998）。这一假设认为，即使儿童知道有限分句的上下文，他们也会在词根分句中选择性地使用非有限动词形式。词根不定式假说的一个明显弱点是缺乏从具有黏附屈折系统的语言中获得的数据。当孩子们用一种或另一种成人动词形式来代替一个特别标记的动词时，或者干脆省略一部分动词形式而产生非成人形式时，Q'anjob'al的粘合形态就会很明显。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子数据的形态语法进行编码，并通过Adquisición de Lenguas Mayas档案（www.almaya.org）将编码的转录结果提供给其他学者和Q'anjob'al社区。

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).