Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting information structure in Isthmus Zapotec

地峡萨波特克语（Isthmus Zapotec，简称ZAI）是一种萨波特克语，属于Otomanguean语系，在墨西哥瓦哈卡州南部的Juchitán de Zaragoza附近大约有8万人使用。虽然Juchitán 50岁以上的居民中说寨语的比例相当高（超过80%），但在成长过程中说寨语的儿童比例要低得多，徘徊在50%左右。因此，虽然几个世纪以来稳定的西班牙语-宰伊语双语一直是常态，但从宰伊语到西班牙语的语言转变现在正在迅速发生（这在整个墨西哥的大多数土著社区都很常见）。鉴于语言的长期生存能力是不确定的，记录各种自然环境下的自发语言使用是很重要的。该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述的口语文本来记录语言中的信息结构。此外，母语人士的判断构建的例子将引出。信息结构被理解为研究说话者如何组织句子的不同组成部分——语调、词法和句法，以传达某些类型的信息。尽管关于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，但没有关于这种语言的信息结构或话语现象的文献。因此，获得的文献语料库将使我们能够更全面地了解国际英语使用者可以使用的结构范围，以及它们如何被用来回应特定的话语动机。这些材料有望为中美洲语言学带来新的数据，并将为评估和告知信息结构和叙事的理论工作提供新的依据。适当的语言文档，特别是话语文档，是在ZAI社区中建立有效的语言维护工作的重要工具。录音和抄本将提供给社会各界，从而有助于仔文的教学。由于当地学校缺乏来自他们自己的口头传统和/或自然发生的语言的材料，因此，对ZAI口头流派的记录可能会产生特别积极的影响。

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.