Doctoral Dissertation Research: The morphosyntax of motion in Hiaki

Hiaki（通常写作Yaqui）是一种濒临灭绝的美洲原住民语言，在墨西哥的索诺拉和亚利桑那州使用。亚利桑那大学研究生亚历山德拉·特鲁曼在海蒂哈雷博士的指导下，将对Hiaki表达运动的方式进行调查，特别是在复杂的多动词结构中，运动动词或立场动词通过与另一个词汇动词复合来修饰。运动表达的变化几十年来一直是跨语言比较和争议的肥沃土壤。Talmy提出了一个非常有影响力的双向语言类型学，但仍然受到审查，特别是在使用多动词结构的语言方面。语言在这方面的变异程度引起了一个关于语言普遍性的有趣问题。本项目将首次对Hiaki中的复合动词结构进行深入的文献记录和分析，并通过将Hiaki与韩语和英语等在发生学和类型学上不同的语言进行比较，探索不同的构词过程在多大程度上可以说映射到相同的潜在句法结构。研究问题：1）Hiaki复合动词的潜在结构是什么，特别是当“中心”动词是不及物动词时（因此不能将第二个动词或动词短语作为其补语）？2)如果我们将Hiaki中的这些结构与具有不同表面形态句法实现的语言进行比较，那么允许的表面形式如何约束可能的底层结构？3)是否有证据表明复杂运动结构的渐变或类型学？通过与母语人士的密切合作，研究人员将制作详细的文件，描述和分析Hiaki中的复杂运动结构，并对这些结构进行跨语言比较。将扩大现有的Hiaki文本转录和相互线性化数据库，并将编制教学材料，以促进Hiaki语言的学习和教学。

Hiaki (often written Yaqui) is an endangered Native American language spoken in Sonora, Mexico, and in Arizona. University of Arizona graduate student Alexandra Trueman, under the supervision of Dr. Heidi Harley, will be conducting an investigation into the way that Hiaki expresses motion, particularly in complex multi-verb constructions in which a verb of motion or stance is modified by compounding it with another lexical verb.Variation in the expression of motion has been fertile soil for cross-linguistic comparison and controversy for decades. Talmy proposed a highly influential two-way language typology that has nevertheless come under review, in particular with regard to languages that employ multi-verb constructions. The degree of variability in language in this respect gives rise to an interesting question about language universality. This project will provide the first in-depth documentation and analysis of this structure in Hiaki, and explore the extent to which distinct word-formation processes can be said to map to identical underlying syntactic structures by comparing Hiaki with genetically and typologically distinct languages such as Korean and English.The study asks:1) What is the underlying structure of a Hiaki compound verb, particularly when the "head" verb is intransitive (and thus cannot take the second verb or verb phrase as its complement)?2) If we compare these constructions in Hiaki with languages with different surface morphosyntactic realizations, how do the allowable surface forms constrain the possible underlying structures?3) Is there evidence to suggest a cline or typology of complex motion constructions?Through close collaboration with native speakers the investigators will produce detailed documentation, description and analysis of complex motion constructions in Hiaki and a crosslinguistic comparison of these constructions. An existing database of transcribed and interlinearized Hiaki texts will be expanded, and pedagogical materials will be developed to promote Hiaki language learning and teaching.