about units forum sources



Mayan languages
AI Grammars
Anatolia, Caucasus, Iran, Mesopotamia

Clausal domain

Goals

The units in this section shed light to various phenomena in the clausal domain:
  • some units deal with different types of predication: (a) verbal vs. copular predication (b) complex predicates.
  • some units deal with the interplay of syntax and information structure. Mayan languages have generally V-initial properties with left peripheral positions dedicated to information structure (topic and focus), which are also reflected in morphology (e.g., through topic markers or inflectional forms of the verb). The syntax of these constructions, the exact nature of "V-initial", and the exact discourse properties of the left periphery have attracted the attention of studies from different angles: syntactic theory, formal semantics, corpus linguistics, psycholinguistic experiments.


Lecturers

Judith Aissen

University of California, Santa Cruz, USA

Scott AnderBois

Brown University, USA

Grant Armstrong

University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Brandon Baird

Middlebury College, USA

Jürgen Bohnemeyer

University at Buffalo, USA

Michael Dürr

Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Rodrigo Gutiérrez Bravo

El Colegio de México, Mexico City, Mexico, and University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany

Jaime Pérez González

University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

units

Obviation
in Tsotsil
by Judith Aissen

aissen

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.XXXX

identify S and O; recoverability and two 3rd persons; prominence scales; disambiguation by voice; relation to obviation
 

slides

Discourse particles
in Mayan languages
by Scott AnderBois

anderbois

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10616178

discourse particles in Mayan languages; mirative and clause type; negative epistemic and intonation; Yucatec Maya
 

slides

Non-verbal predication
and copular sentences
by Grant Armstrong

armstrong

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10676509

non-verbal predication, differences to verbal predication, copular sentences, predication vs. specificational sentences
 

slides

Focus in K'iche'
 
by Brandon Baird

baird

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10594517

focus marking in K'iche', morphosyntax, optionality, emphatic particle, intonation, prosodic prominence of focus
 

slides

Animacy and topicality
in Yucatec
by Jürgen Bohnemeyer

bohnemeyer

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10578820

animacy, topicality, sentence production, experimental studies, left dislocation, voice, Yucatec Maya, Yucatecan Spanish
 

slides

Obviation and inf. structure
in 16th century K'iche'
by Michael Dürr

duerr

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.XXXX

prehispanic writing, colonial period, pronominal prefixes, transitive clauses, pivot and topic, embedding subject into object
 

slides

Topic and focus
in Yucatec Maya
by Rodrigo Gutiérrez Bravo

gutierrez

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10607292

sentence topic, subject/object topics; contrastive focus, focus fronting, focus and negation, definites in focus, agent focus
 

slides

Re-aligning the A's
in discourse in Mocho'
by Jaime Pérez González

perez

DOI: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10623830

language and speakers: Mocho'; preferred argument structure; inverse voice in discourse; corpus data
 

slides

forum

Feel free to share your thoughts or questions about the videos in this section on the Chatwall below.
  • To streamline discussions, please begin with the name of the video or the lecturer.
  • Keep your comment/question concise (300 characters) – think of it as a tweet. You may elaborate your question during the meeting with the lecturers - if you wish!
  • Sign off with your first name or a pseudonym; no personal data/IP addresses are stored. A label will suffice in order to ask you to present your question/comment during the meeting with the lecturers.

sources

basic recommendations

Aissen, Judith. 1992. Topic and focus in Mayan. Language 68(1), 43-80.
AnderBois, Scott. 2019. Reportatives and quotatives in Mayan languages. In Proceedings of Form and Analysis in Mayan Linguistics (FAMLi) 5.
Armstrong, Grant. 2017. The syntax of non-verbal predication in Yucatec Maya. Cuadernos de Lingüística de El Colegio de México 4(2): 137-212.
Baird, Brandon. 2018. Syntactic and Prosodic Contrastive Focus Marking in K’ichee’. International Journal of American Linguistics 84(3), 295-325.
Clemens, Lauren & Jessica Coon. 2018. Deriving V-initial word order in Mayan. Language 94(2), 237-280.
Henderson, Roberts. 2015. Mayan Semantics. Language and Linguistics Compass 10(10), 551-588.
Lehmann, Christian. 2017. Grammaticalization of tense/aspect/mood marking in Yucatec Maya. In Bisang, Walter & Malchukov, Andrej (eds.), Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios. Berlin: Language Science Press.