An approach to the construction of discontinuity in early Yucatec Mayan

Mary Rosa Espinosa Ochoa

Abstract


This research explores the acquisition process of the discontinuous clitics in the syntax of Yucatec Mayan in child language. We analyzed the spontaneous speech of 6 adults and 4 children (1;02–3;05) who acquired Yucatec Mayan in a monolingual environment. We concluded that discontinuity is not perceived as a syntactic unit in the earliest acquisition stage. The full acquisition of discontinuous clitics is a gradual process that is influenced by several factors pertaining to the characteristics of the Mayan language and adult speech. These results support constructivist approaches in language acquisition (Lieven, Behrens, Speares & Tomasello, 2003). This paper is an updated version of a chapter of my Phd thesis.


Keywords


child language acquisition; Yucatec Mayan; clitics; deixis

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.22201/enallt.01852647p.2017.66.682

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