Variation in Yucatec Maya: A descriptive study from perceptual dialectology

Abstract

From a perceptual dialectology perspective, this exploratory descriptive study aims to examine the ability of some bilingual Maya-Spanish speakers to identify potential varieties of Maya and relate them to a particular geographical region; determine the most salient features used by people to differentiate one variety from another; and identify factors that may affect this dialectal perception. Some tools from the methodology used by Preston (1999), Mase (1999), and Clopper and Pisoni (2004) were adapted in the present study, such as the categorization task using a map, and the same-different task. We found a poor or deficient ability by some participants to categorize the different varieties, affected mainly by the scarce exposure and experience with Maya speakers from other communities. The geographic boundaries and the distinction between rural / urban and between Jach Maya (the pure, ancient, true language) and Xe’ek’ Maya (the mixed language) were also used by participants as a guide to recognize a variety or dialectal zone. In general, suprasegmental elements (intonation, melody, rhythm, speed) and the lexicon were found to be salient linguistic elements that also guided the dialectal perception of the participants.