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Germination, early development, and creativity in the acquisition of the Yucatec Maya deictic system

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 March 2021

Mary Rosa ESPINOSA OCHOA Open the ORCID record for Mary Rosa ESPINOSA OCHOA [Opens in a new window]
Mary Rosa ESPINOSA OCHOA*
Affiliation:
Institute of Philological Research, National Autonomous University of Mexico
*
Address for correspondence: Mary Rosa Espinosa Ochoa, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Institute of Philological Research, Circuito Mario de la Cueva S/N Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico City04510, Mexico, maryespinosa@comunidad.unam.mx
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Abstract

The Yucatec Maya language has a highly complex deictic system with interesting typological differences that in addition to demonstratives and locative adverbs also includes ostensive evidentials and modal adverbs. Given that deictic words are among the first that children produce, the aim of this study is to identify the early acquisition that Yucatec Mayan children follow to map out each deictic form. Deictic words taken from spontaneous, longitudinal, transversal corpora and Gaskins's (1990) field work annotations were labeled and analyzed. The results show that children begin by uttering protoforms mapped with prototypical functions of locative and modal adverbs, but the functions of both demonstratives and ostensive evidentials are expressed mostly with the same protoform, which is similar to the deictic organizations of other languages. When children become productive, they overextend functions, which demonstrates a reanalysis of the system before acquisition is complete.

Keywords

DeixisYucatec Mayaearly acquisitionoverextensions
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 24 - 37
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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