The acquisition of Yucatecan Maya prosody
Date
1996-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Calgary
Abstract
In this paper I'm going to talk about some data that I gathered and analyzed while I was in Mexico. I had the opportunity to get involved with a research project at the Autonomous University of the Yucatan, headed by Dra. Barbara Pfeiler, that was looking at the acquisition of Yucatecan Maya. The Maya language family consists of 31 languages, spoken mainly in Guatemala and the south of Mexico by about 3.5 million people. Yucatecan Maya is estimated to have about 600,000 speakers. The influence of Spanish in the area is, of course, strong. Many of the people are bilingual and the issue of maintaining the Mayan language in the next generation is a hot educational topic. This will become an important factor when we look at some of the prosodic changes that seem to have happened to YM in the past century.
Description
Keywords
Linguistics, Mayan languages, Maya language, Speech Prosody, Phonology, Language acquisition, Languages in contact
Citation
Archibald, J. (1996). The acquisition of Yucatecan Maya prosody. Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics, 18(Winter), 1-22.