A Tale of Two Mam Children: Contact-Induced Language Change in Mayan Child Language

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dc.contributor.authorPye, Clifton
dc.date.accessioned2014-07-10T13:55:44Z
dc.date.available2014-07-10T13:55:44Z
dc.date.issued2013-10
dc.descriptionThis is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://www.jstor.org/stable/info/10.1086/671775
dc.description.abstractMayan languages have been in contact with Spanish for nearly 500 years and yet maintain much of their structural integrity. The arrival of bilingual schools and television has now altered the circumstance of language use within many Mayan households. This article compares children’s and mothers’ production of verb, existential, and negation constructions in Spanish and five Mayan languages, with a special focus on Mam. Mayan children may have vocabularies with up to 20% Spanish-derived lexemes and still not exhibit significant structural changes in their grammars. A two-year-old Mam child growing up with intense pressure to use Spanish exhibited changes to verb, existential, and negation constructions that were not evident in the language of other Mayan-speaking children. Verb use and negation appear to be especially sensitive indicators of such change. Contact-induced structural change shows how children’s emerging grammars accommodate new structural elements.
dc.identifier.citationClifton L. Pye. (2013). A Tale of Two Mam Children: Contact-Induced Language Change in Mayan Child Language. International Journal of American Linguistics 79(4). http://www.dx.doi.org/10.1086/671775
dc.identifier.doi10.1086/671775
dc.identifier.issn0020-7071
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1808/14683
dc.publisherUniversity of Chicago Press
dc.rights.accessrightsopenAccess
dc.subjectLanguage shift
dc.subjectcodeswitching
dc.subjectMam
dc.subjectMaya
dc.subjectLanguage acquisition
dc.titleA Tale of Two Mam Children: Contact-Induced Language Change in Mayan Child Language
dc.typeArticle
dspace.entity.typePublication
kusw.kuauthorPye, Clifton
kusw.kudepartmentLinguistics
kusw.oapolicyThis item meets KU Open Access policy criteria.
kusw.oastatusfullparticipation
kusw.oaversionScholarly/refereed, publisher version
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