Structure of a Specific Language: the Mayan Family Instructor Content Of

Structure of a Speciﬁc Language: The Mayan Family LING 410 — Fall 2016 T/Th 10:05–11:25, Linguistics 002

Instructor Jessica Coon email [email protected] office 1085 Dr. Penfield, 221 office hours W 14:00–15:30 or by appointment

Content of the course

This course is an in-depth investigation of the structure of a language (or language family) other than English. This year we will examine various aspects of the structure of languages of the Mayan family within the framework of generative linguistics. We will cover a range of topics in phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. While we will look at speciﬁc puzzles found within Mayan linguistics, we will do so with an eye toward their relevance to linguistic theory more generally. Throughout the semester, we will bear the following questions in mind: Do existing linguistic theories extend readily to language of the Mayan family? How does an in depth investigation into Mayan provide us with tools to tackle bigger problems in the ﬁeld? How do Mayan languages inform our ideas about Universal Grammar?

Requirements and evaluation

We will investigate the above topics through a combination of readings (both speciﬁc to the Mayan family, as well as general readings on the topics we are covering); class presentations (some led by me, others led by you); in-class and take-home datasets (created both by me and by you); as well as short writing assignments. Group work and in-class participation will be essential to successful completion of the course.

short assignments 50% (10 x 5% each) ﬁnal project 30% (paper = 25%; presentation = 5%) article presentation 10% course participation 10%

Readings

The readings will all be listed on the MyCourses website, either as directly-downloadable articles, or as links to the McGill library website. Your responsibility is to complete the reading before coming to class; all readings are required unless marked as optional. Due to the nature of the course, it is inevitable that you will encounter unfamiliar terms, concepts, and theories while doing the reading for the course. Part of the goal of this course is to develop an understanding of how to efﬁciently get through difﬁcult readings. You can except to read approximately 3 articles per week (roughly 150 pages).

Short assignments

Over the course of the semester, you will have 10 short assignments to turn in, roughly one per week. These assignments are due on MyCourses at 11:59pm on Monday night (see Late Work below). These will be graded on a 4-point scale: [✔+] = exceeds expectations; [✔] = meets expectations; [✔−] = below expectations; 0 = not turned in.

Response to readings Throughout the semester, you will be asked to turn in 1–2 page responses to the readings. These should be double-spaced in 12 point Times New Roman font with 1 inch margins. These responses should provide a short summary of some aspect of the readings, but they should go beyond summary. You can use them to raise questions, offer critical analysis, or apply something in the reading to your research language (see below). Though there is a good deal of freedom in content, these should all be well structured into organized paragraphs and spell-checked for typos and grammar.

Late work You have one free late-pass which you may use to turn in one of your short assignments 24 hours late. In order to use your late pass, you must let me know you are using it by the original deadline. Once this pass has been used, late work cannot be accepted for grades without a documented medical excuse. You remain responsible for in-class participation.

Your research language and small groups

Within the ﬁrst couple of weeks, you will be assigned to a small group of 3–4 students. Each group will be responsible for presenting one article to the class (see course outline below). Presentations should be no more than 30 minutes, including at least 10 minutes for class discussion or in-class tasks. As small groups, you will also be asked to adopt one of the following Mayan languages (and associated grammars) for the semester. Some of the short assignments will ask you to investigate certain aspects of your language, either alone or in your group.

1. Mam (Mamean) — England (1983), A grammar of Mam, a Mayan language

2. Jakaltek (Q’anjob’alan) — Craig (1977), The structure of Jacaltec

3. Itzaj (Yucatecan) — Hoﬂing (2000), Itzaj Maya grammar

4. Sakapultek (K’ichean) — DuBois (1981), The Sacapultec Language

5. Tz’utujil (K’ichean) — Dayley (1985), Tz’utujil grammar

6. Ch’ol (Tseltalan) — V´azquez Alvarez´ (2011), A Grammar of Chol, a Mayan language

7. Sipakapense (K’ichean) — Barrett (1999), A grammar of Sipakapense Maya

8. Tojolab’al (Q’anjo’balan) — Furbee-Losee (1976), The correct language: Tojolabal

Varia

Academic integrity McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore, all students must understand the meaning and consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the code of student conduct and disciplinary procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information).

2 L’universitéMcGill attache une haute importance àl’honnêtetéacadémique. Il incombe par conséquent àtous les étudiants de comprendre ce que l’on entend par tricherie, plagiat et autres infractions académiques, ainsi que les conséquences que peuvent avoir de telles actions, selon le Code de conduite de l’étudiant et des procédures disciplinaires (pour de plus amples renseignements, veuillez consulter le site www.mcgill.ca/students/srr/honest/ ).

Right to submit in French In accord with McGill University’s Charter of Students’ Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work that is to be graded.

Conformément àla Charte des droits de l’étudiant de l’UniversitéMcGill, chaque étudiant a le droit de soumettre en français ou en anglais tout travail écrit devant être noté(sauf dans le cas des cours dont l’un des objets est la maˆıtrise d’une langue).

Copyright © Instructor-generated course materials (e.g., handouts, notes, summaries, exam questions, etc.) are protected by law and may not be copied or distributed in any form or in any medium without explicit permission of the instructor. Note that infringements of copyright can be subject to follow up by the University under the Code of Student Conduct and Disciplinary Procedures.

OSD As the instructor of this course I endeavor to provide an inclusive learning environment. However, if you experience barriers to learning in this course, do not hesitate to discuss them with me and the Ofﬁce for Students with Disabilities, 514-398-6009

Laptops and cellphones Mobile computing or communications devices are not permitted to be used in class without the explicit permission of the instructor.

Course outline (◦ = obligatory; ♥ = optional; ➮ = student presentation)

1. Week 1, September 6 & 8 — Introduction

• Reading: ◦ Bennett, Coon, and Henderson (to appear) — ‘Introduction to Mayan linguistics’ ◦ Mateo Toledo (2003) — ‘The Use of Languages’ Names: The Mayan Case’ ♥ Campbell and Kaufman (1985) — ‘Mayan linguistics: Where are we now?’ • In class: T – Introduction, class organization and logistics; short survey; start ﬁlm Breaking the Maya Code. Th – datasets; tour of the Mayan family and topics to be covered this semester. ➽ Turn in: Short survey on Minerva

2. Week 2, September 13 & 15 — Categories, roots and stems

• Reading: ◦ Coon (to appear-b) — ‘Mayan morphosyntax’

3 ◦ Haviland (1994) — ‘Te xa setel xulem [The buzzards were circling] - categories of verbal roots in (Zinacantec) Tzotzil’ ♥ Lois (2011) — ‘Roots and patterns in Yucatecan languages’ • In class: T/Th: Discuss readings; roots and stems; review Craig (1987); preview Ergativity ➽ Turn in 9/12: Assignment 1 — response to readings

3. Week 3, September 20 & 22 — Ergativity: Set A & Set B

• Reading: ◦ Larsen and Norman (1979) — ‘Correlates of ergativity in Mayan grammar’ ◦ Coon (to appear-a) — ‘Little-v0 agreement and templatic morphology in Ch’ol’ ♥ Comrie (1978) — ‘Ergativity’ • In class: T/Th: Discuss readings; ergativity problem sets; preview of Voice ➽ Turn in 9/21: Assignment 2 — Ch’ol roots and stems

4. Week 4, September 27 & 29 — Voice & Valence I

• Reading: ◦ skim: Payne (1997, chapter 8) — ‘Voice and valence adjusting operations’ ◦ Dayley (1981) — ‘Voice and ergativity in Mayan languages’ (read sections 1–3 and section on your language’s sub-family) ➮ Group 1 presents: Garzon (1998) — ‘Indigenous groups and their language contact relations’ • In class: T: Chuj elicitation. Th: ﬁnish Breaking the Maya Code ➽ Turn in 9/26: Assignment 3 — response to readings

5. Week 5, October 4 & 6 — Voice and valence II

• Reading: ◦ Craig (1979) — ‘The antipassive and Jacaltec’ ◦ Coon (2016) — ‘Unergatives, antipassives, and roots in Chuj’ ➮ Group 2 presents: Craig (1987) — ‘Jacaltec: Field Work in Guatemala’ • In class: Voice discussion ➽ Turn in 10/3: Assignment 4 — Describe one voice in your research language and be ready to discuss

6. Week 6, October 11 & 13 — Aspect and split ergativity

• Reading: ◦ Payne (1997, chapter 9.3) — Tense and aspect ◦ Bricker (1981) — ‘The source of the ergative split in Yucatec Maya’ ◦ Coon (2012) — ‘Split ergativity and transitivity in Chol’

4 ➮ Group 3 presents: England (2003) — ‘Mayan language revival and revitalization: Linguists and linguistic ideologies’ • In class: Splits overview ➽ Turn in 10/10: Assignment 5 — split ergativity problem

7. Week 7, October 18 & 20 — Phonetics & Phonology

• Reading: ◦ Bowern (2008) — ‘chapter 3: Starting to work on a language’ ➮ Group 1 presents: Bennett (to appear) — ‘Mayan phonology’ • In class: ﬁeldwork prep; Chuj elicitation; phonetics/phonology ➽ Turn in: Assignment 6 — either a short response to readings, or a description of any kind of split in your research language

8. Week 8, October 25 & 27 — Syntactic ergativity

• Reading: ◦ skim: Smith-Stark (1978) — ‘The Mayan antipassive: Some facts and ﬁctions’ ◦ Ayres (1983) — ‘The antipassive “voice” in Ixil’ ◦ Aissen (to appear) – ‘Correlates of ergativity in Mayan grammar’ ➮ Group 5 presents: Brown and Levinson (1993) — “‘Uphill” and “Downhill” in Tzeltal’ • In class: AF overview; Extraction problem sets ➽ Turn in 10/24: Assignment 7 — Chuj transcription problem

9. Week 9, November 1 & 3 — Word order I

• Reading: ◦ skim England (1991) — ‘Changes in basic word order in Mayan languages’ ◦ Aissen (1992) — ‘Topic and focus in Mayan’ ➮ Group 6 presents: Haviland (2005) — ‘Dreams of Blood: Zinacantecs in Oregon’ ♥ Clemens and Polinsky (to appear) — ‘Verb-initial word orders (Primarily in Austronesian and Mayan languages)’ • In class: Word order overview; preview; discuss ﬁnal project proposals ➽ Turn in 10/31: Assignment 8 — 1 page proposal for your ﬁnal project

10. Week 10, November 8 & 10 — Word order II

• Reading: ◦ Clemens and Coon (2016) — ‘Deriving verb initial order in Mayan’ ➮ Group 7 presents: De Le´on (1998) — ‘The emergent participant: Interactive patterns in the socialization of Tzotzil (Mayan) infants’

5 • In class: word order; preview numerals and classiﬁers ➽ Turn in: Assignment 9 — Feedback on a classmate’s proposal

11. Week 11, November 16 & 17 — Numerals and classiﬁers

• Reading: ◦ Craig (1986) — ‘Jacaltec noun classifiers’ ◦ Zavala (2000) — ‘Multiple classifiers in Akatek (Mayan)’ ➮ Group 8 presents: Haviland (2000) — Warding off witches: Voicing and dialogue in Zinacantec prayer ♥ Hopkins (2012) — ‘The Noun Classifiers of Cuchumatán Mayan Languages: A Case of Diffusion From Otomanguean’ • In class: classifiers (guest presentation) ➽ Turn in: Assignment 10 — Short response to readings; may include discussion of classifiers in your language

12. Week 12, November 22 & 24 — Presentations

13. Week 13, November 29 & December 1 — Presentations

Final papers due 12/9

6 Readings

Aissen, Judith. 1992. Topic and focus in Mayan. Language 68:43–80. Aissen, Judith. 1999. Agent focus and inverse in Tzotzil. Language 75:451–485. Aissen, Judith. to appear. Correlates of ergativity in Mayan. In Oxford handbook of ergativity, ed. Jessica Coon, Diane Massam, and Lisa Travis. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Ayres, Glenn. 1983. The antipassive “voice” in Ixil. International Journal of American Linguistics 49:20–45. Barrett, Edward R. 1999. A grammar of Sipakapense Maya. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Texas Austin, Austin, TX. Bennett, Ryan. to appear. Mayan phonology. Language and Linguistic Compass . Bennett, Ryan, Jessica Coon, and Robert Henderson. to appear. Introduction to Mayan linguistics. Language and Linguistics Compass . Bowern, Claire. 2008. Linguistic fieldwork: A practical guide. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Bricker, Victoria R. 1981. The source of the ergative split in Yucatec Maya. Journal of Mayan Linguistics 2:83–127. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. 1993. “uphill” and “downhill” in Tzeltal. Linguistic Anthropology 3:46–74. Campbell, Lyle, and Terrence Kaufman. 1985. Mayan linguistics: Where are we now? Annual Review of Anthropology 14:187–198. Clemens, Lauren Eby, and Jessica Coon. 2016. Deriving verb initial order in Mayan. Ms. SUNY Albay and McGill University. Clemens, Lauren Eby, and Maria Polinsky. to appear. Verb-initial word orders (Primarily in Austronesian and Mayan languages). In The companion to syntax, ed. Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk. Wiley- Blackwell, 2nd edition. Comrie, Bernard. 1978. Ergativity. In Syntactic Typology: Studies in the Phenomenology of Language,, 329– 394. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Coon, Jessica. 2012. Split ergativity and transitivity in Chol. Lingua 122:241–256. Coon, Jessica. 2016. Unergatives, antipassives, and roots in Chuj. Ms. McGill University. Coon, Jessica. to appear-a. Little-v agreement and templatic morphology in Ch’ol. Syntax (http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002331). Coon, Jessica. to appear-b. Mayan morphosyntax. Language and Linguistics Compass . Craig, Colette. 1987. Jacaltec: Field work in Guatemala. In Languages and their speakers, ed. Timothy Shopen, 3–57. University of Pennsylvania Press. Craig, Colette Grinevald. 1977. The structure of Jacaltec. Austin: University of Texas Press. Craig, Colette Grinevald. 1979. The antipassive and Jacaltec. In Papers in Mayan linguistics, ed. Laura Martin, volume 1, 139–164. Lucas Brothers. Craig, Colette Grinevald. 1986. Jacaltec noun classifiers. Lingua 70:241–284. Dayley, Jon. 1981. Voice and ergativity in Mayan languages. Journal of Mayan Linguistics 2:3–82. Dayley, Jon. 1985. Tzutujil grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press. De León, Lourdes. 1998. The emergent participant: Interactive patterns in the socialization of Tzotzil (Mayan) infants. Linguistic Anthropology 8:131–161. DuBois, John William. 1981. The Sacapultec language. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. England, Nora. 1983. A grammar of Mam, a Mayan language. Austin: University of Texas Press. England, Nora. 1991. Changes in basic word order in Mayan languages. International Journal of American Linguistics 57:446–86. England, Nora C. 2003. Mayan language revival and revitalization: Linguists and linguistic ideologies. American Anthropologist 105:733–743. Furbee-Losee, Louanna. 1976. The correct language: Tojolabal. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. Garzon, Susan. 1998. Indigenous groups and their language contact relations. In The life of our language:

7 Kaqchikel Maya maintenance, shift, and revitalization, ed. Susan Garzon, R. McKenna Brown, Julia Becker Richards, and Wuqu’ Ajpub’, chapter 2. University of Texas Press. Haviland, John B. 1994. “Te xa setel xulem” [The buzzards were circling] – Categories of verbal roots in (Zinacantec) Tzotzil. Linguistics 32:691–741. Haviland, John B. 2000. Warding off witches: Voicing and dialogue in Zinacantec prayer. In Les rituels du dialogue, ed. Aurore Monod Becquelin and Philippe Erikson, 367–400. Sociétéd’ethnologie. Haviland, John B. 2005. Dreams of blood: Zinacatecs in Oregon. In Dislocations/relocations: Narratives of displacement, ed. Mike Baynham and Anna de Fina, 91–127. Manchester, UK: St. Jerome Publishers. Hofling, Charles A. 2000. Itzaj Maya grammar. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Hopkins, Nicholas. 2012. Noun classifiers of the Chuchumatán Mayan languages: A case of diffusion from Otomanguean. International Journal of American Linguistics 78:411–427. Larsen, Tomas W., and William M. Norman. 1979. Correlates of ergativity in Mayan grammar. In Ergativity: Towards a theory of grammatical relations, ed. Frans Plank, 347–370. London/New York: Academic Press. Lois, Ximena. 2011. Roots and patterns in Yucatecan languages. In Proceedings of FAMLi: Formal Approaches to Mayan Linguistics, ed. Kirill Shklovsky, Pedro Mateo Pedro, and Jessica Coon. Cambidge, MA: MIT Working Papers in Linguistics. Mateo Toledo, Eladio. 2003. The use of languages’ names: The Mayan case. International Journal of American Linguistics 69:151–153. Payne, Thomas E. 1997. Describing morphosyntax. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Smith-Stark, Thom. 1978. The mayan antipassive: Some facts and fictions. In Papers in Mayan linguistics, ed. Nora England, 169–187. The Curators of the University of Missouri. Vázquez Alvarez,´ Juan J. 2011. A grammar of Chol, a Mayan language. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Texas Austin, Austin, TX. Zavala, Roberto. 2000. Multiple classifier sytems in Akatek (Mayan). In Systems of nominal classification, ed. Gunter Senft, 114–146. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.