Hiaki Grammar: Documentation and Analysis

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

This three-pronged project focuses on the grammar of Hiaki (Yaqui), an endangered Uto-Aztecan language spoken in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. Investigating understudied languages like Hiaki provides researchers the opportunity to discover hitherto undocumented diversity in the human capacity for linguistic expression, and hence to test and improve upon models of human language and cognition. Basic descriptive research on a broad array of grammatical areas will be conducted, enabling the drafting of the second volume of a projected three-volume series on the grammar of Hiaki. A series of subtitled videos, useful in language teaching as well as serving documentary purposes, will be produced. Two particularly intriguing aspects of Hiaki will be the focus of the theoretical component of this research. The grammar of Hiak''s noun phrases is like that of German or Russian, with concord for number and case marking on articles, nouns and adjectives. In contrast, Hiaki's verb phrases resemble those of Japanese, requiring complex suffixation processes instead of complement clauses in many contexts. Surprisingly, noun phrase concord becomes dissociated when the noun phrase mentions a possessor, like 'The dancer's beads', such that number marking on the article tracks the number of the possessor but the case of the whole noun phrase. This pattern of dissociation is not expected in many current models of grammatical agreement. Verb phrases also exhibit an unusual property: They permit passivization of already non-active verbs. These two very unusual features of Hiaki will be investigated in detail in consultation with native speakers of the language, and a model of these grammatical patterns developed. The implications for our understanding of the structure of human language will include a new grasp of when and why such variation can arise, and, potentially, new theories of agreement and passivization, respectively.