ABSTRACT
Zinacantec Family Homesign (Z) is a new sign language emerging spontaneously over the past three decades in a single family in a remote Mayan Indian village. Three deaf siblings, their Tzotzil-speaking age-mates, and now their children, who have had contact with no other deaf people, represent the first generation of Z signers. I postulate an augmented grammaticalization path, beginning with the adoption of a Tzotzil cospeech holophrastic gesture-meaning "come!"-into Z, and then its apparent stylization as an attention-getting sign, followed by grammatical regimentation and pragmatic generalization as an utterance initial change of speaker or turn marker.
Subject(s)
Gestures , Language Development , Sign Language , Adult , Aged , Child , Family Characteristics , Female , Humans , Linguistics , Male , Mexico , Middle Aged , Pedigree , Persons With Hearing Impairments , Young AdultABSTRACT
The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Chiapas is an electronic database documenting the three principal Indian languages of Chiapas, Mexico. This report describes the design philosophy behind the archive, intended to distribute its results in digital form via the Internet. It illustrates some of the products of the Archive, ranging from standard linguistic description and lexicography, through semi-experimental elicitation, to ethnographically situated interaction characterized by different sorts of speech genre. It also discusses presentational and ethical issues derived from electronic distribution of digital media in linguistic documentation.