The Yucatec Maya language has a highly complex deictic system with interesting typological differences that in addition to demonstratives and locative adverbs also includes ostensive evidentials and modal adverbs. Given that deictic words are among the first that children produce, the aim of this study is to identify the early acquisition that…

This study examines whether children acquiring Tseltal (Mayan) demonstrate a noun bias -- an overrepresentation of nouns in their early vocabularies. Nouns, specifically concrete and animate nouns, are argued to universally predominate in children's early vocabularies because their referents are naturally available as bounded concepts to which…

Causatives have received considerable attention in first language acquisition. Of Mayan languages, acquisition of the causative has only been investigated for K'iche' and Tzotzil, based on longitudinal and spontaneous data. K'iche'-speaking children do not acquire morphological causatives until the age of 3 years, while children acquiring Tzotzil…

Daylong at-home audio recordings from 10 Tseltal Mayan children (0;2-3;0; Southern Mexico) were analyzed for how often children engaged in verbal interaction with others and whether their speech environment changed with age, time of day, household size, and number of speakers present. Children were infrequently directly spoken to, with most…

The speech of three Quiche Mayan children aged 2;1, 2;9, and 3;0 was monitored for the acquisition of the distinction between ergative and absolutive person markers. The children were found not to confuse markers, but to use either the appropriate one or none at all. The one exception to this rule, when analyzed, indicates that children grasp the…

Suggests that children follow different paths into learning verbs, and that there are several forces guiding the learning process: cognitive as well as language specific matters, such as morphology, semantics, and discourse. Sketches the basic characteristics of verbs in Tzotzil and examines two children's productions at the end of their…