The nucleus of any sentence of any human language is the verb. When a speaker chooses a particular verb, the structure of the rest of the sentence usually follows automatically. Verbs seem to hold the key to understanding the central expressive possibilities of human language. Interestingly, there are relatively few structural options for verbs in English: they can accept or reject the presence of a subject, an object, and/or an indirect object, but not much else. In English, verbs that share a core meaning usually pattern alike in the sentence structure(s) they accept. These core meanings may give us insight into the universal structure of human thought - or may only give us insight into the structure of thought of speakers of English. We don't know because no systematic classification of the structural properties of the verbs of any language other than English currently exists. With support from the National Science Foundation Dr. Heidi Harley and Dr. Jason Haugen will attempt to fill this gap by documenting the verbs of Yaqui, a Native American language of the southwest. Yaqui differs from English significantly in that many kinds of suffixes can be added to its verbs. These suffixes change the sentence structures that the verbs require. By discovering which suffixes can attach to which verbs of Yaqui, the investigators will establish whether the verb root's core meaning affects sentence structure in the same way that it does in English - and more importantly, will discover whether the same types of core meanings that define English verb classes are also at work in Yaqui. The investigators will work with speakers of Yaqui to create a large database of Yaqui verbs and example sentences using them, with and without each verbal suffix. By the end of the study, it should be clear whether the core meanings that matter for English verb classes are also important in the classification of Yaqui verbs.
Using endangered, understudied Yaqui as the subject language will provide a dual benefit, unlike a study of a widely-studied living language with similar suffixing properties. This project will provide extensive documentation of many important aspects of Yaqui grammar for the first time, contributing new data to our store of knowledge about human language-data that may well otherwise be lost to science and humanity forever. In addition, the Yaqui language teaching community will be able to employ the materials produced by the study in language classes, and as documentation of their linguistic heritage. These materials will support the tribe's active efforts in the urgent arena of language maintenance and revitalization.
