The acquisition of directionals in Q’anjob’al

Abstract

This article evaluates the acquisition of directionals in Q’anjob’al, a Western Mayan language of Guatemala. The data come from a longitudinal study of two Q’anjob’al monolingual children of Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala: Xhuw (1;9–2;5) and Xhim (2;3–3;5). The results show how these children acquire the morphological distribution of motion verbs and directionals in Q’anjob’al. They produce directionals parallel to motion verbs. Xhuw produced more motion verbs than directionals, while Xhim produced more directionals than motion verbs. Despite the omission of tense/aspect and agreement in the verb complex, these children produce two types of suffixes that distinguish motion verbs from directionals. The children acquired three groups of directionals in the following order: DIR3 (teq ‘toward X’, toq ‘away from X’) > DIR2 (el ‘out’ aj ‘up’ ok ‘enter, in’ ek’ ‘pass’ ay ‘down’) > DIR1 (kan ‘stay’).