Documentation of the Yaqui Language

DENISSE FIORDALIZO MARTÍNEZ MARTÍNEZ

 

Denisse F. MartinezDisciplines: Linguistics

Region: Yaqui

Chapter: Hermosillo

 

From the cognitive point of view, the sensorial perception of space, movement and the localization of one entity with respect to another are primary ways to describe our perception of reality. That is to say, the physical experience that we have with the contexts of interaction, as well as with the world that surrounds us, constrains our conceptual systems – our knowledge of the world – which is represented in language. The objective of this project is the linguistic documentation of spontaneous narrations of movement events of the Yaqui language of the Pótam people. The study of expressions of movement arises from the interest of knowing the conceptualization that Yaqui speakers have about the world. The Yaqui in Mexico primarily reside in eight towns located on the Yaqui River in the southeast Sonora. To achieve the objective of this research, the project is planned for 12 months, divided into 5 stages: (1) design and acquisition of material, (2) data collection, (3) transcription in the ELAN (EUDICO Linguistic Annotator) program, (4) translation, and (5) final revision. The team of collaborators consists of eight Yaqui speakers, four men and four women between 5 and 60 years of age. The data collected will be spontaneous narrations of stories without text, that is, stories created only with images.