Lourdes de Leon | CIESAS (original) (raw)
Papers by Lourdes de Leon
Editora Universidade de Brasília eBooks, 2020
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 11, 2001
First language, Jun 3, 2022
In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the ... more In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the Global South in four leading journals of language acquisition, I argue that Mayan language acquisition has contributed in important ways to test theories in the field at large. I specifically outline major contributions from Mayan Tzotzil acquisition to topics of input, lexical, semantic and morphological development. Research on Mesoamerican languages is invaluable in understanding the implications of linguistic typology in language acquisition.
Journal of Pragmatics, Apr 1, 2019
Framing, footing, and language scaling practices in children's multilingual peer and sibling-kin ... more Framing, footing, and language scaling practices in children's multilingual peer and sibling-kin group interactions: An introduction 1. Introduction Many children and youth today grow up in transnational and postcolonial communities characterized by conflicting language ideologies, with "majority" languages often seen as routes to school and commercial success, and indigenous and immigrant languages seen as carriers of cultural heritage and community identity. Children in these communities confront polarizing discourses about national belonging which portray language alternation and the use of non-majority languages as undermining national unity and citizenship (
Linguistics and Education, 2017
Directives are a central resource for the organization of attention in everyday family activities... more Directives are a central resource for the organization of attention in everyday family activities. Studies in middle class families reveal that they are patterned and repeated in the everyday routines of children's lives, providing the basis for their learning of skills, accountability, and moral discernment (M. Goodwin, 2006; M. Goodwin & Cekaite, 2013, 2014). Scholars studying indigenous children's learning from a cross-cultural perspective have underscored children's agency and self-motivation in learning through observation and participation in everyday activities (
Deafness & Education International, 2002
STUF - Language Typology and Universals, 1992
This paper focuses on the micro-diachronic emergence of locative terms from a subset of body part... more This paper focuses on the micro-diachronic emergence of locative terms from a subset of body part terms in Tzotzil. Semantic and morpho-syntactic changes undergone in the nominal construction where body part terms occur suggest that there is an ongoing grammaticalization process. The terms ba 'face', ti' 'mouth', pai 'back', 'bark' 'shell', chak 'buttock', ni' 'nose' are examined in detail on the basis of a varied corpus of occurrences. The analysis is based on a reasonably large body of data from a colonial and a modern Tzotzil dictionary, (LAUGHLIN, 1975; 1988), narratives LAUGHLIN (1977), natural conversation (HAVILAND, n.d.), and interactive spatial tasks performed with about 30 children and 25 adults of Nabenchauk, Chiapas. From this data, the interactive material from spatial tasks is taken as the indicator of the production, comprehension of the locative use of the subset of locative body parts in question.
Encyclopedia of Language and Education
The policies which nation-states, and their societal majorities, apply to their ethnic and lingui... more The policies which nation-states, and their societal majorities, apply to their ethnic and linguistic minorities have become a touchstone to evaluate the quality of democracy, pluricultural commitment and the construction of modern states in almost any part of the world. There-fore, ...
Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, ... more Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, presentations and other public materials. Entries have been developed by different individuals. Please cite authors as indicated on the webpage and front page of the pdf entry. Use of associated stimuli should also be cited by acknowledging the field manual entry. Intellectual property rights are hereby asserted. Creative Commons license This material is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means you are free to share (copy, redistribute) the material in any medium or format, and you are free to adapt (remix, transform, build upon) the material, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit in the form of a citation to the original material; you may not use the material for commercial purposes; and if you adapt the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original.
Este livro recupera experiências de pesquisa com crianças na América Latina, traz contribuições m... more Este livro recupera experiências de pesquisa com crianças na América Latina, traz contribuições metodológicas e análises teóricas contextualizadas à realidade latino-americana. Aborda processos de pesquisa com, para crianças e em torno de crianças. Quatro universidades latino-americanas apoiam esta produção editorial: Universidade Autônoma de Chiapas (México), Universidade de Brasília (Brasil), Universidade Surcolombiana (Colômbia) e Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade Nacional de Rosário (Argentina).
Journal of Pragmatics, 2018
The present study documents the everyday bilingual practices of Mayan children, using Tzotzil May... more The present study documents the everyday bilingual practices of Mayan children, using Tzotzil Mayan and Spanish at play. It is based on a video-ethnography of bilingual peer language practices framed within larger research on language socialization in the everyday lives of Mayan children in the South of Mexico. The study examines how the children, whose first language is Tzotzil, staged bilingual scenarios through the use of parallel bilingual constructions (e.g., alignments, adjacency pairs, recycled discourse templates) in several domains of activity (e.g., broadcasting news of an earthquake, farewells, birthday parties, and commercial advertisements). Their bilingual ludic practices challenged regimented and conventional patterns and associations between language and activity domains. An analysis of the micro-interactional processes in the bilingual interactions (e.g., changes of footing, frame shifts, keying, and stances) reveals how children can invoke and reorder language scales and values. It is argued that language scales are neither neutral nor pre-established, but are rather the outcome of the dynamics of situated interaction. Findings demonstrate how the children's ludic creation of novel bilingual spaces reveals how peer language socialization in postcolonial contexts might contribute to rescaling, revaluing, and revitalizing native languages.
Learning Indigenous Languages: Child Language Acquisition in Mesoamerica
... Bowerman, Melissa, Lourdes de Leon & Soonja Choi 1995 Verbs, particles, and spatial s... more ... Bowerman, Melissa, Lourdes de Leon & Soonja Choi 1995 Verbs, particles, and spatial semantics: Learning to talk about spatial actions in typologically different languages. In The Proceedings of the 27th Annual Child Language Research Forum, Eve V. Clark (ed.), 101-111. ...
Ethos, 2017
Cell phones are vehicles for creating and transforming sociality in peer networks (Coleman 2010; ... more Cell phones are vehicles for creating and transforming sociality in peer networks (Coleman 2010; Wallis 2010). In the last decade, increased access to cell phones has radically changed courtship practices among Mayan youth of Zinacantán, Chiapas, and México as young couples now text clandestine romantic relationships, unmediated by elders. Since there is essentially no vocabulary for romantic love in Mayan Tzotzil, couples now rely on Spanish expressions gleaned from the media and other sources and have created a genre of romantic texting. The current study analyzes the textual microprocesses of dialogical construction of romance from a database of ten thousand WhatsApp text messages. Both microlevel practices and macrolevel forces are considered in shaping new landscapes of love, showing how texting affords new technological, linguistic, and literacy skills that are significantly changing repertoires of identity (Kroskrity 1993, 2000) and new expressions of agency and affect among Mayan youth. [Youth, cell phones, romance, love, digital communication, literacy, Mayan] Resumen Los teléfonos móviles (celulares) son vehículos en la creación y transformación de las redes sociales de pares (Coleman 2010, Wallis 2010). En laúltima década, el acceso a los teléfonos móviles ha cambiado de manera radical las prácticas de cortejo entre los jóvenes mayas de Zinacantán, Chiapas, México quienes mantienen relaciones románticas vía texto sin el control tradicional adulto. El tsotsil no tiene vocabulario para amor romántico, sin embargo los jóvenes usan expresiones de los medios para crear un nuevo género romántico en español. Se analizan los micro-procesos de la construcción dialógica del romance en una base de datos de 10,000 mensajes de WhatsApp en el contexto de las fuerzas macro-sociales en que se inscriben. Se muestra que los mensajes de texto ofrecen destrezas tecnológicas, lingüísticas y literacidades que producen cambios en los repertorios de identidad (Kroskrity 1993, 2000) y en las nuevas expresiones de agencia y afecto de la juventud maya.
Journal of Pragmatics, 2021
Learning Indigenous Languages: Child Language Acquisition in Mesoamerica
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2004
Editora Universidade de Brasília eBooks, 2020
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jan 11, 2001
First language, Jun 3, 2022
In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the ... more In response to Kidd and Garcia’s survey that shows the paucity of authors and languages from the Global South in four leading journals of language acquisition, I argue that Mayan language acquisition has contributed in important ways to test theories in the field at large. I specifically outline major contributions from Mayan Tzotzil acquisition to topics of input, lexical, semantic and morphological development. Research on Mesoamerican languages is invaluable in understanding the implications of linguistic typology in language acquisition.
Journal of Pragmatics, Apr 1, 2019
Framing, footing, and language scaling practices in children's multilingual peer and sibling-kin ... more Framing, footing, and language scaling practices in children's multilingual peer and sibling-kin group interactions: An introduction 1. Introduction Many children and youth today grow up in transnational and postcolonial communities characterized by conflicting language ideologies, with "majority" languages often seen as routes to school and commercial success, and indigenous and immigrant languages seen as carriers of cultural heritage and community identity. Children in these communities confront polarizing discourses about national belonging which portray language alternation and the use of non-majority languages as undermining national unity and citizenship (
Linguistics and Education, 2017
Directives are a central resource for the organization of attention in everyday family activities... more Directives are a central resource for the organization of attention in everyday family activities. Studies in middle class families reveal that they are patterned and repeated in the everyday routines of children's lives, providing the basis for their learning of skills, accountability, and moral discernment (M. Goodwin, 2006; M. Goodwin & Cekaite, 2013, 2014). Scholars studying indigenous children's learning from a cross-cultural perspective have underscored children's agency and self-motivation in learning through observation and participation in everyday activities (
Deafness & Education International, 2002
STUF - Language Typology and Universals, 1992
This paper focuses on the micro-diachronic emergence of locative terms from a subset of body part... more This paper focuses on the micro-diachronic emergence of locative terms from a subset of body part terms in Tzotzil. Semantic and morpho-syntactic changes undergone in the nominal construction where body part terms occur suggest that there is an ongoing grammaticalization process. The terms ba 'face', ti' 'mouth', pai 'back', 'bark' 'shell', chak 'buttock', ni' 'nose' are examined in detail on the basis of a varied corpus of occurrences. The analysis is based on a reasonably large body of data from a colonial and a modern Tzotzil dictionary, (LAUGHLIN, 1975; 1988), narratives LAUGHLIN (1977), natural conversation (HAVILAND, n.d.), and interactive spatial tasks performed with about 30 children and 25 adults of Nabenchauk, Chiapas. From this data, the interactive material from spatial tasks is taken as the indicator of the production, comprehension of the locative use of the subset of locative body parts in question.
Encyclopedia of Language and Education
The policies which nation-states, and their societal majorities, apply to their ethnic and lingui... more The policies which nation-states, and their societal majorities, apply to their ethnic and linguistic minorities have become a touchstone to evaluate the quality of democracy, pluricultural commitment and the construction of modern states in almost any part of the world. There-fore, ...
Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, ... more Proper citation and attribution Any use of the materials should be acknowledged in publications, presentations and other public materials. Entries have been developed by different individuals. Please cite authors as indicated on the webpage and front page of the pdf entry. Use of associated stimuli should also be cited by acknowledging the field manual entry. Intellectual property rights are hereby asserted. Creative Commons license This material is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This means you are free to share (copy, redistribute) the material in any medium or format, and you are free to adapt (remix, transform, build upon) the material, under the following terms: you must give appropriate credit in the form of a citation to the original material; you may not use the material for commercial purposes; and if you adapt the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original.
Este livro recupera experiências de pesquisa com crianças na América Latina, traz contribuições m... more Este livro recupera experiências de pesquisa com crianças na América Latina, traz contribuições metodológicas e análises teóricas contextualizadas à realidade latino-americana. Aborda processos de pesquisa com, para crianças e em torno de crianças. Quatro universidades latino-americanas apoiam esta produção editorial: Universidade Autônoma de Chiapas (México), Universidade de Brasília (Brasil), Universidade Surcolombiana (Colômbia) e Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade Nacional de Rosário (Argentina).
Journal of Pragmatics, 2018
The present study documents the everyday bilingual practices of Mayan children, using Tzotzil May... more The present study documents the everyday bilingual practices of Mayan children, using Tzotzil Mayan and Spanish at play. It is based on a video-ethnography of bilingual peer language practices framed within larger research on language socialization in the everyday lives of Mayan children in the South of Mexico. The study examines how the children, whose first language is Tzotzil, staged bilingual scenarios through the use of parallel bilingual constructions (e.g., alignments, adjacency pairs, recycled discourse templates) in several domains of activity (e.g., broadcasting news of an earthquake, farewells, birthday parties, and commercial advertisements). Their bilingual ludic practices challenged regimented and conventional patterns and associations between language and activity domains. An analysis of the micro-interactional processes in the bilingual interactions (e.g., changes of footing, frame shifts, keying, and stances) reveals how children can invoke and reorder language scales and values. It is argued that language scales are neither neutral nor pre-established, but are rather the outcome of the dynamics of situated interaction. Findings demonstrate how the children's ludic creation of novel bilingual spaces reveals how peer language socialization in postcolonial contexts might contribute to rescaling, revaluing, and revitalizing native languages.
Learning Indigenous Languages: Child Language Acquisition in Mesoamerica
... Bowerman, Melissa, Lourdes de Leon & Soonja Choi 1995 Verbs, particles, and spatial s... more ... Bowerman, Melissa, Lourdes de Leon & Soonja Choi 1995 Verbs, particles, and spatial semantics: Learning to talk about spatial actions in typologically different languages. In The Proceedings of the 27th Annual Child Language Research Forum, Eve V. Clark (ed.), 101-111. ...
Ethos, 2017
Cell phones are vehicles for creating and transforming sociality in peer networks (Coleman 2010; ... more Cell phones are vehicles for creating and transforming sociality in peer networks (Coleman 2010; Wallis 2010). In the last decade, increased access to cell phones has radically changed courtship practices among Mayan youth of Zinacantán, Chiapas, and México as young couples now text clandestine romantic relationships, unmediated by elders. Since there is essentially no vocabulary for romantic love in Mayan Tzotzil, couples now rely on Spanish expressions gleaned from the media and other sources and have created a genre of romantic texting. The current study analyzes the textual microprocesses of dialogical construction of romance from a database of ten thousand WhatsApp text messages. Both microlevel practices and macrolevel forces are considered in shaping new landscapes of love, showing how texting affords new technological, linguistic, and literacy skills that are significantly changing repertoires of identity (Kroskrity 1993, 2000) and new expressions of agency and affect among Mayan youth. [Youth, cell phones, romance, love, digital communication, literacy, Mayan] Resumen Los teléfonos móviles (celulares) son vehículos en la creación y transformación de las redes sociales de pares (Coleman 2010, Wallis 2010). En laúltima década, el acceso a los teléfonos móviles ha cambiado de manera radical las prácticas de cortejo entre los jóvenes mayas de Zinacantán, Chiapas, México quienes mantienen relaciones románticas vía texto sin el control tradicional adulto. El tsotsil no tiene vocabulario para amor romántico, sin embargo los jóvenes usan expresiones de los medios para crear un nuevo género romántico en español. Se analizan los micro-procesos de la construcción dialógica del romance en una base de datos de 10,000 mensajes de WhatsApp en el contexto de las fuerzas macro-sociales en que se inscriben. Se muestra que los mensajes de texto ofrecen destrezas tecnológicas, lingüísticas y literacidades que producen cambios en los repertorios de identidad (Kroskrity 1993, 2000) y en las nuevas expresiones de agencia y afecto de la juventud maya.
Journal of Pragmatics, 2021
Learning Indigenous Languages: Child Language Acquisition in Mesoamerica
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 2004
Libro bilingüe tsotsil (tzotzil)/español sobre las prácticas de crianza y etnoteorías sobre la cr... more Libro bilingüe tsotsil (tzotzil)/español sobre las prácticas de crianza y etnoteorías sobre la crianza de los niños y las personas del poblado maya tsotsil (tzotzil) de Zinancantán, Chiapas. LIbro Coordinado por Lourdes de León Pasquel y Antonio de la Torre López.. Ilustrado por Roberto de la Cruz, oriundo de Zinacantán.
This is a bilingual book in Tsotsil (Tzotzil)/Spanish coordinated by Lourdes de León and Antonio de la Torre López and illustrated by Roberto de la Cruz from Zinacantán, Chiapas.
The book is about the Mayan everyday socialization practices and ethnotheories to raise children and members of the Mayan community of Zinacantán, Chiapas.
Introducción a Nuevos senderos en la adquisición y socialización de las lenguas mesoamericanas. C... more Introducción a Nuevos senderos en la adquisición y socialización de las lenguas mesoamericanas. Cap. 3, El desarrollo de la narrativa y la socialización del narrador. Cap. 4, La Amenaza: Un estudio de la socialización en niños ch'oles
Comentarios y reflexiones sobre tres entrevistas realizadas por Lois Meyer a Noam Chomsky
The present study explores , from a referential perspective, two typologically different system... more The present study explores , from a referential perspective, two typologically different systems of classifier systems in two genetically un-related languages: Mixtec and Tzotzil. Whereas the Mixtec classifier represents a case of grammaticalization, intermediate between lexical numeral classifiers and morphological noun classes or gender systems, Tzotzil numeral classifiers are cleary representative of the lexical numeral classifier type. I provide a description of the morphology, syntax, and semantics of classifiers in both systems and demonstrate that, despite the typological differences between them, classifier expressions in both of these languages share a characteristic: they are used for purposes of identification and pronominal reference.
Colección de artículos clásicos sobre la socialización del lenguaje y aprendizaje comunitario (Oc... more Colección de artículos clásicos sobre la socialización del lenguaje y aprendizaje comunitario (Ochs y Schieffelin, Brice-Heath, Rogoff, M.H. Goodwin, Reynolds, Paradise con introducción de la coordinadora)
Collection of classical articles in language socialization and community learning.
Language development and language socialization among the Mayans of Zinacantan. Longitudinal stu... more Language development and language socialization among the Mayans of Zinacantan.
Longitudinal study from birth to early language production looking at preverbal communication, teasing routines, early semantics, early evidentials and the context of children development in a traditional indigenous culture. Awarded the Best Research in Linguistics in 2005 by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e HIstoria.