Collaborative Research: What's the question? A cross-linguistic investigation into compositional and pragmatic constraints on the question under discussion

合作研究：问题是什么？

• 批准号: 1452674
• 负责人: Marie-Catherine de Marneffe
• 金额: $ 27.31万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-01 至 2021-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1452674&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; What; question; cross

The greatest value of language resides in its meaning, in the information that is exchanged in discourse. This project is part of a broad scholarly effort to find out how that meaning is determined, and to identify what inferences can be drawn from what is said. Recent research on meaning in language, including much published work by the four PIs on this project, shows that the meaning of a sentence is dramatically affected by the context in which the sentence is uttered. Specifically, the three-institution project team has shown in past work how the meaning of a sentence is greatly affected by what question the speaker seeks to address. The fact that a sentence meaning can only be fully grasped in terms of the question the uttered sentence answers creates a problem because the question addressed by a given utterance is typically implicit. So, often a listener can only fully understand the meaning of an uttered sentence by recreating the question that was answered. To do this, the listener must reason from many available clues, for example the intonation used in the utterance, and what is known of the speaker's intentions. The goal of this project is to conduct empirical and theoretical work which will identify the process by which implicit questions are revealed. The work to be undertaken in this project is of intrinsic interest in understanding human culture and human communication, and also has significant practical applications, for example in the field of Natural Language Processing. To build computers that can understand and use language, the features that inform human language understanding must be identified. The project also offers advanced training opportunities for young researchers at US institutions, develops experimental and other research methodologies that can impact a broad range of fields, and analyzes a foundational problem in language which is related to strategically valuable natural language technology. The project is set in the context of a Question Under Discussion model in which the context incorporates a dynamically evolving stack of questions. The problem for this model is to figure out what question is addressed by any given stretch of discourse. Three types of constraint on the question will be explored cross-linguistically: lexical constraints contributed by, for instance, focus sensitive expressions and factive predicates, information-structural constraints, including those imposed by intonation and cleft constructions, and contextual constraints, such as Gricean principles. This goal is pursued by expanding methodologies which the three-institution team has jointly pioneered in previous work: a mix of experimental research, corpus-based studies of naturally occurring utterances, and cross-linguistic fieldwork. The development effort is spearheaded with English and Paraguayan Guaraní (Tupí-Guaraní) and selective work is performed on other languages to test aspects of the work that are particularly germane, including K'iche' and Kaqchikel (both Mayan), Hungarian (Ugric) and Tagalog (Austronesian). Throughout the project, there will be an emphasis on the development of data-collection methods appropriate for use with theoretically untrained native speakers

语言的最大价值在于它的意义，在于话语中交换的信息。该项目是广泛学术努力的一部分，旨在找出意义是如何确定的，并确定可以从所说的内容中得出什么推论。最近关于语言含义的研究，包括该项目的四位 PI 发表的大量工作，表明句子的含义受到说话的上下文的显着影响。具体而言，三个机构的项目团队在过去的工作是什么意思句子很大程度上受说话者想要解决的问题的影响，事实上，句子的含义只能根据所说出的句子所回答的问题来完全理解，这会产生一个问题，因为给定的话语所解决的问题通常是隐含的。通常，听者只能通过重现所回答的问题才能完全理解所说出的句子的含义。为此，听者必须从许多可用的线索中进行推理，例如话语中使用的语调以及对说话者的了解。该项目的目标是进行实证和理论工作，以确定揭示隐含问题的过程。该项目所开展的工作对于理解人类文化和人类交流具有内在意义，并且具有重要意义。实际应用，例如在自然语言处理领域，为了构建能够理解和使用语言的计算机，必须确定人类语言理解的功能，该项目还为美国机构的年轻研究人员提供高级培训机会，开发实验。以及其他可以影响广泛领域的研究方法，以及与具有战略价值的自然语言技术相关的语言基本问题。该项目是在“讨论中的问题”模型的背景下设置的，该模型的问题是弄清楚什么是动态发展的问题。问题是通过任何给定的话语延伸来解决的，该问题的三种类型的约束将被跨语言地探讨：例如，由焦点敏感表达和事实谓词造成的词汇约束，信息结构约束，包括由语调和语调施加的约束。这一目标是通过扩展三个机构团队在之前的工作中共同开创的方法来实现的：实验研究、基于语料库的自然话语研究和交叉研究的结合。语言实地工作以英语和巴拉圭瓜拉尼语（Tupí-Guaraní）为主导，并选择性地对其他语言进行工作，以测试工作中特别相关的方面，包括K'iche' 和 Kaqchikel（均为玛雅语）、匈牙利语（乌戈尔语）和他加禄语（南岛语）。在整个项目中，重点将放在开发适用于理论上未经训练的母语人士的数据收集方法。