Doctoral Dissertation Research: Individual-level Knowledge of an Incoming Phonemic Contrast

博士论文研究：传入音素对比的个人水平知识

• 批准号: 1627973
• 负责人: Meredith Tamminga
• 金额: $ 0.59万
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2018-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1627973&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Individual; level

The goal of this dissertation research is to contribute to our understanding of how speakers deal with sound change in progress. It will combine socio- and psycholinguistic approaches in order to compare individuals' production and perception of a sound that is new in the language variety that they speak. One of the major ways that languages change through time is by the loss and gain of sound categories (phonemes). A sound is a phoneme category in a language if changing the sound changes meaning. For example, TH is a phoneme in English, and changing TH to S changes the word THINK to SINK. A speaker whose language does not have a particular sound will perform worse on tasks that ask him to recognize or use that sound than a speaker whose language does have it. Individuals learning a new language typically struggle to produce unfamiliar sounds, or to tell two sounds apart. But what about a speaker who is in the middle of this kind of language change? How will this speaker perform with the new sound, and what can we say about the number of phonemes in their sound system? By zooming in on a sound change happening right now in the city of Seville, Spain, this project will challenge assumptions about what it means to have a sound category. It will add to knowledge about phoneme mergers, joining a new line of research expanding beyond Germanic vowels. In conducting the project, the researcher will train a local student in linguistic research skills. Finally, the focus of this study on a low-prestige variety of continental Spanish will support the idea that socio- and psycholinguistic studies of nonstandard varieties can contribute to our scientific understanding of human language.S and TH are different sound categories in most of Spain. The standard ("correct") way to speak Spanish in Spain uses both sounds as English does, so that replacing S with TH can change e.g., casa 'house' to caza 'hunt'. The research will be conducted in the city of Seville, where speakers are now beginning to use both S and TH, rather than just S (a pattern known as "seseo"). Some speakers go back and forth between using only S and using both sounds. This project examines these speakers' language systems by looking both at how they normally speak (how much they use TH, and when), and how well they perform on tasks with this sound. Sociolinguistic interviews will be conducted with a sample of young adult speakers. The behavior observed will be compared to data collected in a battery of psycholinguistic experiments. From these the researcher will evaluate the speakers' low and high-level perception of the sounds S and TH, and mental representations of standard and nonstandard forms containing these sounds. The results of the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies will be combined to form a holistic picture of the individual phonological systems resulting from contact between merged and unmerged varieties.

本论文研究的目的是帮助我们理解说话者如何处理正在进行的声音变化。它将结合社会语言学和心理语言学方法，以比较个人对他们所说的语言种类中的新声音的产生和感知。语言随时间变化的主要方式之一是声音类别（音素）的丢失和增加。如果改变声音会改变含义，那么声音就是语言中的音素类别。例如，TH 是英语中的音素，将 TH 更改为 S 会将单词 THINK 更改为 SINK。语言中没有特定声音的说话者在要求他识别或使用该声音的任务中表现得比语言中有特定声音的说话者表现得更差。学习新语言的人通常很难发出不熟悉的声音，或者很难区分两种声音。但对于处于这种语言变化之中的说话者呢？这款扬声器在新声音下的表现如何？关于其声音系统中的音素数量我们能说些什么？通过放大西班牙塞维利亚市目前正在发生的声音变化，该项目将挑战关于声音类别意味着什么的假设。它将增加有关音素合并的知识，加入日耳曼元音之外的新研究领域。在开展该项目时，研究人员将对当地学生进行语言研究技能培训。最后，这项研究的重点是一种低声望的大陆西班牙语变体，这将支持以下观点：非标准变体的社会语言学和心理语言学研究有助于我们对人类语言的科学理解。S 和 TH 在西班牙大部分地区是不同的声音类别。在西班牙说西班牙语的标准（“正确”）方式与英语一样使用这两种发音，因此用 TH 替换 S 可以改变，例如，casa 'house' 到 caza 'hunt'。这项研究将在塞维利亚市进行，那里的说话者现在开始同时使用 S 和 TH，而不仅仅是 S（一种称为“seseo”的模式）。有些说话者会在仅使用 S 音和使用两种声音之间来回切换。该项目通过观察他们平时说话的方式（他们使用 TH 的程度和时间）以及他们使用这种声音执行任务的情况来检查他们的语言系统。社会语言学访谈将针对年轻成人演讲者进行。观察到的行为将与一系列心理语言学实验中收集的数据进行比较。研究人员将据此评估说话者对声音 S 和 TH 的低级和高级感知，以及包含这些声音的标准和非标准形式的心理表征。社会语言学和心理语言学研究的结果将结合起来，形成合并和未合并变体之间接触所产生的个体音系系统的整体图景。