Neural mechanisms for phonological alternation with high and low productivity - a case study on tone sandhi

高低生产力语音交替的神经机制——连读变调案例研究

基本信息

批准号：
1826547
负责人：
Jie Zhang
金额：
$ 43.98万
依托单位：
University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2018
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2018-09-15 至 2024-09-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1826547&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Neural mechanisms phonological alternation low

项目摘要

Of the 7,000 or so languages spoken in the world today, a conservative estimate of around half of them are tonal, in that the use of pitch itself may change the meaning of a word. This list includes languages that play key roles in the economy and national security of the US such as Chinese and Vietnamese as well as many Native American languages such as Navajo and Cherokee. A better understanding of the linguistic properties of these languages is a meaningful first step in increasing the communication efficiency with speakers of these languages and the development of better learning materials for these languages for native speakers of English. This project investigates the linguistic patterns of tone in two Chinese languages--Mandarin and Taiwanese--using state-of-the-art neurolinguistic techniques to shed light on how words with tones are represented in the speakers' brains. It contributes methodological innovations that will allow the different stages of the production processing of tone to be tracked by neurological measures. Moreover, this project involves international collaboration between a US institution and two prominent neurolinguistic laboratories in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The established connections will provide educational opportunities for students both in the US and internationally. This project focuses on tonal alternation patterns whereby a tone takes different phonological forms in different contexts, also known as "tone sandhi." Behavioral studies have shown that tone sandhi patterns extend to novel words in different ways, i.e., have different productivity, depending on the phonological nature of the pattern. This suggests that different mechanisms may be involved in the processing of this type of phonological alternation. This project uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine the time-course of the encoding of a number of tone sandhi patterns in Mandarin and Taiwanese in speech production. It is hypothesized that unproductive sandhi patterns are primarily subserved by a lexical mechanism that engages neural activities in an earlier time window of lexical retrieval (approximately 150-225 ms after the initiation of production), while productive sandhi patterns are primarily subserved by a computation mechanism that engages neural activities in a later time-window of phonological encoding (400-600 ms). It is also hypothesized that the neural activities of the lexical mechanism are sensitive to lexical frequency, while those of the computation mechanism are less so. This project will be the first to investigate the neural activities underlying the putative computation vs. lexical mechanisms associated with productive and unproductive phonological alternations. The increased understanding of the neural encoding of phonological alternation will inform both the theoretical models of speech production and formal models of phonological competence. Findings of this project can also be linked to issues of morphological decompositionality such as regularity and semantic transparency to achieve a fuller understanding of the neural bases of linguistic productivity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在当今世界上说的7,000种左右的语言中，对其中一半的一半的保守估计是音调的，因为使用音调本身可能会改变单词的含义。该列表包括在美国的经济和国家安全中扮演关键角色的语言，例如中国和越南人以及许多美国原住民语言，例如纳瓦霍和切诺基。更好地理解这些语言的语言特性是提高这些语言的说话者的沟通效率的有意义的第一步，以及为英语以英语为母语的这些语言为这些语言提供更好的学习材料。该项目研究了两种汉语语言的语言模式 - 曼丹林和台湾 - 使用最先进的神经语言技术，以阐明说话者的大脑中如何用音调表示单词。它贡献了方法上的创新，这将允许通过神经系统措施跟踪语调生产处理的不同阶段。此外，该项目涉及美国机构与香港和台湾两个著名的神经语言实验室之间的国际合作。建立的联系将为美国和国际的学生提供教育机会。该项目的重点是音调交替模式，在这种模式中，音调在不同的语境中采用不同的语音形式，也称为“音调桑迪”。行为研究表明，根据模式的语音性质，音调桑迪模式以不同的方式扩展到不同的单词，即具有不同的生产力。这表明可能与这种类型的语音交替处理可能涉及不同的机制。该项目使用与事件相关的电位（ERP）来检查语音生产中普通话和台湾的许多音调桑迪模式编码的时间顺序。假设，非生产性的桑迪模式主要是通过词汇机制来弥补的，该机制在较早的词汇检索的较早时间窗口中参与神经活动（在生产开始后约150-225毫秒），而生产性的sandhi模式则主要通过延迟量的计算机制来供应神经活动的一种计算机制，即延迟的时间 - 000 00（40）。还假设词汇机制的神经活性对词汇频率敏感，而计算机制的神经活性则较少。该项目将是第一个研究与生产性和非生产性语音交替相关的推定计算与词汇机制相关的神经活动。对语音交替的神经编码的不断理解将为语音生产的理论模型和语音能力的形式模型提供信息。该项目的发现还可以与形态分解性问题有关，例如规律性和语义透明度，以使人们对语言生产力的神经基础有更深入的了解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛影响的评估来通过评估来支持的。