Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting Tense, Aspect, Mood and Polarity in a Language with a Complex Verbal System

博士论文研究：记录具有复杂言语系统的语言的时态、体、语气和极性

• 批准号: 1830273
• 负责人: Jeffrey Good
• 金额: $ 1.85万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 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: 2018-12-01 至 2021-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1830273&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Documenting; Tense

Time is an important notion that pervades many aspects of daily life. Time is of such importance that all attested human languages have at least one grammatical strategy to encode temporal relationships. Most languages, however, have relatively complex systems of encoding time (which are generally referred to as tense/aspect systems) that interact with several features of the grammar. Individual tense/aspect systems, in addition to their internal complexity, also vary significantly from language to language. Because of the cross-linguistic variation that has been observed, any given language has the potential to offer new insights into the extent of possible temporal encoding strategies, as well as the extent of possible meanings that tense and aspect can carry. The language of study for this project, Iyasa (yko), is a Bantu language spoken in the Littoral Region of southwestern Cameroon by approximately 2,000 people. Tense/aspect studies in Bantu are especially critical as the systems in these languages are noted as being among the most complex in the world. This project will, thus, provide a thorough documentary and descriptive record of Iyasa's system of tense and aspect, utilizing methods in both linguistic fieldwork and linguistic analysis in order to uncover the nuances of the system. Broader impacts include the professional development of a doctoral student, the publicly accessible data, and the presence of an American linguist in Cameroon to help maintain and improve the academic relationship between the two nations. Additionally, the research project and its products can bring linguistic awareness and attention to a language, region, and community of speakers currently under-represented in scientific literature. Records of tense/aspect systems of endangered language vary greatly in quality from mere labels of each tense and aspect (leaving it to the reader to assume what precise meanings should be associated with each label) to descriptions where nearly every detail related to tense and aspect is included. In order to achieve an adequately detailed description of the Iyasa tense/aspect system, researchers will make use of a wide variety of methodologies. These methodologies include (but are not limited to) administering tense/aspect questionnaires both already developed and newly developed by researchers on this project, analyzing of tense/aspect in natural narrative and conversational discourse, directed semantic elicitation (where a series of contexts that differ only slightly in meaningful ways are provided by the researcher), and directed narratives that are elicited by means of video clips or storyboards. Another important aspect of this project is that it will incorporate insights from a wide range of theories including cognitive theories of tense and aspect that move away from the notion of time as a single linear timeline. This project, in addition to providing important documentary materials and linguistic training opportunities to the Iyasa community, will provide important insights on how to improve computational models of tense and aspect for natural language processing and help strengthen our general understanding of how humans can and do encode time in language.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.

时间是一个重要的观念，它遍及日常生活的许多方面。时间如此重要，以至于所有证明的人类语言至少具有一种语法策略来编码时间关系。但是，大多数语言具有相对复杂的编码时间系统（通常称为时态/方面系统），这些系统与语法的多个特征相互作用。除了内部复杂性外，单个时态/方面系统在语言之间也有很大差异。由于已经观察到的跨语言差异，任何给定的语言都有可能对可能的时间编码策略的程度以及时态和方面可能携带的可能含义的程度提供新的见解。该项目的研究语言IYASA（YKO）是在西南喀麦隆沿海地区使用的班图语，约有2,000人。班图的时态/方面研究特别至关重要，因为这些语言中的系统被认为是世界上最复杂的系统之一。因此，该项目将提供IYASA紧张和方面系统的详尽纪录片和描述性记录，并利用语言田野调查和语言分析中的方法来揭示系统的细微差别。更广泛的影响包括博士生的专业发展，可公开访问的数据以及在喀麦隆的美国语言学家的存在，以帮助维持和改善两国之间的学术关系。此外，该研究项目及其产品可以将语言意识和关注引起到目前在科学文献中代表不足的语言，区域和社区。濒危语言的时态/方面系统的记录在质量上差异很大，从每个时态和方面的标签（让读者都可以假设应与每个标签相关联的含义）到描述，几乎每个细节与时态和方面相关的每个细节包括。为了实现IYASA时态/方面系统的充分详细描述，研究人员将利用各种方法。这些方法包括（但不限于）管理紧张/方面的问卷，研究人员已经开发并新开发了该项目的项目，分析了自然叙事和对话性话语中的时态/方面，指示语义启发（其中一系列不同的环境研究人员仅以有意义的方式稍有有意义的方式），并通过视频剪辑或情节板引起的指示叙事。该项目的另一个重要方面是，它将结合各种理论的见解，包括紧张的认知理论和从时间概念中移开作为单个线性时间表的时间概念。该项目除了向IYASA社区提供重要的纪录片和语言培训机会外，还将提供有关如何改善时态计算模型和自然语言处理的计算模型的重要见解，并有助于加强我们对人类如何和进行编码的一般理解该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准通过评估来支持的。