Doctoral Dissertation Research: Child and Child-Directed Expression of Possession in a Polysynthetic Language

博士论文研究：多合成语言中儿童和儿童导向的占有表达

基本信息

批准号：
1912062
负责人：
Andrea Berez-Kroeker
金额：
$ 2.12万
依托单位：
University of Hawaii
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2019-09-01 至 2022-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1912062&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Doctoral Dissertation Research Child Directed

项目摘要

The scientific field of language acquisition research examines a basic foundation of the human experience: How children come to speak their first language. For decades the field has largely focused on languages with millions (or even billions) of speakers, such as Spanish, French, Japanese, and English. We know very little about how children learn to speak most of the other 7000 languages around the world. Approximately half of these languages are in danger of disappearing, which includes all of the Algonquian language family, one of the largest groups of indigenous languages in North America. Algonquian languages such as Northern East Cree (NEC) are radically different from those typically studied in language acquisition research, and as these languages cease to be spoken, we lose the chance to understand how children acquire the fundamentally human capacity of linguistic expression. This dissertation project explores how children learn to speak NEC, one of the few remaining indigenous languages in North America still learned by children as a first language. This project analyzes and improves video/audio recordings collected by the Chisasibi Child Language Acquisition Study (CCLAS), and this dissertation also includes new fieldwork with adult speakers of NEC to provide more insight into how the language works and the stages children go through when learning the language. This dissertation project offers a range of benefits for science and for communities. It will enhance existing documentation of NEC and include child speech as well as speech from adults to children, both of which are underrepresented genres in language documentation. It will also expand the purview and deepen the diversity of language acquisition research. Furthermore, this dissertation can help provide Cree communities with better tools for language assessment and speech-language pathology, so that children may have better support on their journey to become speakers of their language. Lastly, the documentation and description generated by this dissertation can help inform the development of curricula and teaching materials for learners of the Cree language.This dissertation will enhance and expand the documentary record of NEC. This project will create new language documentation as well as enrich existing recordings of child and child-directed speech collected by the Chisasibi Child Language Acquisition Study (CCLAS). The focus of this dissertation is the first language acquisition of the expression of possession, which is a fundamental concept in cognitive and linguistic development. This project will create and advance language documentation on two fronts. First, research involves working with adult speakers of NEC to review CCLAS recordings and elicit and transcribe adult-like targets. This will produce hours of transcribed and annotated audio recordings of NEC as well as unique metalinguistic commentary and analysis. Second, these adult targets, transcriptions, elicitations, analysis, commentary, and notes will be used to enrich the existing CCLAS corpus. This work will help enable CCLAS to make additional transcripts, annotations, and media files publicly available. Through this work, this dissertation will help break new scientific ground. For example, this dissertation examines speech genres often absent in language documentation, and it enriches the range and typological diversity of language acquisition research. This project can also provide insight to help ensure that methods and tools in language assessment and speech-language pathology are linguistically and culturally inappropriate. The findings from this research can also inform the creation of curriculum and pedagogical materials to benefit not only second language learners but also meet the needs of schools teaching Cree-speaking children about the structure of their mother tongue.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.

语言获取研究的科学领域研究了人类经验的基本基础：孩子们如何讲第一语言。几十年来，该领域主要集中在具有数百万（甚至数十亿）演讲者的语言上，例如西班牙，法语，日语和英语。我们对孩子们如何学会说世界上其他7000种语言中的大多数语言知之甚少。这些语言中大约有一半有消失的危险，其中包括所有阿尔冈斯语家族，这是北美最大的土著语言群体之一。诸如Northern East Cree（NEC）之类的Algonquian语言与语言获取研究中通常研究的语言完全不同，并且随着这些语言不再使用，我们失去了了解孩子如何获得语言表达的人类能力的机会。该论文项目探讨了孩子们如何学会说NEC，这是北美剩下的少数剩下的土著语言之一，这些语言仍被儿童作为母语学习。该项目分析并改善了Chisasibi儿童语言获取研究（CCLAS）收集的视频/音频录音，该论文还包括与NEC成人演讲者的新野外作业，以提供更多有关语言工作和阶段儿童在学习语言时如何进行的洞察力。该论文项目为科学和社区提供了一系列好处。它将增强NEC的现有文档，并包括儿童演讲以及成人对儿童的言语，这两种语言文档中的代表性不足。它还将扩大权限并加深语言获取研究的多样性。此外，这项论文可以帮助Cree社区提供更好的语言评估和语音语言病理学工具，从而使孩子们可以更好地支持他们成为语言的讲话者。最后，本论文产生的文档和描述可以帮助告知开发Cree语言学习者的课程和教学材料。本文将增强和扩展NEC的纪录片记录。该项目将创建新的语言文档，并丰富Chisasibi儿童语言获取研究（CCLAS）收集的儿童和指导语音的现有记录。本论文的重点是对所有权表达的第一语言获取，这是认知和语言发展中的一个基本概念。该项目将在两个方面创建和推进语言文档。首先，研究涉及与NEC的成人发言人一起审查CCLAS录制，并引起和转录类似成人的目标。这将产生数小时的NEC转录和注释的音频记录，以及独特的元素语言评论和分析。其次，这些成人目标，转录，诱导，分析，评论和注释将用于丰富现有的CCLAS语料库。这项工作将有助于使CCLA公开提供其他成绩单，注释和媒体文件。通过这项工作，这篇论文将有助于打破新的科学基础。例如，本论文研究语言文献中通常不存在的语音流派，并丰富了语言获取研究的范围和类型学多样性。该项目还可以提供见识，以帮助确保语言评估和语音语言病理学中的方法和工具在语言和文化上是不合适的。这项研究的发现还可以为创建课程和教学材料的创建提供信息，不仅使第二语言学习者受益，而且还满足学校对母亲的结构来教授Cree儿童的需求。这项奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过该基金会的智力功能和广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务。