Doctoral Dissertation Research: The grammar and use of elaborate verb morphology by elderly monolinguals

博士论文研究：老年单语者的语法和复杂动词形态的使用

• 批准号: 2035185
• 负责人: Anthony Woodbury
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2035185&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; grammar; use

The way bilinguals and monolingual elders speak an endangered indigenous language is not uniform. Bilinguals are typically more dominant in one of their two languages, in most cases not their indigenous one but the national or dominant language in their country of origin. Monolingual speakers differ from bilinguals in having one single, fully developed, linguistic system. This difference can be seen in their use of words, especially complex verbs, since a range of semantic nuances that are idiosyncratic to their speech are displayed. The speech of elderly monolinguals in indigenous languages is vanishing as villages decrease in population, leading to significant losses of cultural diversity. In this dissertation project, the doctoral student will document naturalistic spoken monolingual speech and provide an in-depth analysis of the grammar and the semantics of verbal morphology in a particular monolingual variety that will allow answering questions such as: What is the verbal morphology of elderly monolinguals like and what grammar underlies such complex systems? What semantic information is prominently displayed through the verbs used by monolinguals that is not present in bilingual speech? These questions remain just loosely explored in current literature. The results of this project will enhance understanding of the diversity of endangered indigenous languages as it brings into the analysis monolingual systems which are morphologically more elaborate, thus allowing researchers to evaluate different cross-linguistic theories of morphologically complex languages. Since the doctoral student is bilingual, data collection will include her participation in everyday conversations. This interactive process will guarantee gathering real speech while spontaneously interacting with elderly monolinguals. Complementary elicited data will also be gathered to help achieve a better understanding of the semantics of verbal morphology. The naturalistic data corpus collected will be transcribed, annotated and analyzed, and will then be curated and deposited in a digital archive for the use of a wide range of stakeholders including indigenous language speakers, linguists, and other researchers.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.

双语者和单语老年人说濒临灭绝的土著语言的方式并不统一。双语者通常更擅长使用两种语言中的一种，在大多数情况下，不是他们的本土语言，而是他们原籍国的民族语言或主导语言。单语者与双语者的不同之处在于，他们拥有一个单一的、充分发展的语言系统。这种差异可以从他们对单词的使用中看出，尤其是复杂动词，因为显示了一系列与他们的言语不同的语义细微差别。随着村庄人口的减少，使用土著语言的老年单语者的语言正在消失，导致文化多样性的显着丧失。在本论文项目中，博士生将记录自然主义的单语口语，并对特定单语品种的言语形态的语法和语义进行深入分析，从而回答以下问题：老年人的言语形态是什么？单语者喜欢这种复杂系统的语法是什么？哪些语义信息通过单语者使用的动词突出显示，而双语语音中不存在？在当前的文献中，这些问题仍然只是松散地探讨。该项目的结果将增强对濒危土著语言多样性的理解，因为它将形态上更复杂的单语系统纳入分析，从而使研究人员能够评估形态复杂的语言的不同跨语言理论。由于博士生会说双语，因此数据收集将包括她参与日常对话。这个互动过程将保证在与老年单语者自发互动的同时收集真实的语音。还将收集补充的引出数据，以帮助更好地理解言语形态的语义。收集到的自然数据语料库将被转录、注释和分析，然后被整理并存放在数字档案中，供包括土著语言使用者、语言学家和其他研究人员在内的广泛利益相关者使用。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，并被认为值得支持。