Doctoral Dissertation Research: Acquisition of grammatical variation: Differential object marking in heritage speakers

博士论文研究：语法变异的习得：传统说话者的差异对象标记

• 批准号: 2140586
• 负责人: Karen Miller
• 金额: $ 1.55万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-03-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2140586&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Acquisition; grammatical

According to the Census Bureau, more than 41 million people in the US speak Spanish at home. It is important to understand how the growing number of US children who are raised speaking Spanish at home come to acquire and use language as adults. The goal of this project is to explore the use of a variable grammatical form in bilingual adults who were raised in the US speaking Spanish at home and English in school; these bilingual adults are also known as “heritage speakers”. Examining variable patterns leads to a more comprehensive understanding of bilingual language acquisition in the US context. Disseminating the findings from this project through both scientific and public channels helps researchers and educators to develop more effective educational strategies and improves speech-language pathologists' ability to assess language abilities in clinical settings. Previous studies have shown that heritage speakers demonstrate significant variability in their use of grammatical forms. This variability can be traced to language-specific factors as well as aspects of an individual’s language experience. While variable grammatical patterns appear across languages and speech communities, these patterns are rarely studied in heritage speakers. This project uses a sentence repetition task with heritage language speakers and monolinguals to examine the trade-off between competing influences on the distribution of differential object marking (DOM), a phenomenon found in a number of languages where certain objects in a sentence are accompanied by a prefix/suffix, preposition, or other marker. The project addresses the following questions: (1) How do heritage speakers acquire variable grammatical patterns such as DOM? (2) What are the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain heritage speakers’ use of variable patterns? (3) How does variable usage change across generations of bilingual speakers? This novel approach combining the study of variation, language acquisition, and cross-generational heritage speakers has significant potential to contribute to our understanding of bilingualism and language acquisition.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.

根据人口普查局的说法，美国有4100万人在家里讲西班牙语。重要的是要了解越来越多的我们在家中讲西班牙语的孩子如何获得成年人的语言。该项目的目的是探索在美国在家中在美国讲西班牙语的双语成年人中使用可变语法形式的使用；这些双语成年人也被称为“遗产演讲者”。检查可变模式会导致对在美国背景下对双语语言获取的更全面理解。通过科学和公共渠道传播该项目的发现，有助于研究人员和教育制定更有效的教育策略，并提高语音语言病理学家在临床环境中评估语言能力的能力。先前的研究表明，遗产讲者在使用语法形式方面表现出显着的差异。这种可变性可以追溯到特定于语言的因素以及个人语言体验的各个方面。虽然可变的语法模式出现在语言和语音社区中，但这些模式很少在遗产扬声器中进行研究。该项目使用传统语言说话者和单语言使用句子重复任务，以检查竞争对差异对象标记分布（DOM）的分布之间的权衡，这是一种以许多语言发现的现象，其中句子中的某些对象伴随着前缀/后缀，介词，介词或其他标记。该项目解决了以下问题：（1）遗产演讲者如何获得可变的语法模式，例如DOM？ （2）哪些语言和外语言因素限制了遗产扬声器对可变模式的使用？ （3）可变用法在几代双语扬声器之间有何变化？这种新颖的方法结合了变异，语言获取和跨代遗产演讲者的研究，具有巨大的潜力，有助于我们对双语主义和语言获取的理解。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影响的审查标准来通过评估而被视为珍贵的支持。