Collaborative Research: Architecture of Functional Categories in American Sign Language

合作研究：美国手语功能类别的架构

• 批准号: 9729065
• 负责人: Judy Kegl
• 金额: $ 5.2万
• 依托单位: Rutgers University New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1998
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1998-03-15 至 1999-06-08
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9729065&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Architecture; Functional; Categories

This project represents a continuation of research into the syntactic structure of American Sign Language (ASL), funded by NSF grant #SBR-9410562. The research agenda has been to investigate the distribution of functional categories in ASL. Functional categories are those that signal structural relationships among lexical categories. For example, functional categories, such as Tense, Aspect, and Agreement, contain grammatical information that is often expressed morphologically through inflection. Different languages make productive use of different subsets of grammatical categories. It is the characteristics of functional categories that establish basic sentence structure and determine typological variation. The goal has been to uncover the syntactic structure of ASL through examination of functional categories. Research to date has investigated a large number of syntactic constructions in the language, focusing most intensely on Tense and person Agreement projections, as well as the higher level projection relevant to the structure of questions. With respect to these three areas, our results have diverged from previous beliefs about ASL. We have demonstrated the existence of lexical tense markers (contrary to the belief that ASL lacks grammatical tense). Our discovery of non-manual syntactic markings of agreement has provided new insights into the nature of agreement, its representation in the syntax, and its relation to the distribution of null pronouns. Our analysis of questions challenges previous claims about the mechanism of question formation in ASL, as well as claims that have been made about purported constraints on phrase structure and movement processes in language generally. The syntactic research on functional categories will now extend to several additional projections that display interesting interactions with those that we have already studied. For example, Aspect has not only manual instantiations (which have been described in the l iterature) but also interesting non-manual correlates that have not yet been examined. We will also extend our work on agreement to number agreement, both within the clause and the determiner phrase. In addition, we will address several syntactic projections above the level of TP (the clause). Finally, we will complement our studies of the functional structure of ASL with studies of the verb lexicon, focusing on the argument-taking properties of particular classes of verbs.

该项目是对美国手语（ASL）句法结构研究的延续，由NSF资助#SBR-9410562。本研究旨在探讨美国手语中功能语类的分布。功能范畴是那些在词汇范畴之间表示结构关系的范畴。例如，功能范畴，如时态、体和一致性，包含语法信息，这些信息通常通过形态变化来表达。不同的语言对语法范畴的不同子集的使用是富有成效的。功能范畴的特点决定了句子的基本结构和类型变异。我们的目标是通过检查的功能类别，揭示美国手语的句法结构。 迄今为止的研究已经调查了大量的句法结构的语言，集中最强烈的时态和人称协议的预测，以及更高层次的投影相关的问题的结构。关于这三个方面，我们的研究结果已经偏离了以前的信念，美国手语。我们已经证明了词汇时态标记的存在（与美国手语缺乏语法时态的观点相反）。我们的非手动句法标记协议的发现提供了新的见解协议的性质，其在句法中的代表性，以及它与空代词的分布。我们的问题的分析挑战以前的索赔的问题形成的机制，在美国手语，以及索赔已经取得了所谓的限制短语结构和运动过程中的语言一般。 关于功能范畴的句法研究现在将扩展到几个额外的投射，这些投射与我们已经研究过的那些投射表现出有趣的相互作用。例如，Aspect不仅具有手动实例化（在文献中已经描述过），而且还具有尚未检查的有趣的非手动相关性。我们还将把一致性扩展到数一致性，包括分句和限定词短语。此外，我们还将讨论TP（小句）以上的几个句法投射。 最后，我们将补充我们的研究的功能结构的美国手语的动词词汇的研究，重点是讨论的论点，采取特定类别的动词的属性。