DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Syntactic and Psycholinguistic Investigations of Odawa

博士论文研究：Odawa 的句法和心理语言学研究

• 批准号: 0080659
• 负责人: Fernanda Ferreira
• 金额: $ 1.17万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-10-01 至 2002-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0080659&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DOCTORAL; DISSERTATION; RESEARCH; Syntactic; Psycholinguistic

Formal linguists and psycholinguists start with the standard assumption that all human brains operate according to the same principles, and that all human language and human sentence processing must adhere to these principles, regardless of the surface characteristics of any given language. Yet the vast majority of psycholinguistic research (on both production and comprehension) that has been conducted has focused on a tiny number of the world's languages. With only a few exceptions, all of the languages have been typologically homogeneous and therefore syntactically similar. The proposed research seeks primarily to extend psycholinguistic research to the Odawa language, a Native American language closely related to Ojibwa and other Algonquian languages and spoken in southern Ontario, Canada. Odawa is typologically and syntactically very different from any language ever investigated by psycholinguists and thus offers a totally new perspective on the various current and competing theories of human sentence processing.Odawa is often referred to as a nonconfigurational language due to its extremely free word order in independent clauses. Any transitive sentence consisting of two noun phrase arguments and a verb can occur grammatically in any of the six possible word orders. Yet this word order is not facilitated by a rich, conventional case system of the sort observed in languages that exhibit certain degrees of word order freedom and which have been studied by psycholinguists (e.g., German, Japanese). This degree of word order freedom is something that is not taken into consideration in any current model of sentence production or comprehension.The Student Investigator has the unprecedented opportunity to combine his training in formal syntax, psycholinguistics, and the Odawa language to perform a large number of production and comprehension experiments in the town of Wikwemikong, Ontario, Canada, where approximately 50% of the 7,000 residents are still native speakers of the language. The production experiments will be conducted to assess baseline preferences for various structural alternatives, and to determine whether the preferences can be changed with various priming manipulations. The comprehension experiments will seek to establish temporary ambiguities and then observe the manner and time course of participants' recovery from such ambiguities. Critically, the syntax of Odawa allows key assumptions made by current theories of sentence processing to be critically examined.

形式语言学家和心理语言学家从一个标准假设开始，即所有的人类大脑都按照相同的原则运作，所有的人类语言和人类句子处理都必须遵守这些原则，而不管任何给定语言的表面特征如何。然而，绝大多数的心理语言学研究（关于产生和理解）都集中在世界上少数几种语言上。除了少数例外，所有的语言在类型学上都是同质的，因此在语法上是相似的。拟议中的研究主要旨在将心理语言学研究扩展到奥达瓦语，这是一种与奥吉布瓦语和其他阿尔冈琴语密切相关的美洲土著语言，在加拿大安大略省南部使用。小田语在类型学和句法上与心理语言学家研究过的任何语言都有很大的不同，因此为当前各种各样的人类句子处理理论和竞争理论提供了一个全新的视角。小田语通常被认为是一种非构形语言，因为它在独立从句中的词序非常自由。任何由两个名词短语参数和一个动词组成的及物句都可以在语法上以六种可能的词序中的任何一种出现。然而，这种词序并不是由一个丰富的、传统的格系统来促进的，这种格系统在一些语言中观察到，这些语言表现出一定程度的词序自由，并得到了心理语言学家的研究（如德语、日语）。这种程度的词序自由在任何当前的句子生成或理解模型中都没有被考虑到。学生调查员有一个前所未有的机会，将他在形式语法、心理语言学和小田语方面的训练结合起来，在加拿大安大略省wikemikong镇进行大量的生产和理解实验，那里的7000名居民中约有50%仍然以小田语为母语。生产实验将评估各种结构选择的基线偏好，并确定偏好是否可以随着各种启动操作而改变。理解实验将寻求建立暂时的歧义，然后观察参与者从这种歧义中恢复的方式和时间进程。关键的是，Odawa的句法允许对当前句子处理理论所做的关键假设进行批判性检验。