Diachronic Morphology in Cross-Linguistic Perspective

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，爱丽丝·c·哈里斯（Alice C. Harris）博士将进行为期四年的语言学研究，研究历史词法（单词形式随时间的变化）。这项研究的目的是发现改变单词形式的普遍力量。以前对历史形态学的研究强调欧洲和印欧语系的语言，但更广泛的数据库更有可能揭示变化的普遍性。这个项目将继续哈里斯博士早期对卡特维利亚和东北高加索家族语言的研究。它还将借鉴已发表的关于许多其他语系的历史形态学的讨论。将要使用的方法包括对不同语言中非常相似的变化进行跨语言比较。例如，人们发现，在一些不相关的语言中，动词的第三人称单数形式被概括为所有人称数的基础，而第三人称单数动词没有特别的标记。在本研究中，将研究这些概括的异同。理解复杂的语言范式是如何产生和重构的，将告诉我们很多关于认知在管理语言范畴（如时态和格）使用中的作用。因此，对形态变化的研究将有助于更好地从广义上理解语言的变化。此外，本研究将有助于形态学理论的发展。

With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Alice C. Harris will conduct four years of linguistic research on historical morphology (changes over time in the forms of words). The goal of the research is to discover the universal forces that change the forms of words. Previous studies of historical morphology have emphasized the languages of Europe and the Indo-European family, but a broader database is more likely to reveal universals of change. This project will continue Dr. Harris's earlier research on languages of the Kartvelian and North East Caucasian families. It will also draw on published discussions of historical morphology of many other language families. The method that will be used involves cross-linguistic comparison of very similar changes in very different languages. For example, it has been found that in a number of unrelated languages, the third person singular form of the verb has been generalized as the base of all persons and numbers, leaving the third person singular verb with no special marking. In this research, both the similarities and differences in such generalizations will be studied.An understanding of how complex linguistic paradigms arise and are restructured will tell us a great deal about the role of cognition in managing the use of linguistic categories, such as tense and case. This study of morphological change will thus contribute to a better understanding of language change broadly. In addition, this study will contribute to morphological theory.