Clause Types: Form and Force in Grammatical Theory

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Paul Portner博士和Raffaella Zanuttini博士将对人类语言中的从句类型进行为期两年的研究。这项研究试图了解是什么赋予了句子特定的功能，例如提出问题、发表声明或发出命令。特别是，该项目旨在回答两个问题：(1)句子的功能在多大程度上可以从其语法形式中读出？(2)在世界语言中，什么范围的功能与特定的语法形式相对应？这项研究将重点研究两种语言，韩语和巴迪奥托语(意大利北部的一种罗曼语变体)。这个项目的数据将来自几个来源：田野调查、问卷调查、引出的产出数据和语法判断。这个项目对与语言有关的几个科学领域(例如计算语言学、心理语言学和语言习得)具有重要意义。这项研究的结果将填补我们在理解语言方面的一个重大空白，无论是在特定语言的语法方面，还是在语言共性方面。此外，记录和研究巴迪奥图语和韩语还有好处：巴迪奥图语是一种濒临灭绝的语言变体。韩国语是世界上的主要语言之一，但对其助词和小句类型的研究还不够深入。最后，该项目将培训年轻学者分析和描述鲜为人知的语言，这是教育机构、负责情报和国防的政府机构以及计算语言学行业的一项重要技能。

With National Science Foundation support, Drs. Paul Portner and Raffaella Zanuttini will conduct two years of research on clause types in human language. This research seeks to understand what gives a sentence a particular function, for example that of asking a question, making a statement, or giving an order. In particular, the project aims to answer two questions: (1) To what extent can a sentence's function be read off of its grammatical form? (2) What range of functions are mapped to particular grammatical forms in the languages of the world? The study will focus on two languages, Korean and Badiotto (a Romance variety spoken in northern Italy). The data for this project will come from several sources: fieldwork, questionnaires, elicited production data, and grammaticality judgments.This project has significance for several scientific fields that pertain to language (e.g. computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and language acquisition). The results of this research will fill a major gap in our understanding of language, both in terms of the grammars of particular languages and of language universals. Additionally, there are benefits to documenting and studying Badiotto and Korean: Badiotto is an endangered language variety. Korean is one of the world's major languages, and yet its particles and clause types are not well studied. Finally, this project will train young scholars in the analysis and description of lesser-known languages, a skill of importance in educational institutions, government agencies concerned with intelligence and defense, and the computational linguistics industry.