The Morphosyntax of Verbs in Arizona Yaqui

亚利桑那州亚基语动词的形态句法

• 批准号: 0446333
• 负责人: Heidi Harley
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-07-01 至 2007-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0446333&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Morphosyntax; Verbs; Arizona; Yaqui

The nucleus of any sentence of any human language is the verb. When a speaker chooses a particular verb, the structure of the rest of the sentence usually follows automatically. Verbs seem to hold the key to understanding the central expressive possibilities of human language. Interestingly, there are relatively few structural options for verbs in English: they can accept or reject the presence of a subject, an object, and/or an indirect object, but not much else. In English, verbs that share a core meaning usually pattern alike in the sentence structure(s) they accept. These core meanings may give us insight into the universal structure of human thought - or may only give us insight into the structure of thought of speakers of English. We don't know because no systematic classification of the structural properties of the verbs of any language other than English currently exists. With support from the National Science Foundation Dr. Heidi Harley and Dr. Jason Haugen will attempt to fill this gap by documenting the verbs of Yaqui, a Native American language of the southwest. Yaqui differs from English significantly in that many kinds of suffixes can be added to its verbs. These suffixes change the sentence structures that the verbs require. By discovering which suffixes can attach to which verbs of Yaqui, the investigators will establish whether the verb root's core meaning affects sentence structure in the same way that it does in English - and more importantly, will discover whether the same types of core meanings that define English verb classes are also at work in Yaqui. The investigators will work with speakers of Yaqui to create a large database of Yaqui verbs and example sentences using them, with and without each verbal suffix. By the end of the study, it should be clear whether the core meanings that matter for English verb classes are also important in the classification of Yaqui verbs.Using endangered, understudied Yaqui as the subject language will provide a dual benefit, unlike a study of a widely-studied living language with similar suffixing properties. This project will provide extensive documentation of many important aspects of Yaqui grammar for the first time, contributing new data to our store of knowledge about human language-data that may well otherwise be lost to science and humanity forever. In addition, the Yaqui language teaching community will be able to employ the materials produced by the study in language classes, and as documentation of their linguistic heritage. These materials will support the tribe's active efforts in the urgent arena of language maintenance and revitalization.

任何人类语言的任何句子的核心都是动词。当说话者选择一个特定的动词时，句子的其余部分的结构通常会自动跟随。动词似乎掌握着理解人类语言主要表达能力的关键。有趣的是，英语中动词的结构选择相对较少：它们可以接受或拒绝主语、宾语和/或间接宾语的存在，但除此之外就没有多少了。在英语中，具有相同核心意义的动词在它们所接受的句子结构中通常是相似的。这些核心意义可能让我们洞察人类思维的普遍结构，也可能只让我们洞察说英语的人的思维结构。我们不知道，因为除了英语之外，目前还没有对任何语言的动词结构特征进行系统的分类。在国家科学基金会的支持下，海蒂哈雷博士和杰森豪根博士将试图通过记录美国西南部的一种土著语言亚基语的动词来填补这一空白。Yaqui与英语的显著不同之处在于它的动词可以添加多种后缀。这些后缀改变了动词所要求的句子结构。通过发现哪些后缀可以附加到Yaqui的哪些动词上，研究人员将确定动词词根的核心含义是否会像英语中那样影响句子结构-更重要的是，将发现定义英语动词类别的相同类型的核心含义是否也在Yaqui中起作用。调查人员将与亚基语使用者合作，创建一个大型亚基语动词数据库以及使用它们的例句，无论是否有每个动词后缀。在研究的最后，我们应该清楚的是，对英语动词类别有重要意义的核心意义在亚基语动词的分类中是否也很重要。使用濒危的、未被充分研究的亚基语作为主题语言将提供双重好处，而不像研究一种被广泛研究的、具有类似后缀属性的活语言。该项目将首次提供Yaqui语法许多重要方面的广泛文档，为我们关于人类语言的知识库提供新的数据，否则这些数据可能会永远丢失给科学和人类。此外，Yaqui语言教学社区将能够在语言课堂上使用该研究编写的材料，并将其作为语言遗产的文献。 这些材料将支持该部落在维护和振兴语言这一紧迫的竞技场中的积极努力。