Collaborative Research: The Comparative Morpho-Syntax of Appalachian English

合作研究：阿巴拉契亚英语的比较形态句法

• 批准号: 0617197
• 负责人: Christina Tortora
• 金额: $ 2.99万
• 依托单位: CUNY College of Staten Island
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-09-01 至 2010-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0617197&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Comparative; Morpho; Syntax

Appalachian English is a group of linguistic varieties, or "dialects", spoken roughly in the central and southern part of the Appalachian Mountain range. These dialects can differ from standard English in a number of ways. For example, with respect to the structural properties of sentences and the words inside them (the 'morpho-syntax'), they allow sentences like "The girls likes pizza", where a third person plural subject occurs with a verb carrying the -s suffix (which is reserved for singular subjects in standard English). In the domain of relative clauses, Appalachian English permits examples like "At first, you wouldn't believe the characters come knocked on my door", in which "who"/"that" are omitted, something that is not possible in standard English. With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Judy Bernstein, Marcel den Dikken, Christina Tortora and Raffaella Zanuttini, a team of researchers from four different academic institutions, will combine their expertise in theoretical linguistics and experience in fieldwork and work together to investigate these phenomena with the aim of reaching a deeper understanding of grammatical variation, particularly in the areas of the syntax of subjects and subject-verb agreement. There are many reasons why it is important to study different linguistic varieties, including those that do not constitute a "standard" language. Linguists view a speaker's knowledge of his or her language as an object of scientific investigation, and model it as a system of interacting principles, valid for all languages, and a number of choice-points relating to these principles on which languages may vary. Thus, from a scientific perspective, a comparative study of the morphological and syntactic properties of varieties of English will provide an opportunity to look at these grammatical systems with a magnifying glass, and to determine where exactly they can vary, and how. This can lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of grammar. From an educational point of view, this project will train young scholars in the analysis and description of lesser-known linguistic varieties, as the research group will include two graduate students and a regional consultant. This training component of the project will thus add to the pool of scholars who are skilled in the documentation of languages.

阿巴拉契亚英语是一组语言变体，或“方言”，大致在阿巴拉契亚山脉的中部和南部使用。这些方言在许多方面与标准英语不同。例如，关于句子的结构属性和其中的单词（“形态句法”），他们允许像“女孩们喜欢披萨”这样的句子，其中第三人称复数主语出现在带有-s后缀的动词中（这是标准英语中为单数主语保留的）。在关系从句领域，阿巴拉契亚英语允许这样的例子，“起初，你不会相信字符来敲我的门”，其中省略了“who”/“that”，这在标准英语中是不可能的。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下。朱迪·伯恩斯坦、马塞尔·登·迪肯、克里斯蒂娜·托尔托拉和拉菲拉·扎努蒂尼，一个由来自四个不同学术机构的研究人员组成的团队，将结合他们在理论语言学方面的专业知识和实地考察的经验，共同研究这些现象，以期对语法变化有更深入的了解，特别是在主语句法和主动一致方面。研究不同的语言变体，包括那些不构成“标准”语言的变体，是很重要的，原因有很多。语言学家将说话者的语言知识视为科学研究的对象，并将其建模为一个相互作用的原则系统，适用于所有语言，以及与这些原则相关的许多选择点，语言可能在这些原则上有所不同。因此，从科学的角度来看，对各种英语的形态和句法特性进行比较研究将提供一个机会，让我们用放大镜来观察这些语法系统，并确定它们究竟在哪里可以变化，以及如何变化。这可以让你对语法的本质有更深的理解。从教育的角度来看，该项目将培养年轻学者分析和描述鲜为人知的语言品种，因为研究小组将包括两名研究生和一名区域顾问。因此，该项目的这一培训部分将增加精通语言文件编制的学者人数。