Collaborative Research: Studying Language Production in the Field: Accessibility Effects on Variation

合作研究：研究现场语言生产：可访问性对变异的影响

• 批准号: 0848298
• 负责人: Juergen Bohnemeyer
• 金额: $ 0.25万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-01 至 2012-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0848298&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Studying; Language; Production

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).When speakers encode their thoughts into linguistic utterances, they often can choose between several different ways of conveying the same message. For example, English speakers may use an active or a passive. They are more likely to choose a passive over an active if the patient, but not the agent, is human and hence more accessible ("The girl was struck by lightning"). Such accessibility effects are well-established for a small set of (mostly related) languages, and have had a tremendous influence on linguistic and psycholinguistic theory. Yet, the languages previously studied psycholinguistically are unsuited for distinguishing competing accounts of accessibility effects. For example, according to availability accounts, speakers prefer to mention the more accessible referent earlier in the sentence. According to certain alignment accounts, on the other hand, speakers prefer to make the most accessible referent the subject of the sentence. Both accounts correctly predict English passive vs. active choice. To address these questions, this study will look at morphosyntactic variations in a language that is typologically very different from English: Yucatec (Mayan). The studies will exploit properties of Yucatec to distinguish between accessibility accounts where previously studied languages fail to do so. The studies will also contribute to the establishment of an interdisciplinary research program of field-based psycholinguistics. Since most of the world's languages are spoken far away from psycholinguistic laboratories, it is crucial to adapt and apply psycholinguistic methods to the study of variation under field conditions, where participant recruiting is a non-trivial issue and familiarity with the very concept of an "experiment" cannot be assumed. The research will employ two types of production methodologies, recall studies and video description tasks, as well as grammaticality ratings. Production studies are the primary methodology of psycholinguists working on choice in language production, providing quantitative data on what speakers produce. Grammaticality ratings are the primary methodology of theoretical linguists employed in fieldwork. This method will be extended to a quantitative level, making it possible to study gradient preferences in alternations. By using both methods, the relevance and accessibility of the results will be increased for both research communities. In addition to their relevance for psycholinguistic research, the studies will close significant gaps in the scientific record of the grammar of Yucatec, for which close to no quantitative record of syntactic variation exists. This data will help to distinguish between competing analyses of Yucatec syntax, and will contribute to syntactic typology.The successful completion of the research will have a potentially transformative effect on several disciplines: for psycholinguistics, it will allow theories of production to be tested against a wider set of language data. For field linguistics, it will contribute to the methodological repertoire available for future field work, pushing forward the state-of-the-art in language description. The post-doctoral researcher, graduate research assistants, and undergraduate students will have the experience of participating in and becoming specialists in a newly emerging research paradigm of field-based psycholinguistics. They will be trained in psycholinguistic theory, as well as psycholinguistic and field work methodologies (including state-of-the-art statistical data analysis). The native speaker consultants, who are members of indigenous communities, will receive valuable linguistic training. The sound files from the research will constitute the first large scale documentation of syntactic variation in Mayan. All data will be archived and made freely available, allowing further study of the material. To facilitate similar investigation on other understudied languages, all experimental stimuli and scripts will also be made available.

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。当演讲者将他们的想法编码成语言话语时，他们通常可以在几种不同的方式中选择传达同一信息。例如，英语使用者可以使用主动或被动。如果病人是人，而不是施动者，因此更容易接近（“女孩被闪电击中”），他们更有可能选择被动而不是主动。这种可及性效应对于一小部分（大多数是相关的）语言来说是公认的，并且对语言学和心理语言学理论产生了巨大的影响。然而，以前研究的语言心理语言学是不适合区分可及性效应的竞争帐户。例如，根据可得性解释，说话者更喜欢在句子的前面提到更易接近的指称物。另一方面，根据某些对齐解释，说话者更喜欢把最容易理解的所指对象作为句子的主语。这两个帐户正确预测英语被动与主动选择。为了解决这些问题，这项研究将着眼于形态句法的变化，在语言类型上是非常不同的英语：尤卡坦（玛雅）。这些研究将利用Yucatec的属性来区分以前研究的语言无法做到的可访问性帐户。这些研究也将有助于建立一个跨学科的研究计划，以场为基础的心理语言学。由于世界上大多数的语言是讲远离心理语言学实验室，这是至关重要的适应和应用心理语言学的方法，在现场条件下，参与者的招募是一个重要的问题和熟悉的“实验”的概念不能假设的变化的研究。该研究将采用两种类型的生产方法，回忆研究和视频描述任务，以及语法等级。产出研究是心理语言学家研究语言产出选择的主要方法，为说话者的产出提供定量数据。语法性评级是理论语言学家在田野调查中使用的主要方法。这种方法将被扩展到定量水平，使人们有可能研究交替的梯度偏好。通过使用这两种方法，结果的相关性和可访问性将增加两个研究界。除了与心理语言学研究的相关性外，这些研究还将填补尤卡坦语语法科学记录中的重大空白，因为尤卡坦语几乎没有句法变异的定量记录。这些数据将有助于区分尤卡坦语句法的竞争分析，并将有助于句法类型学。研究的成功完成将对几个学科产生潜在的变革性影响：对于心理语言学，它将使产生理论得到更广泛的语言数据集的测试。对于田野语言学来说，它将有助于为未来的田野工作提供方法论的储备，推动语言描述的最新发展。博士后研究员，研究生研究助理和本科生将有参与并成为基于场的心理语言学的新兴研究范式的专家的经验。他们将接受心理语言学理论以及心理语言学和实地工作方法（包括最先进的统计数据分析）的培训。母语顾问是土著社区的成员，他们将接受宝贵的语言培训。来自研究的声音文件将构成玛雅语句法变化的第一个大规模文件。所有数据都将存档并免费提供，以便对材料进行进一步研究。为了方便对其他未充分研究的语言进行类似的调查，所有实验刺激和脚本也将提供。