International Research Fellowship Program: Evolution of Language Systems: A Comparative Study of Grammatical Change in English and Icelandic

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。国际研究奖学金项目使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行9至24个月的研究。该计划的奖励为联合研究提供了机会，并利用独特或互补的设施、专业知识和国外的实验条件。该奖项将支持Joel C. Wallenberg博士与冰岛大学Hoskuldur Thrainsson博士开展为期18个月的研究。这次合作继续深入研究现代冰岛语中一些复杂的语法结构，以及冰岛语和英语在其书面历史中的语法的详细比较。这个为期18个月的项目有以下三个主要目标：与冰岛语使用者进行一系列实验，重点是选择科学上重要的语法结构，收集和句法注释现代和历史冰岛文本数据库（语料库），以及对实验和书面数据进行详细的定性和定量分析。该项目通过对现代和历史英语和冰岛语的研究，调查自然语言语法和语言进化的中心问题。这两种语言非常相似，可以进行详细的比较，但在一些重要而有趣的方面又有所不同。虽然该项目包括对历史上的冰岛语和英语的广泛比较，但它主要关注的是已经在历史英语中存在的现代冰岛语现象，特别是？对象转变?或匆忙?（Wallenberg 2007, 2008）和？量词运动?（Light & Wallenberg 2008）。这两种现象都表明，两种语言的使用者都有一定程度的选择性，但由于普遍的语法限制，这种选择性受到了限制。这两种现象在被调查的两种语言中也遵循着不同的历史轨迹。冰岛语历时语料库的建设为语言变化和变化的定量和可复制研究创造了一个永久的公共资源。对语言稳定性和语言变化的内部和外部因素的调查揭示了儿童如何习得语言，人类语言能力如何处理来自说话者群体的统计输入，并为语言进化的动态与生物进化的动态之间的关系提供了更多的数据（e.g. Nowak 2006: chapter 13）。此外，对标注这样一个语料库所需的计算方法进行实验，可以进一步推进自然语言处理的一般研究（参见Dredze & Wallenberg 2008a， 2008b中的词性标注冰岛语）。最后，除了潜在的科学成果之外，英语与中世纪时期英格兰、爱尔兰和苏格兰的斯堪的纳维亚语之间的深刻语言接触表明，美国英语和现代冰岛语之间存在着共同的文化历史，在对早期英语和冰岛语的语法系统进行全面比较后，我们将更好地理解这一文化历史的细节。

0853114WallenbergThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support an eighteen-month research fellowship by Dr. Joel C. Wallenberg to work with Dr. Hoskuldur Thrainsson at the University of Iceland.This collaboration continues an in-depth study of a number of intricate grammatical constructions in modern Icelandic, as well as a detailed comparison of the grammar of Icelandic and English throughout their written histories. The 18 month project has the following three primary goals: to conduct a series of experiments with speakers of Icelandic focusing on a selection of scientifically important grammatical constructions, the collection and syntactic annotation of a database (?corpus?) of modern and historical Icelandic texts, and a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experimental and written data. The project investigates central questions of natural language syntax and language evolution through a study of modern and historical English and Icelandic. These two languages are similar enough to allow for a detailed comparison, but yet differ in important and interesting ways. While the project includes a broad comparison of historical Icelandic and English, it focuses primarily on phenomena of modern Icelandic that have already been shown to exist in historical English as well, particularly ?object shift? or ?scrambling? (Wallenberg 2007, 2008) and ?quantifier movement? (Light & Wallenberg 2008). Both of these phenomena show a degree of optionality for speakers in both languages, as well as limits on this optionality due to general grammatical constraints. Both phenomena have also followed different historical trajectories in the two languages under investigation. The construction of a diachronic corpus of Icelandic creates a permanent, public resource for quantitative and replicable studies of language variation and change over time. The investigation of internal and external factors in language stability and language change sheds light on how children acquire language, how the human language faculty processes statistical inputs from the population of speakers, and brings more data to bear on the relationship between the dynamics of language evolution and the dynamics of biological evolution (cf. e.g. Nowak 2006: Chapt. 13). Furthermore, experimentation in the computational methods necessary to annotate such a corpus could further advance general research in natural language processing (cf. part-of-speech-tagging Icelandic in Dredze & Wallenberg 2008a, 2008b). Finally, in addition to potential scientific gains, the profound language contact between English and the Scandinavian languages in England, Ireland, and Scotland during the medieval period points to a shared cultural history between American English and modern Icelandic, the details of which will be much better understood after a thorough comparison of the early English and Icelandic grammatical systems.