Karuk [kyh] and Yurok [yur] syntax and text documentation

Karuk [kyh] 和 Yurok [yur] 语法和文本文档

• 批准号: 1065620
• 负责人: Andrew Garrett
• 金额: $ 15.44万
• 依托单位: University of California-Berkeley
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-06-15 至 2014-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1065620&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Karuk; kyh; Yurok; yur; syntax

This project will analyze and collect new information about syntax and texts in two indigenous languages of northern California, Karuk [kyh] and Yurok [yur]; each language has a handful of (elderly) speakers. Existing scholarly literature carefully describes the pronunciation and word formation patterns of both languages, but discourse and word order patterns have attracted relatively little attention. This project will investigate these topics through work with speakers, analysis of existing published and unpublished texts (collected by several linguists over the 20th century), and creation of syntactically annotated text corpora for both languages. This project is important scientifically for three reasons. First, while indigenous California was linguistically the densest and most diverse area of its size in the western hemisphere, its languages have mostly not been analyzed in syntactic detail. Second, over the last 1000-2000 years there has been intensive cultural interaction between neighboring Karuk and Yurok, but its linguistic effects have not been carefully studied. Language contact effects tend to be especially conspicuous in syntax; preliminary work suggests that the syntactic correspondences between these two languages will cast new light on the mechanisms of contact-induced language change. A third reason is methodological: it is highly unusual to build syntatically annotated corpora of "small" languages; the results are expected to show researchers throughout the world that this approach can yield interesting syntactic generalizations. More broadly, this project will be of direct benefit for Karuk and Yurok language learning. Learners in both communities have a good knowledge of vocabulary, pronunciation, and word formation. But they are less familiar with the distinctive syntactic patterns of their heritage languages, and naturally tend to use English patterns. This research will allow for the writing of grammatical descriptions that are useful for learners and teachers, emphasizing aspects of each language that differ from English, and reinforcing linguistic and cultural revival.

该项目将分析和收集有关北加州两种土著语言 Karuk [kyh] 和 Yurok [yur] 语法和文本的新信息；每种语言都有少数（老年）使用者。现有的学术文献仔细描述了两种语言的发音和构词模式，但语篇和词序模式引起的关注相对较少。该项目将通过与演讲者合作、分析现有已发表和未发表的文本（由 20 世纪的几位语言学家收集）以及为两种语言创建句法注释文本语料库来研究这些主题。该项目具有重要的科学意义，原因有三个。首先，虽然加州原住民在西半球的语言上是最密集和最多样化的地区，但其语言大多没有进行句法细节分析。其次，在过去的1000-2000年里，邻近的卡鲁克和尤洛克之间存在着密集的文化互动，但其语言影响尚未得到仔细研究。语言接触效应在句法上尤其明显；初步工作表明，这两种语言之间的句法对应将为接触引起的语言变化机制提供新的线索。第三个原因是方法论上的：构建“小”语言的句法注释语料库是非常不寻常的；预计结果将向世界各地的研究人员表明，这种方法可以产生有趣的句法概括。更广泛地说，该项目将为卡鲁克语和尤洛克语的语言学习带来直接好处。这两个社区的学习者都对词汇、发音和构词法有很好的了解。但他们不太熟悉其传统语言的独特句法模式，自然倾向于使用英语模式。这项研究将允许编写对学习者和教师有用的语法描述，强调每种语言与英语不同的方面，并加强语言和文化的复兴。