Locality, markedness and phonetic factors in speaker knowledge of non-local ejective phonotactics in South Bolivian Quechua

南玻利维亚克丘亚语非局部喷射语音学知识中的局部性、标记性和语音因素

• 批准号: 1222700
• 负责人: Gillian Gallagher
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-08-15 至 2017-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1222700&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Locality; markedness; phonetic; factors; speaker

This project investigates the knowledge that native speakers have about the sound structures in their language. Languages differ in what sounds they use, and one of the structural properties of a language is the set of sounds that that language uses. Within a language, some combinations of the sounds of that language may not exist. For example, English has a sound 't' and a sound 'l', but the combination 'tl' does not exist at the beginning of a word; there are words like 'tad' and words like 'lad', but no words like 'tlad'. Speakers are generally aware of absent combinations of this type and find that they sound odd or foreign. This project investigates two main questions about speaker knowledge of non-existing structures: (1) Do speakers of a language find certain unattested structures more strange than others, and do these asymmetries correlate with which structures are more commonly found in the world's languages? (2) Do speakers notice only very specific combinations of sounds that are unattested, or do they make broad generalizations about the types of sounds that may not combine?These questions are addressed by a series of experiments conducted by Dr. Gillian Gallagher in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with speakers of South Bolivian Quechua, a language with many systematic combinatorial restrictions on its sounds. The project contributes knowledge and documentation of the sound structures of this indigenous language, which will be made publicly available. The project also trains graduate students to carry out experimental work with indigenous languages.This research contributes to understanding how humans make generalizations in the course of learning, a question central not only to linguistics but to the study of cognition more generally. The available learning data (e.g., the words of a language) are often compatible with multiple generalizations; this project investigates what criteria help humans choose between these possible generalizations in a manner that is consistent across learners.

这个项目调查了母语者对他们语言中声音结构的了解。语言的不同在于它们使用的声音，语言的结构属性之一就是语言使用的声音集。在一种语言中，该语言的某些语音组合可能不存在。例如，英语有一个音't'和一个音'l'，但组合'tl'不存在于单词的开头;有像'tad'这样的单词和像'lad'这样的单词，但没有像'tlad'这样的单词。说话者通常会意识到这种类型的组合不存在，并发现它们听起来很奇怪或陌生。本项目主要研究两个关于说话人对不存在结构的认识的问题：（1）一种语言的说话人是否会发现某些未经证实的结构比其他结构更奇怪，这些不对称性是否与世界语言中更常见的结构相关？(2)说话者是只注意到未经证实的非常特定的声音组合，还是对可能无法联合收割机组合的声音类型进行了广泛的概括？Gillian Gallagher博士在玻利维亚的科恰班巴对南玻利维亚克丘亚语的使用者进行了一系列实验，解决了这些问题。该项目提供了关于这一土著语言的健全结构的知识和文献，并将向公众提供。该项目还培训研究生用土著语言进行实验工作，这项研究有助于了解人类在学习过程中如何进行概括，这不仅是语言学的核心问题，也是更广泛的认知研究的核心问题。可用的学习数据（例如，一种语言的单词）通常与多种概括兼容;该项目研究了什么标准可以帮助人类在这些可能的概括之间进行选择，从而使学习者之间保持一致。