Doctoral Dissertation Research: Language Ideology, Multilingualism, and Syntactic Variation in Albanian and Macedonian

博士论文研究：阿尔巴尼亚语和马其顿语的语言意识形态、多语言和句法变异

• 批准号: 1252218
• 负责人: Line Mikkelsen
• 金额: $ 1.4万
• 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: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-02-15 至 2015-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1252218&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Language; Ideology

Macedonian and Albanian share striking similarities in grammatical structure. Despite being very distant descendants from Indo-European (comparable to the difference between English and Persian), these languages share such similarity in grammar and phraseology that some sentences can be translated word-for-word, a phenomenon that specialists in Balkan languages argue to have resulted from a social system that encouraged mutual multilingualism among speakers of these languages for a period of centuries. Their surface similarities have been accounted for as an inventory of "Balkanisms" -- commonalities in word order, grammatical construction, and word building shared between Balkan languages as a result of contact between these languages and not due to inheritance from their respective linguistic predecessors. These findings, however, have not necessarily been mapped with cross-linguistically comparable theoretical descriptions that would connect them to broader research on how the human mind produces and comprehends language.Prendergast will examine three syntactic Balkanisms that recommend themselves to both socio-cultural linguistic investigation and theoretical syntactic description: 1) overt direct and indirect object doubling by a clitic pronoun; 2) relative clause head-marking; and 3) definite article omission in prepositional phrases. These syntactic Balkanisms share an orientation toward a generative syntactic theoretical primitive: the determiner phrase (DP).Prendergast will collect data in Albania and the Republic of Macedonia over six months on language use and social attitudes toward language among Macedonian- and Albanian-speakers by means of ethnographic interviewing and structured surveys gauging speakers' grammaticality judgments. He will seek to plot variation in these syntactic Balkanisms according to the dynamics of multilingual speaker contact (or lack thereof) in contemporary Republic of Macedonia, assessing whether speakers who continue traditional Balkan multilingualism differ in their underlying grammatical structures from speakers who participate in a new social model of Balkan monolingualism and ethnic segregation. Data on these variations then become the basis for a generative syntactic description of the Balkan DP.The results of this project will contribute to current theoretical syntactic research on the DP cross-linguistically. Prendergast seeks to demonstrate that there are "deep structural Balkanisms" important to understanding the process of mutually multilingual contact among speakers, a situation that has shaped the development of a considerable number of languages around the world. This project will also enhance the training of a graduate student.

马其顿语和阿尔巴尼亚语在语法结构上有着惊人的相似之处。尽管它们是印欧语系的后裔（与英语和波斯语之间的差异相比）非常遥远，但这些语言在语法和用语方面具有相似性，以至于一些句子可以逐字翻译，巴尔干语言专家认为，这种现象是由于几个世纪以来鼓励这些语言使用者相互使用多种语言的社会制度造成的。它们表面上的相似性被认为是“巴尔干主义”的清单——巴尔干语言之间在词序、语法结构和构词方面的共性是这些语言之间接触的结果，而不是由于从各自的语言前辈继承而来。然而，这些发现不一定与跨语言可比较的理论描述相联系，从而将它们与关于人类思维如何产生和理解语言的更广泛的研究联系起来。普伦德加斯特将研究三种句法巴尔干主义，这些巴尔干主义推荐自己用于社会文化语言调查和理论句法描述：1）通过附属代词公开直接和间接宾语双重； 2) 关系从句标题标记； 3）介词短语中定冠词的省略。这些句法巴尔干主义都有一个朝向生成句法理论原语的方向：限定词短语（DP）。普伦德加斯特将在六个月内收集阿尔巴尼亚和马其顿共和国的数据，了解马其顿语和阿尔巴尼亚语使用者的语言使用和对语言的社会态度，通过民族志访谈和结构化调查来衡量说话者的语法判断。他将根据当代马其顿共和国多语言说话者接触（或缺乏接触）的动态，寻求绘制这些句法巴尔干主义的变化，评估继续传统巴尔干多语制的说话者与参与巴尔干单语制和种族隔离新社会模式的说话者的潜在语法结构是否不同。这些变化的数据将成为巴尔干 DP 生成句法描述的基础。该项目的结果将有助于当前 DP 跨语言的理论句法研究。普伦德加斯特试图证明，“深层结构性巴尔干主义”对于理解说话者之间相互多语言接触的过程很重要，这种情况影响了世界各地相当多语言的发展。该项目还将加强研究生的培训。