NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI) for FY 2013 in New Zealand

这项行动资助加州大学圣地亚哥分校的Scott Seyfarth于2013年夏天在新西兰克赖斯特彻奇的坎特伯雷大学开展社会、行为和经济科学领域的研究项目。这个项目的题目是“新西兰英语中元音变化的基于使用的因素”。主持会议的科学家是伊丽莎白·休谟。该项目使用来自坎特伯雷大学的大型历史语音语料库的数据来研究新西兰英语元音变化的原因。语料库正在评估使用变量对新西兰英语元音集中和前元音移位的贡献，如单词可预测性、不同元音类型的概率和近同音异义词的突出性。这些因素已经被证明会影响日常讲话中的元音发音，因此，我们的目标是评估它们是否也可能影响元音在长期变化过程中的变化，或者这些变化是否能更好地由社会语言学分析来解释。该项目为上个世纪新西兰英语的元音系统类型学、语音类别维护以及语音和音系学方面的学术研究做出了贡献。EAPSI奖学金的广泛影响包括为研究员提供美国以外的第一手研究经验；介绍该地区的科学、科学政策和科学基础设施；以及对社会、文化和语言的了解。这些活动符合美国国家科学基金会的目标，即在其科学家、工程师和教育工作者的职业生涯早期培养国际合作，从而确保美国科学劳动力具有全球意识。此外，这项研究促进了全球英语声音系统研究的交流，包括新西兰语言、大脑和行为研究所的多学科、国际语言学和认知研究人员之间的交流。研究结果将为该研究所的新西兰英语起源项目做出贡献，并将与更广泛的语言学界分享。

This action funds Scott Seyfarth of the University of California, San Diego to conduct a research project in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences area during the summer of 2013 at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The project title is "Usage-Based Factors for Vowel Change in New Zealand English." The host scientist is Elizabeth Hume.This project uses data from a large historical speech corpus hosted at the University of Canterbury to study causes for vowel change in New Zealand English. The corpus is being evaluated for the contribution of usage variables, such as word predictability, the probabilities of different vowel types, and the salience of near-homophones, to vowel centralization and the front vowel shift in New Zealand English. These factors have been shown to influence vowel articulation in everyday speech, and so the goal is to assess whether they may also have influenced the long-term vowel changes in progress, or whether the changes are better accounted for by sociolinguistic analysis. The project contributes to scholarship on vowel system typology, phonetic category maintenance, and the phonetics and phonology of New Zealand English over the last century.Broader impacts of an EAPSI fellowship include providing the Fellow a first-hand research experience outside the U.S.; an introduction to the science, science policy, and scientific infrastructure of the respective location; and an orientation to the society, culture and language. These activities meet the NSF goal to educate for international collaborations early in the career of its scientists, engineers, and educators, thus ensuring a globally aware U.S. scientific workforce. Furthermore, this research promotes the exchange of work being done on the sound systems of global Englishes, including among the multi-disciplinary, international linguistics and cognition researchers at the New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain, and Behavior. The results of the research will contribute to the Origins of New Zealand English Project at the Institute, and will be shared with the wider linguistics community.