The Verbal Morpho-semantics and Clausal Architecture of Tlingit

该项目将对Tlingit语言（Lingít, /lin）进行详细的、理论性的实地考察。kít/)是阿拉斯加、不列颠哥伦比亚省和育空地区的一种高度濒危且未被充分研究的语言。该项目将重点关注语言中与时间和可能性表达相关的方面，以及语言中相当灵活的词序的本质。这个项目对专业语言学家和努力学习特林吉特语作为第二语言的社区成员都将产生重要的结果。鉴于特林吉特语处于高度濒危状态，这两个群体都将直接受益于收集新的特林吉特语数据。此外，对该项目中确定的具体语言现象的研究将对语言学理论的各个领域做出独特的重要贡献。例如，对特林吉特语词序和句子结构的调查有望为语言学家确立“隐蔽a -乱置”的存在，这是一种理论预测的语法过程，但迄今为止还没有明确的文献记录。此外，对Tlingit表达时间和可能性概念的语法手段的研究将为围绕语言在表达这些概念方面的差异程度的具体辩论提供信息，从而探索与人性和人类认知结构有关的深刻而长期的问题。除了这些技术成果之外，该项目还将推动正在进行的工作，以记录、维护和振兴世界各地越来越多的濒危语言，减轻到本世纪末将不可避免的灾难性语言死亡。这个项目将揭示微妙的语法概括，这对越来越多的将特林吉特语作为第二语言学习的人来说非常重要。此外，在这个项目中所做的数字录音和实地报告将被添加到保存在阿拉斯加遗产研究所和阿拉斯加本土语言档案馆的档案中，为未来的特林吉特人保留他们祖先的声音和语言。

This project will conduct detailed, theoretically-informed fieldwork upon the Tlingit language (Lingít, /lin.kít/), a highly endangered and understudied language indigenous to Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon. The project will focus upon aspects of the language related to the expression of time and possibility, as well as the nature of the language's rather flexible word order. This project will yield results of significance to both professional linguists and community members striving to learn Tlingit as a second language. Both groups will directly benefit from the collection of new Tlingit language data, given the language's status as highly endangered. In addition, study of the specific linguistic phenomena identified in this project will make distinct, important contributions to diverse areas of linguistic theory. For example, the investigation of word-order and sentence structure in Tlingit is expected to establish for linguists the existence of 'covert A-scrambling', a grammatical process whose existence is predicted by theory, but which has thus far not been definitively documented. Furthermore, study of the grammatical means by which Tlingit expresses the concepts of time and possibility will inform specific debates surrounding the extent to which languages vary in the expression of these concepts, thus probing deep and long-standing questions relating to human nature and the structure of human cognition.Beyond these technical results, this project will advance ongoing efforts to document, maintain and revitalize the growing number of endangered languages throughout the world, mitigating the inevitable and catastrophic language death that will occur by the end of this century. This project will uncover subtle grammatical generalizations of no small importance to the growing number of persons learning Tlingit as a second language. Moreover, the digital recordings and field reports made during this project will be added to the archives stored at the Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Alaska Native Language Archive, preserving for future Tlingit generations the voices and the words of their forebears.