Doctoral Dissertation Research: Building and Interpreting Possession Sentences

博士论文研究：占有句子的构建和解释

• 批准号: 1324839
• 负责人: Gillian Gallagher
• 金额: $ 0.79万
• 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: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-07-15 至 2015-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1324839&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Building; Interpreting

Under the direction of Dr. Gillian Gallagher, Mr. Neil Myler will conduct linguistic fieldwork on two varieties of Quechua in order to deepen our understanding of possession sentences across languages. Possession sentences pose some long-standing puzzles for linguistic theory. In particular, their syntactic structure varies widely across languages. A minority of languages uses a transitive verb for possession (as does English- 'I have a sister'; 'I have a car'), but most use an intransitive verb corresponding to 'be', along with a preposition or a case-marker on one of the arguments. Such languages have constructions like 'at me is a sister', 'I am with a sister' or 'there is my sister', corresponding to 'I have a sister'. These facts raise two important questions for comparative syntax, which are the focus of this investigation: (i) what other syntactic properties of a language determine whether it has a transitive verb 'have' or not?; and (ii) how exactly do the many types of 'be' construction found cross-linguistically differ in their syntax and semantics? Mr. Myler will investigate these questions by eliciting judgments on the grammaticality and meaning of possession sentences from native speakers of two closely related Quechua dialects: the Bolivian dialect of Cochabamba and the Argentine dialect of Santiago del Estero. Cochabamba Quechua has three syntactically-distinguishable 'be'-based possession constructions, making it ideal for investigating question (ii). In addition, Santiago del Estero Quechua is a 'have' language, while Cochabamba Quechua is a 'be' language. Since the two dialects are otherwise very similar to each other, a direct comparison of the two should yield insight into question (i). As well as addressing these important theoretical questions, the project will make glossed transcriptions of the data available via a website, thus contributing to the description of Quechua languages and providing resources for future research on them. Finally, this award will enhance the training of a graduate student.

在Gillian Gallagher博士的指导下，Neil Myler先生将对两种不同的盖丘亚语进行语言实地考察，以加深我们对跨语言占有句的理解。占有句是语言学理论长期困扰的问题。具体地说，它们的句法结构在不同语言中差异很大。少数语言使用及物动词表示所有(英语也是如此--‘我有一个妹妹’；‘我有一辆车’)，但大多数语言使用与‘be’相对应的不及物动词，并在其中一个论元上加上介词或格标记。这类语言有这样的结构，如‘at me is a sys’，‘I’am with a sys‘或’There is my sys‘，对应于’我有一个妹妹‘。这些事实为比较句法提出了两个重要的问题，这也是本研究的重点：(I)一种语言的其他句法属性决定了它是否有及物动词Have？以及(Ii)在跨语言中发现的许多类型的Be结构在句法和语义上到底有什么不同？迈勒将从两种关系密切的盖丘亚语方言：玻利维亚方言科恰班巴和阿根廷方言圣地亚哥德尔埃斯特罗--引出母语人士对占有句的语法和意义的判断，以此研究这些问题。Cochabamba Quechua有三个句法上可区分的基于be的所有格结构，这使它成为研究问题(Ii)的理想选择。此外，圣地亚哥·德尔·埃斯特罗·盖丘亚语是一种“有”的语言，而科恰班巴·盖丘亚语是一种“BE”语言。由于这两种方言在其他方面非常相似，直接比较这两种方言应该会产生对问题(I)的洞察。除了解决这些重要的理论问题外，该项目还将通过一个网站提供数据的注释抄本，从而有助于描述克丘亚语，并为今后对这些语言的研究提供资源。最后，这个奖项将加强研究生的培养。