Collaborative Research: Structure and Tone in Luyia

语言是如何以及为什么变化的？研究密切相关的语言可以告诉我们人类语言本质的重要细节，在一组语言中保持大多数语法属性不变，同时改变其他语法属性。了解这种变化的限制？这种差异在历史上是如何产生的？需要对一组相关语言的准确描述。Luyia是肯尼亚和乌干达的一组班图语，它的异质变体为研究语法中的这种微小变化提供了实验室。该项目将首次对四种文献不足的肯尼亚Luyia品种进行全面描述和正式分析：Bukusu，Logoori，Tiriki和Wanga。将为每种语言编写一系列专著，其中包括语法大纲、音调系统的详细描述、句法的深入研究、文本集和词典。Luyia的不同音调系统是这项工作的主要焦点。鲁雅声调有许多显著的特点，包括一个罕见的过程，通过这种过程，高声调在词中和词内传播。复杂的声调模式标志着动词时态之间的屈折变化，句法上的制约规则也存在于短语声调中。对这些过程的深入理解依赖于音系-句法界面理论，该理论关注的是什么样的句法信息可以被音系系统使用。本文将通过有针对性的聚合引出法，系统地考察这些在理论上和类型学上都很有趣的鲁雅声调特征。该项目以团队为基础，数据丰富，理论上知情的语言描述和分析。Luyia团队借鉴了多个子领域的语言学家的专业知识，并汇集了美国和非洲的学者，丰富了每个群体的语言学实践。该项目编写的专著、文本集和词典将在网上免费提供，相关材料将在适当的地方社区传播。

How and why do languages vary? Studying closely related languages can tell us important details of the nature of human language, by holding most grammatical properties constant while varying others, across a set of languages. Understanding the limits on such variation?and how such differences arise historically?requires an accurate description of a group of related languages. The heterogeneous varieties of Luyia, a group of Bantu languages of Kenya and Uganda, provide a laboratory for investigating such micro-variation in grammar. This project will produce the first comprehensive descriptions and formal analyses of four underdocumented Kenyan varieties of Luyia: Bukusu, Logoori, Tiriki, and Wanga. A series of monographs will be developed for each language which include a grammatical outline, a detailed description of the tonal system, in-depth studies in syntax, a collection of texts, and a dictionary. The diverse tone systems of Luyia are a major focus of this work. Luyia tone has many notable features, including a rare process by which High tones spread leftward across and within words. Complex tonal patterns mark inflectional differences among verb tenses, and syntactically conditioned rules are also found in the phrasal tonology. A solid understanding of these processes bears crucially on theories of the phonology-syntax interface, which are concerned with what kind of syntactic information can be used by a phonological system. These theoretically and typologically interesting features of Luyia tone will be systematically investigated through targeted paradigmatic elicitation. This project models team-based, data-rich and theoretically informed linguistic description and analysis. The Luyia team draws on the expertise of linguists in multiple subfields and brings together US-based and Africa-based scholars, enriching the practice of linguistics by each group. The monographs, text collections, and dictionaries produced by the project will be made freely available online, and relevant materials will be disseminated within the appropriate local communities.