Determining the suppressibility of functional categories in second-language acquisition: from Spanish to Palenquero

确定第二语言习得中功能类别的抑制性：从西班牙语到帕伦克罗

• 批准号: 1357155
• 负责人: John Lipski
• 金额: $ 8.99万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-03-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1357155&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Determining; suppressibility; functional; categories; second

Are some languages easier to learn than others? This question, one that most linguists would find naive, is frequently heard among would-be language learners. A phenomenon often associated with more "difficult" languages is grammatical agreement, e.g. verb conjugation and noun-adjective gender and number, whose forms and rules seem to represent a net increase in complexity over languages that lack agreement. And yet, as one scholar remarks, "Non-native speakers [...] will readily appreciate this demand. But most native speakers will hardly be aware that it exists at all; to them [...] agreement usually comes for free." But does it? And if so, how can systems that stymie learners be so easy for native speakers? In principle, the most effective way to determine the real-time complexity of grammatical agreement would be to "turn it off" and see whether speakers experience any sort of "relief." An integral component of language such as agreement cannot be voluntarily deactivated, but given the proper combination of languages and an appropriate population of native speakers and learners it may be possible to indirectly explore the seemingly paradoxical fact that agreement appears effortless for native speakers but burdensome for all but the most proficient learners.This research project focuses on bilingual speakers of two languages with highly similar vocabularies and sentence structures, one of which exhibits several forms of agreement and the other of which does not. The languages are Spanish and the creole language Palenquero, spoken in the Afro-Colombian village of San Basilio de Palenque. Although they are not mutually intelligible, Palenquero grammar is in many respects a proper subset of Spanish, lacking grammatical inflection on nouns, adjectives, and verbs and the accompanying agreement. In order to speak Palenquero without interference from Spanish, the bilingual speaker has to suppress grammatical agreement while producing essentially the same noun and verb phrases with the same basic words. Recent language-revitalization efforts have resulted in a cohort of native Spanish speakers who have acquired Palenquero as a second language. This study will include psycholinguistic experiments with first- and second-language speakers of Palenquero to test the suppressibility of agreement. In addition, by demonstrating that historically stigmatized languages can play a crucial role in addressing significant issues in linguistics, this study will aid in efforts to legitimize other languages and peoples struggling for acceptance.

有些语言比其他语言更容易学习吗？这个问题，一个大多数语言学家会觉得幼稚的问题，经常在想要学习语言的人中听到。一个通常与更“困难”的语言相关的现象是语法一致性，例如动词变位和名词-形容词性和数，其形式和规则似乎代表了缺乏一致性的语言的复杂性的净增加。然而，正如一位学者所说，“非母语人士[...]会很乐意接受这个要求。但大多数母语人士几乎不会意识到它的存在;对他们来说，[...]协议通常是免费的。“真的吗？如果是这样的话，那些阻碍学习者的系统怎么会对母语者如此容易呢？原则上，确定语法一致性的实时复杂性的最有效方法是“关闭它”，看看说话者是否体验到任何形式的“解脱”。“语言的一个组成部分，如协议，不能自愿停用，但是，如果语言的适当组合和适当的母语使用者和学习者的人口，则可能间接地探索看似矛盾的事实，即对于母语使用者来说，一致似乎毫不费力，但对于除了最熟练的学习者之外的所有学习者来说，都是负担。词汇和句子结构，其中一个表现出几种形式的协议，而另一个则没有。语言是西班牙语和克里奥尔语帕伦克罗，在非洲裔哥伦比亚村庄圣巴西利奥德帕伦克使用。虽然它们不能相互理解，但帕伦克罗语法在许多方面是西班牙语的一个适当子集，缺乏名词，形容词和动词的语法变化以及伴随的一致性。为了在不受西班牙语干扰的情况下讲帕伦克罗语，双语者必须抑制语法一致性，同时用相同的基本单词产生基本相同的名词和动词短语。最近的语言复兴努力已经导致一批母语为西班牙语的人将帕伦克罗语作为第二语言。这项研究将包括心理语言学实验与第一和第二语言的帕伦克罗测试的抑制性协议。此外，通过证明历史上被污名化的语言可以在解决语言学中的重大问题方面发挥至关重要的作用，这项研究将有助于使其他语言合法化和努力争取被接受的民族。