Doctoral Dissertation Research: Questions and answers in K'iche'

博士论文研究：Kiche 中的问题与解答

• 批准号: 1451628
• 负责人: Judith Tonhauser
• 金额: $ 0.84万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-02-01 至 2017-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1451628&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Questions; answers

Each human language is a complex system and the languages that are still spoken today exhibit a wide variety of complex structures. By examining linguistic properties of human languages, e.g., sentence structure and meaning, linguists discover fundamental properties common to all human languages. At the same time, linguistic research reveals the diversity of language and systematic explorations of a wide variety of languages are indispensable to understanding this diversity. Yet, most research in formal linguistics focuses on English and other well-studied European languages. While theoretical research on under-studied languages has been on the rise in the past 30 years, formal linguistic research on many topics is still hampered by very little data from a diverse range of languages being available. Such research thus leaves unaddressed questions about cross-linguistic universals and variation. Hence, additional theoretically well-informed studies in under-studied languages are needed in order to broaden our knowledge about human languages and to develop theories that can explain a wide range of facts about them. This project studies K'iche', an indigenous Mayan language of Guatemala, with the goal of exploring a central topic in the formal study of linguistic meaning, namely the interpretation of questions and answers. While there are some preliminary studies on this topic in K'iche', there is no in-depth study that looks at how different kinds of questions and their answers are expressed in this language. Thus, the research will contribute to the understanding of K'iche' grammar by significantly extending the limited previous work in these areas and at the same time facilitating an informed comparison between K'iche' and well-studied languages like English. To that end, a large component of the grant work involves collecting original linguistic data in Guatemala from native speakers of K'iche'. In addition, the research involves developing an analysis of the question-answer exchange in K'iche' in a mathematically precise theory of grammar with the goal of excelling not only in empirical breadth and but also in theoretical rigor. The project aims to explore whether theoretical models of questions and answers can account for the structure and interpretation of questions and answers in a typologically different language like K'iche'. For example, K'iche' differs from English in terms of having a "canonical" verb-initial word order and allowing word order changes based on discourse-related phenomena. Existing formal theories of discourse and of the question-answer exchange are predominantly modeled based on data from English. Thus, this research aims to bring theoretically interesting data from K'iche' to bear on the broader issue of modeling the grammar of questions and answers.

每一种人类语言都是一个复杂的系统，今天仍在使用的语言表现出各种各样的复杂结构。通过研究人类语言的语言特性，例如句子结构和意义，语言学家发现了所有人类语言共同的基本特性。同时，语言学研究揭示了语言的多样性，对各种语言的系统探索是理解这种多样性的必要条件。然而，大多数形式语言学的研究都集中在英语和其他研究得很好的欧洲语言上。虽然在过去的30年里，对未被充分研究的语言的理论研究一直在上升，但对许多主题的正式语言学研究仍然受到来自各种语言的很少数据的阻碍。这样的研究留下了关于跨语言共性和变异的未解决的问题。因此，为了扩大我们对人类语言的认识，并发展出能够解释有关语言的广泛事实的理论，需要对未被充分研究的语言进行额外的理论丰富的研究。该项目研究危地马拉的一种土著玛雅语言K'iche，目的是探索语言意义正式研究中的一个中心主题，即对问题和答案的解释。虽然在K‘iche’中有一些关于这个主题的初步研究，但没有深入研究如何用这种语言表达不同类型的问题及其答案。因此，这项研究将有助于理解K‘iche’语法，大大扩展了这些领域有限的先前工作，同时促进K‘iche’和像英语这样研究得很好的语言之间的比较。为此目的，赠款工作的很大一部分涉及从危地马拉母语为K‘iche’的人那里收集原始语言数据。此外，该研究还涉及在数学上精确的语法理论中对K‘iche’中的问答交换进行分析，其目标不仅是在经验广度上，而且在理论严谨性上都很出色。该项目旨在探索问题和答案的理论模型是否可以解释在类型学上不同的语言（如K'iche）中问题和答案的结构和解释。例如，汉语与英语的不同之处在于它有一个“规范的”动词词序，并允许词序根据与话语相关的现象而变化。现有的语篇和问答交换的形式理论主要是基于英语数据建模的。因此，本研究旨在将来自K‘iche’的理论上有趣的数据用于更广泛的问题建模和答案语法。