Doctoral Dissertation Research: Using Naso Verbal Art to discover general phonological and grammatical principles

博士论文研究：利用 Naso Verbal Art 发现一般语音和语法原则

• 批准号: 1465235
• 负责人: Anthony Woodbury
• 金额: $ 1.51万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 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: 2015-07-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1465235&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Using; Naso

This grant supports documentation and research on Naso (also known as Teribe), an endangered Chibchan language spoken in the mountainous region of Panama that borders Costa Rica. There are approximately 500 speakers of Naso, but only a few elders are fluent users of a special form of Naso called tlokwo rönge 'profound words'. In tlokwo rönge, pairs of rhyming words are the basis of couplets that convey metaphors relating to local, traditional indigenous life. The grammatical and sound structure of this poetic register has not been documented before. Other Chibchan languages spoken nearby (Bribri, Cabécar, and Kuna) are known to have similarly structured poetic language.Methods used in this project will include elicitation of phonological and grammatical properties of the 'profound words', and interviews recording speakers' intuitions about the meaning, performative context, and knowledge surrounding the origins and areal diffusion of the words. The latter point makes the study relevant to the study of difrasismos, or poetic couplets, found across Mesoamerican languages.The broader questions addressed in this project are: What are the motivations for using parallelism in verbal art across languages of the world? What do these structures tell us about the human mind? While definite answers are not assumed to result from this project, the case study of Naso verbal art aims to advance the scientific literature by building on theoretic models within phonology and poetics. This project responds to a need to document aesthetic and rhetorical properties of natural discourse, as motivated by the apparent loss of these structures in situations of language shift.

这笔拨款用于记录和研究纳索语（也被称为Teribe），这是一种濒临灭绝的奇布坎语，在巴拿马与哥斯达黎加接壤的山区使用。大约有500人说纳索语，但只有少数老人能流利地使用纳索语的一种特殊形式，称为tlokwo rönge“深刻的话语”。在tlokwo rönge中，成对的押韵词是对联的基础，传达了与当地传统土著生活有关的隐喻。这种诗歌语域的语法和声音结构以前没有文献记载。附近使用的其他奇布坎语（Bribri, cab<s:1>和Kuna）也有类似的诗意语言结构。在这个项目中使用的方法将包括“深刻的词”的语音和语法特性的引出，以及采访记录说话者对意义的直觉，表演背景，以及围绕单词的起源和区域传播的知识。后一点使得这项研究与跨中美洲语言的对联体诗研究相关。在这个项目中更广泛的问题是：在世界上的语言艺术中使用并行的动机是什么？这些结构告诉我们关于人类思维的什么？虽然这个项目没有给出明确的答案，但对纳索语语言艺术的案例研究旨在通过建立在音韵学和诗学的理论模型上来推进科学文献。该项目回应了记录自然话语的美学和修辞特性的需要，因为在语言转换的情况下这些结构的明显丧失。