EAPSI: Do Abstract Syntactic Representations Help Adult Second Language Learners Acquire Novel Word Types?

EAPSI：抽象句法表征是否有助于成人第二语言学习者获得新的单词类型？

• 批准号: 1614233
• 负责人: Karen Clothier
• 金额: $ 0.54万
• 依托单位: Clothier Karen K
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-06-15 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1614233&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Do; Abstract; Syntactic; Representations

Some words do not directly translate into other languages. For example, where an English speaker would say either "John heard that Bill praised himself/him," depending on who is being praised, a Japanese speaker would say roughly "John-ga Bill-wa praised self heard-that," and mean either John or Bill was being praised. Him, himself, and the Japanese self are examples of anaphora, words that refer back to already-mentioned linguistic information (e.g. Bill or John). The use of anaphora is partly constrained by universal, syntactic principles, but also language-specific rules. This project investigates whether learners can develop native-like understanding of these cross-linguistically varied constructions from mere exposure, and if so what information is relevant and influential. This project, conducted in collaboration with Dr. Hajime Ono at Tsuda College, will form a cross-linguistic data-set that will allow the researchers to better understand the linguistic factors that enhance or reduce adults' ability to learn new words and grammatical constructions. Results from this project should provide insight into the kind of information that is especially relevant or influential in helping adults learn a new language. This project seeks to better understand the nature of language learning mechanisms, and whether abstract syntactic representations can be used to acquire the correct interpretations of novel anaphora. Anaphora in both Japanese and English are constrained by universal principles, but language-specific parameters must also be learned. This project uses a novel language learning task developed by the awardee to test if the learning mechanism can track repeated co-occurrences of a word-form, syntactic representation, and context-based interpretations in order to map that word-form to the correct anaphora type, which will increase our understanding of the role of syntactic representations in the language acquisition process.This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.

有些词不能直接翻译成其他语言。例如，英语使用者会说“John heard that Bill promoted himself/him”，这取决于谁被表扬，日语使用者会大致说“John-ga Bill-wa promoted self heard-that”，意思是约翰或比尔被表扬。他、他自己和日本人的自我都是回指的例子，回指的是已经提到的语言信息（例如比尔或约翰）。 回指的使用一方面受到普遍的句法原则的制约，另一方面也受到语言特有规则的制约。本研究旨在探讨学习者是否能从单纯的接触中发展出对这些跨语言差异结构的母语般的理解，以及如果是的话，哪些信息是相关的和有影响力的。该项目与津田大学的Hajime Ono博士合作进行，将形成一个跨语言数据集，使研究人员能够更好地了解增强或降低成年人学习新单词和语法结构的能力的语言因素。从这个项目的结果应该提供深入了解的信息，特别是相关的或有影响力的，在帮助成年人学习一门新的语言。本项目旨在更好地理解语言学习机制的本质，以及抽象的句法表征是否可以用来获得对新颖回指的正确理解。日语和英语中的回指都受到普遍原则的约束，但也必须学习特定语言的参数。这个项目使用一个由获奖者开发的新颖的语言学习任务来测试学习机制是否可以跟踪单词形式的重复共现，句法表示和基于上下文的解释，以便将单词形式映射到正确的回指类型，这将增加我们对句法表征在语言习得过程中的作用的理解。东亚和太平洋暑期学院的这个奖项该项目支持美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和日本科学促进会共同资助。