Investigations in the Semantics of Kiowa, a Native American language of Oklahoma

语言最重要的用途是人与人之间的交流，信息的传递是必不可少的。这种传递依赖于说话者和听者知道单词和单词部分的意思，以及这些部分如何组合成适合对话的有意义的句子。这种知识被称为语言的语义。研究人员探索语义学，以探索个体文化和整个人类物种中知识、文化和认知的本质。理解语言元素的微妙含义对语言学习也很重要。这项研究将记录基奥瓦语的语义，这是俄克拉荷马州基奥瓦部落成员使用的一种严重濒危的语言。包括基奥瓦人在内的许多美洲土著部落都建立了一些项目，通过教学和语言巢穴项目来保护和振兴部落语言。美国国会于1990年通过了《美洲原住民语言法案》，将承认美洲原住民语言的独特地位和重要性制定为政策。该项目的更广泛影响包括支持基奥瓦人的复兴，因为一些文档将作为教学材料双重使用。此外，该项目将汇集基奥瓦的教师，并将包括土著研究生研究人员，扩大社区成员和学者对语言科学的参与。该项目由一位语言学家领导，他也是部落成员，将对基奥瓦语义学进行深入调查。语义学是语言的重要组成部分，但语言学家还没有深入而精确地全面记录任何语言的语义学，因为这样做的理论框架是最近才发展起来的。这个项目将应用这个语言文档框架，以揭示对基奥瓦语言至关重要的现象的语义。调查人员将从母语人士那里获得语言判断，这可以梳理出意思的微妙方面，而这些方面往往是说话者无法用文字定义的。该项目还将记录和检查记录自然语言使用的新文本，特别是在目前可用的基奥瓦文本未充分代表的文化领域。基奥瓦语法包括形式语义感兴趣的多个领域，如证据性、情态、合并、量化和程度，所有这些也是学习者需要掌握的重要领域。这个项目将产生一个参考语法和教学材料，通过涵盖教师和研究人员仍然知之甚少的语义领域，将极大地帮助这些项目。这个参考语法也将作为其他美洲原住民语言研究人员的手册，特别是那些没有在这个研究框架中受过训练的人。这项研究将为研究人员提供新的见解，以了解除基奥瓦语之外的许多语言中发生的数十种现象。在此过程中，它将再次强调美洲原住民语言对语言学的长期贡献，即对人类语言可能性的科学理解，从而更深入地了解人类思维的可能性。

The most important use of language is communication between people, where the transmission of information is essential. This transmission relies on speakers and listeners knowing what the words and parts of words mean, and how those parts combine to make meaningful sentences that fit in a conversation. That knowledge is called the semantics of a language. Researchers explore semantics to probe the nature of knowledge, culture, and cognition within individual cultures and throughout the human species as a whole. Understanding the subtle meaning of linguistic elements is also important for language learning. This study will document the semantics of the Kiowa language, a severely endangered language spoken by members of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma. Many Native American tribes, including the Kiowa have established programs to preserve and revitalize tribal languages through teaching and language-nest programs. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. Broader impacts of this project include support for Kiowa revitalization, as some documentation will have dual use as teaching materials. Also, this project will bring together teachers of Kiowa and will include Native graduate researchers, broadening participation in linguistic science both by community members and academics. Led by a linguist who is also a tribal member, this project will conduct an in-depth investigation into Kiowa semantics. Semantics forms a crucial component of language, but linguists have not thoroughly documented any language's semantics with depth and precision, because the theoretical framework to do so was only recently developed. This project will apply this framework of language documentation, in order to uncover the semantics of phenomena crucial to the Kiowa language. The investigators will elicit language judgments from native speakers of the language, which can tease apart subtle aspects of meaning that are often impossible for speakers to define with words. The project will also record and examine new texts that document naturalistic language use, especially in cultural domains under-represented by currently available Kiowa texts. Kiowa grammar includes multiple areas of interest to formal semantics, such as evidentiality, modality, incorporation, quantification, and degree, all of which are also important areas for learners to acquire. This project will result in a reference grammar and teaching materials that will greatly aid these programs by covering the areas in semantics that remain poorly understood by teachers and researchers. This reference grammar will also serve as a manual for researchers of other Native American languages, especially those who are not trained in this research framework. This study will offer new insight for researchers on dozens of phenomena that occur in many languages besides Kiowa. In doing so, it will re-emphasize the longstanding contribution of Native American languages to linguistics, a scientific understanding of what is possible in human language, and thus a deeper understanding of what is possible in the human mind.