Perception and Production of Clitics

评论的感知和产生

• 批准号: 1729256
• 负责人: Alice Harris
• 金额: $ 23.16万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-01 至 2023-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1729256&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Perception; Production; Clitics

Why are there more languages that have suffixes than ones that have prefixes? Why do languages that have both prefixes and suffixes use the suffixes more? One explanation that has been suggested is that the beginnings of words are more salient and therefore more important Yet little research has been done on the relative ability of speakers to understand and produce prefixes in contrast to suffixes. Most prior research has been conducted on English; the little research on other languages is mostly on languages related to English, such as French or Spanish.The goals of this collaborative research project are to analyze processing and production differences among clitics occurring in different positions, and to test whether any differences are the same cross-linguistically. The research targets a language that is unrelated to English and other Indo-European languages: Udi, a member of the Nakh-Daghestanian language family. It examines both affixes and the precursors of affixes, clitics. Clitics are little words that are pronounced with a host word, similar to the way English 'will' can be pronounced with the subject of a verb: he'll go. Udi is unusual in having clitics that can occur in four different positions in the verb: at the end of verbs, before the verbs, between meaningful parts of the verb, and inside the root of the verb. Psycholinguistic experiments will compare the perception/production of clitics in different positions, and compare clitics in one position with suffixes occurring in the same position. Further, the researchers will compare these aspects of Udi with the same aspects of European Portuguese, another language with both affixes and clitics that can occur in various positions. This research is significant because it will inform an interpretation of the human ability to understand words and will apply this interpretation to typological differences among languages and the historical change from clitics to affixes. Researchers will work with an Udi literacy expert and will create materials based on their research that will aid in literacy efforts.

为什么有后缀的语言比有前缀的语言多？为什么既有前缀又有后缀的语言更多地使用后缀？一种解释是，单词的开头更突出，因此更重要。然而，与后缀相比，说话者理解和产生前缀的相对能力却很少有研究。以往的研究多以英语为对象，对其他语言的研究则以法语、西班牙语等与英语相关的语言为主。本次合作研究的目的是分析不同位置的语篇在加工和产出上的差异，并验证跨语言的差异是否相同。这项研究的目标是一种与英语和其他印欧语言无关的语言：乌迪语，它是纳克-达吉斯坦语系的一员。它考察了词缀和词缀的前体--附缀。Clitics是一个小单词，发音与一个主机词，类似于英语的方式'将'可以与动词的主题发音：他会去。Udi的不寻常之处在于它有可以出现在动词中四个不同位置的附点：在动词的末尾，在动词之前，在动词有意义的部分之间，以及在动词的词根内部。心理语言学实验将比较不同位置的附着词的感知/产生，并比较一个位置的附着词与出现在同一位置的后缀。此外，研究人员还将Udi的这些方面与欧洲葡萄牙语的相同方面进行比较，欧洲葡萄牙语是另一种既有词缀又有附着词的语言，可以出现在不同的位置。这项研究意义重大，因为它将为人类理解单词的能力提供解释，并将这种解释应用于语言之间的类型学差异以及从附着词到词缀的历史变化。研究人员将与Udi扫盲专家合作，并将根据他们的研究创建材料，以帮助扫盲工作。