Perception and Production of Clitics

为什么有后缀的语言比有前缀的语言多？为什么同时拥有前缀和后缀的语言更多地使用后缀？有一种解释是，单词的开头更突出，因此更重要。然而，关于说话者理解和产生前缀与后缀的相对能力的研究很少。大多数先前的研究都是针对英语进行的；关于其他语言的少量研究主要是关于与英语相关的语言，如法语或西班牙语。这个合作研究项目的目的是分析不同位置的政治人物在加工和生产上的差异，并检验这些差异是否在跨语言上是相同的。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：乌地语，它是纳卡-达吉斯坦语系的一员。它既检查词缀，也检查词缀的前体，即修饰语。Clitics是与主词一起发音的小词，类似于英语中的will与动词的主语一起发音：he'll go。Udi的不同之处在于，它的限定词可以出现在动词的四个不同位置：动词末尾、动词前面、动词有意义的部分之间和动词词根内部。心理语言学实验将比较不同位置的词缀的感知/产生，并将同一位置词缀与同一位置词缀进行比较。此外，研究人员将把乌地语的这些方面与欧洲葡萄牙语的相同方面进行比较，后者是另一种具有词缀和限定词的语言，可以出现在不同的位置。这项研究具有重要意义，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差异以及从词缀到词缀的历史变化。研究人员将与乌地扫盲专家合作，并将根据他们的研究制作有助于扫盲工作的材料。

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.