Doctoral Dissertation Research: Computing agreement in a mixed system - A psycholinguistic comparison of subject and object agreement

这个项目调查了在印地语中与产生口头协议有关的言语错误，印地语是一种广泛使用的语言，具有复杂的动词协议系统。说母语通常感觉不是一项特别困难或要求很高的任务：在大多数情况下，成年人这样做时没有遇到任何明显的困难。尽管如此，许多对语言产生的研究表明，这是一项高度复杂的认知任务，将抽象的概念转化为我们可以用嘴或手交流的语言信息需要许多心理过程。了解这些心理过程的性质对于理解如何开发更好的语言障碍治疗方法以及开发更复杂的自然语言技术都是重要的。本项目通过调查印地语中的言语错误，有助于更好地了解语言生产是如何进行的。言语错误是洞察自然语言产生的最重要来源之一。然而，大多数关于语言产生过程中的言语错误的研究都集中在英语上，这可能限制了本研究的范围。本项目通过调查印地语中的语音错误来填补我们知识的空白，印地语是一种语法性质与英语非常不同的语言。此外，本项目增加了印地语在心理语言学研究中的能见度。在语言产生和理解的心理语言学研究中，印地语的研究仍然很少，尽管它有许多独特的语法特性，而且它是世界上第三大口语，全世界有超过5亿人说印地语，仅美国就有超过50万人说印地语。以前对欧洲语言的研究表明，在某些语法环境中，说话者有时会出现动词一致错误。例如，在‘The Key to the CABACKETS IS RUSTED’这句话中，说英语的人有时会产生错误的复数形式‘are’，而不是正确的is，这是由于受到复数名词‘Cabinets’的干扰。研究表明，这种干扰对“分心”名词--“橱柜”的结构特性高度敏感。然而，使语言表达突出并可能在语言产生过程中造成干扰的确切结构属性并未得到很好的理解。印地语可以帮助阐明这一点。与其他被研究的语言不同，印地语有一个“混合”的一致系统：在某些上下文中，动词与主语一致(如在英语中)，在另一些上下文中，动词与宾语一致。在这里，研究人员将使用两种方法--口语产生范式和二元选择一致范式--进行结构化实验，以确定印地语使用者在主语一致配置和宾语一致配置中产生动词一致错误的情况。通过比较主语一致和宾语一致的偏误模式，本研究将揭示是什么因素使语言表达在语言产生过程中的认知突显。这一结果将对开发协议产生模式的心理语言学家和对说话者获得的关于母语的语法概括感兴趣的语言学家感兴趣。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project investigates speech errors associated with the production of verbal agreement in Hindi, a widely-spoken language with a complex verb agreement system. Speaking one's native language does not usually feel like a particularly difficult or demanding task: in most situations adults do this without experiencing any noticeable difficulty. Despite this, much research into language production has shown that it is a highly complex cognitive task, and that there are many mental processes involved in translating an abstract idea to a linguistic message that we can communicate with our mouths or hands. Understanding the nature of these mental processes is important both for understanding how to develop better treatments for language disorders, as well as for developing more sophisticated natural language technology. The present project contributes to a better understanding of how language production proceeds by investigating speech errors in Hindi. Speech errors provide one of the most important sources of insight into natural language production. However, the majority of research into speech errors during language production is focused on English, potentially limiting the scope of this research. The present project fills a gap in our knowledge by investigating speech errors in Hindi, a language that has very different grammatical properties than English. In addition, the present project increases the visibility of Hindi for psycholinguistic research. Hindi remains highly understudied in psycholinguistic research on language production and comprehension, despite its many unique grammatical properties and the fact that it is the third most spoken language in the world, with over half a billion speakers worldwide and over half a million in the United States alone.Previous research on European languages has shown that speakers will sometimes produce verb agreement errors in certain grammatical contexts. For example, in the sentence 'the key to the cabinets is rusty', English speakers will sometimes produce the incorrect plural form 'are' instead of the correct is due to interference from the plural noun 'cabinets'. Research has shown that this interference is highly sensitive to the structural properties of the 'distractor' noun--'cabinets'. However, the precise structural properties that make a linguistic expression prominent and likely to create interference during language production are not well understood. Hindi can help shed light on this. Unlike other studied languages, Hindi has a 'mixed' agreement system: in some contexts, the verb agrees with the subject (as in English), and in others it agrees with the object. Here, the researchers will use structured experiments utilizing two methodologies--the spoken production paradigm and the binary choice agreement paradigm--to identify the circumstances under which Hindi speakers produce errors in verb agreement in both subject agreement configurations and object agreement configurations. In comparing error patterns for subject agreement and object agreement, this research will shed light on what factors make linguistic expressions cognitively prominent during language production. The results will be of interest to psycholinguists developing models of agreement production and to linguists interested in the grammatical generalizations that speakers acquire about their native language.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.