Doctoral Dissertation Grant: Documentation and Analysis of a Typologically Uncommon Maimai Language

博士论文资助：类型学上不常见的麦麦语言的记录和分析

• 批准号: 1826767
• 负责人: Matthew Dryer
• 金额: $ 1.87万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Buffalo
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-07-01 至 2020-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1826767&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Grant; Documentation; Analysis

New Guinea, a large island north of Australia, makes up approximately 2% of the total land area of the world. Despite its size, it also contains roughly 20% (over 1,000) of the world's languages. For a vast majority of these languages, there exists no documentation. In addition, many of the languages of New Guinea are critically endangered, due in large part to the incursion of Tok Pisin, which is an English-based creole that serves as a lingua franca. Given the fact that young children are ceasing to learn heritage languages in lieu of Tok Pisin, many of the languages of New Guinea are likely to be extinct by the end of the century. The documentation and description of these languages can have a large impact for both the scientific study of language. From a scientific standpoint, the languages of New Guinea exhibit features that are rare among the languages of the world, such as the use of verbs in functions which are typologically unusual; forms of word-formation that were previously unattested; and complex strings of consonants. Understanding how these linguistic systems work can inform how languages change over time, and how populations have moved around the world. For the communities which speak these languages, the documentation can potentially represent the only record of their language and the knowledge that they contain. Due to many of these languages' endangered status, documentation and description must be undertaken now, or they will be lost forever. A broader impact of the work that will be completed is the dissertation and concomitant PhD that the researcher will obtain. All data collected will be archived in PARADISEC, an archive that specializes in languages of the Pacific. The data provided to this archive, as well as a dictionary of the language, will be openly accessible to researchers, the Heyo-speaking community, and interested members of the public.Doctoral student Thomas Diaz of SUNY at Buffalo, under the advisement of Dr. Matthew Dryer, will document and describe one such language, named Heyo. Heyo is a member of the Torricelli family of languages, belonging to the Maimai branch and spoken in the northwest of Papua New Guinea. While every other of the Torricelli language family's seven branches have received some level of description and documentation, the Maimai branch has received no such treatment and remains completely undocumented. The project will consist of three major steps. First, the researcher will collect and record raw data from speakers in Papua New Guinea. This data consists of traditional narratives, naturalistic conversation, and cultural performances. After the collection of raw data, the researcher will analyze and annotate this data for linguistic phenomena, and uncover the linguistic structure of the language. In the final stages of the project, the researcher will, as a requirement for his doctoral dissertation, produce a grammatical description of Heyo. The documentation will include descriptions of typologically rare argument and gender marking; the complex system of discourse clitics; and the blurring of morphosyntactic distinctions between word classes, primarily in regards to nouns and verb. Furthermore, this project will inform knowledge of contact and borrowing patterns across genealogically disparate, but geographically close languages.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.

新几内亚是澳大利亚北部的一个大岛，约占世界陆地总面积的2%。尽管它的大小，它也包含了大约20%（超过1,000）的世界语言。对于这些语言中的绝大多数，没有文档。此外，新几内亚的许多语言都濒临灭绝，这在很大程度上是由于Tok Pisin的入侵，这是一种以英语为基础的克里奥尔语，作为弗兰卡。鉴于年幼的儿童不再学习传统语言，而不再学习托克皮辛语，新几内亚的许多语言很可能在世纪末灭绝。这些语言的文档和描述对语言的科学研究都有很大的影响。从科学的角度来看，新几内亚的语言表现出世界语言中罕见的特征，例如在类型学上不寻常的功能中使用动词;以前未被证实的构词形式;以及复杂的辅音字符串。了解这些语言系统如何工作可以告知语言如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及人口如何在世界各地移动。对于讲这些语言的社区来说，这些文件可能是他们的语言及其所包含的知识的唯一记录。由于这些语言中有许多处于濒危状态，现在必须进行记录和描述，否则它们将永远消失。将完成的工作的更广泛的影响是研究人员将获得的论文和伴随的博士学位。收集到的所有数据都将存入太平洋语言专门档案库PARADISEC。提供给这个档案馆的数据以及一本语言词典将向研究人员、说Heyo的社区和感兴趣的公众开放。纽约州立大学布法罗分校的博士生托马斯迪亚兹将在马修·德莱尔博士的指导下记录和描述一种名为Heyo的语言。赫约语是托里切利语系的一员，属于迈迈语分支，在巴布亚新几内亚西北部使用。虽然托里切利语系的其他七个分支都得到了一定程度的描述和记录，但迈迈分支却没有得到这样的待遇，仍然完全没有记录。该项目将包括三个主要步骤。首先，研究人员将从巴布亚新几内亚的说话者那里收集并记录原始数据。这些数据包括传统的叙事，自然主义的谈话，和文化表演。在收集到原始数据后，研究者将分析和注释这些数据中的语言现象，并揭示语言的语言结构。在项目的最后阶段，研究人员将作为博士论文的要求，对Heyo进行语法描述。这些文档将包括对类型学上罕见的论点和性别标记的描述;复杂的话语附点系统;以及词类之间形态句法差异的模糊，主要是在名词和动词方面。此外，该项目将为不同谱系但地理位置接近的语言的接触和借用模式提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估而被认为值得支持。