Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting Tense, Aspect, Mood and Polarity in a Language with a Complex Verbal System

博士论文研究：记录具有复杂言语系统的语言的时态、体、语气和极性

• 批准号: 1830273
• 负责人: Jeffrey Good
• 金额: $ 1.85万
• 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: 2018-12-01 至 2021-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1830273&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Documenting; Tense

Time is an important notion that pervades many aspects of daily life. Time is of such importance that all attested human languages have at least one grammatical strategy to encode temporal relationships. Most languages, however, have relatively complex systems of encoding time (which are generally referred to as tense/aspect systems) that interact with several features of the grammar. Individual tense/aspect systems, in addition to their internal complexity, also vary significantly from language to language. Because of the cross-linguistic variation that has been observed, any given language has the potential to offer new insights into the extent of possible temporal encoding strategies, as well as the extent of possible meanings that tense and aspect can carry. The language of study for this project, Iyasa (yko), is a Bantu language spoken in the Littoral Region of southwestern Cameroon by approximately 2,000 people. Tense/aspect studies in Bantu are especially critical as the systems in these languages are noted as being among the most complex in the world. This project will, thus, provide a thorough documentary and descriptive record of Iyasa's system of tense and aspect, utilizing methods in both linguistic fieldwork and linguistic analysis in order to uncover the nuances of the system. Broader impacts include the professional development of a doctoral student, the publicly accessible data, and the presence of an American linguist in Cameroon to help maintain and improve the academic relationship between the two nations. Additionally, the research project and its products can bring linguistic awareness and attention to a language, region, and community of speakers currently under-represented in scientific literature. Records of tense/aspect systems of endangered language vary greatly in quality from mere labels of each tense and aspect (leaving it to the reader to assume what precise meanings should be associated with each label) to descriptions where nearly every detail related to tense and aspect is included. In order to achieve an adequately detailed description of the Iyasa tense/aspect system, researchers will make use of a wide variety of methodologies. These methodologies include (but are not limited to) administering tense/aspect questionnaires both already developed and newly developed by researchers on this project, analyzing of tense/aspect in natural narrative and conversational discourse, directed semantic elicitation (where a series of contexts that differ only slightly in meaningful ways are provided by the researcher), and directed narratives that are elicited by means of video clips or storyboards. Another important aspect of this project is that it will incorporate insights from a wide range of theories including cognitive theories of tense and aspect that move away from the notion of time as a single linear timeline. This project, in addition to providing important documentary materials and linguistic training opportunities to the Iyasa community, will provide important insights on how to improve computational models of tense and aspect for natural language processing and help strengthen our general understanding of how humans can and do encode time in 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.

时间是一个重要的概念，渗透在日常生活的许多方面。时间是如此重要，以至于所有被证实的人类语言都至少有一种语法策略来编码时间关系。然而，大多数语言都有相对复杂的编码时间系统（通常称为时态/方面系统），这些系统与语法的几个特征相互作用。单独的时态/时态系统，除了其内部的复杂性外，在不同的语言中也有很大的不同。由于已经观察到的跨语言差异，任何给定的语言都有可能提供关于可能的时间编码策略的程度的新见解，以及时态和时态可以携带的可能意义的程度。本项目的学习语言Iyasa （yko）是喀麦隆西南部沿海地区约有2000人使用的班图语。班图语的时态/时态研究尤其重要，因为这些语言的系统被认为是世界上最复杂的语言之一。因此，该项目将利用语言学田野调查和语言学分析的方法，为Iyasa的时态和相位系统提供全面的文献和描述性记录，以揭示该系统的细微差别。更广泛的影响包括博士生的专业发展，公开可访问的数据，以及美国语言学家在喀麦隆的存在，以帮助维持和改善两国之间的学术关系。此外，该研究项目及其产品可以使语言意识和关注到目前在科学文献中代表性不足的语言、地区和群体。濒危语言的时态/aspect系统的记录在质量上差别很大，从仅仅标记每个时态和aspect（留给读者去假设与每个标签相关联的精确含义）到几乎包含所有与时态和aspect相关的细节的描述。为了充分详细地描述Iyasa时态/相位系统，研究人员将使用各种各样的方法。这些方法包括（但不限于）管理本项目研究人员已经开发和新开发的时态/方面问卷，分析自然叙事和会话话语中的时态/方面，定向语义引出（由研究人员提供的一系列上下文仅在有意义的方面略有不同），以及通过视频剪辑或故事板引出的定向叙述。这个项目的另一个重要方面是，它将整合来自广泛理论的见解，包括时态和方面的认知理论，这些理论远离了时间作为单一线性时间线的概念。除了为Iyasa社区提供重要的文献资料和语言培训机会外，该项目还将为如何改进自然语言处理的时态和方面的计算模型提供重要见解，并有助于加强我们对人类如何能够并确实在语言中编码时间的一般理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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，被认为值得支持。