Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating the Universality of the Subject Requirement through a Language With Overt Correspondents for Postulated Null Subjects

博士论文研究：通过具有假定空主题的公开通讯者的语言来调查主题要求的普遍性

• 批准号: 1841673
• 负责人: David Pesetsky
• 金额: $ 1.37万
• 依托单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 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: 2018-12-15 至 2021-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1841673&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Investigating; Universality

It has been estimated that over half the world's roughly seven thousand languages are on the verge of disappearing, while many others face a similar future in the slightly longer term. The loss of a language entails a loss of cultural and intellectual wealth both for its community of speakers and for a scientific community for whom linguistic diversity provides a vital natural laboratory for understanding the nature of human language as a whole. This project investigates unique and scientifically significant sentence structures of a language still spoken by a speech community of reasonable size, but facing clear signs of future threat due to the encroachment of English and larger regional languages: Bùlì (bwu), a Gur (Mabia) language spoken in Sandema, Ghana. In many disciplines, abstract elements are posited but not directly observable, such as quarks in physics. Bùlì has the potential to reshape our understanding of abstract syntactic elements posited in linguistics. The impetus for this project is the discovery of overt elements in the language Bùlì that appear to be the counterpart of elements that are hidden in (most) other languages of the world. The investigation of this phenomenon requires observing and analyzing these elements as used by actual speakers of the language in Ghana, since the language is underdocumented. Broader impacts include the training of a dissertation student. In addition, for the local community of speakers, this project will aid local educators by laying a foundation for the future development of pedagogical materials, including an introductory grammar book. this project falls in the national interest by strengthening the existing close relations between the U.S. and Ghana, especially between educational and scientific institutions. The importance of the Ghanaian people and their diverse cultures to the United States more generally is evidenced by the fact that three presidents since 1998 have visited Ghana This project concerns subordinate clauses in Bùlì, which have been discovered to have several surprising properties. The most striking discovery concerns the fact that certain controversial abstract elements that have been proposed as part of the grammar of languages like English are overt and pronounced in Bùlì. In particular, the unpronounced subject position of certain infinitival clauses in English has been claimed to be occupied by an element that is present in the mental representations of speakers despite being unpronounced. This proposal is important to our understanding of the laws that govern the structure of sentences in general, but because it has complex consequences, some researchers have advanced theories that dispense with unpronounced subject positions. In Bùlì, however, some (but interestingly not all) of the positions for which a silent subject has been posited for English are occupied by an overt pronoun. The presence of this pronoun appears to argue in favor of the universality of a requirement that all clauses have a structural subject, but hypotheses concerning the details of its distribution and testing of these hypotheses will show whether this conclusion is supported or not. These discoveries concerning Bùlì have the potential to shape our entire understanding of how clauses (basic building blocks of language) are formed.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.

据估计，世界上大约7000种语言中有一半以上濒临消失，而其他许多语言在稍长的时间内也面临着类似的未来。 一种语言的丧失意味着该语言使用者群体和科学界的文化和知识财富的丧失，语言多样性为科学界提供了理解整个人类语言性质的重要自然实验室。 该项目调查了一种语言的独特和具有科学意义的句子结构，这种语言仍然由一个规模合理的语言社区使用，但由于英语和更大的区域语言的侵蚀，它面临着未来威胁的明显迹象：B ugrave; ligrave;（bwu），加纳桑代马的一种古尔（马比亚）语言。在许多学科中，抽象元素被假定但不能直接观察到，例如物理学中的夸克。B ugrave; ligrave;有可能重塑我们对语言学中假定的抽象句法元素的理解。 这个项目的动力是在语言B ugrave中发现明显的元素; ligrave;似乎是世界上（大多数）其他语言中隐藏的元素的对应物。 对这一现象的调查需要观察和分析加纳实际使用该语言的人所使用的这些要素，因为该语言没有得到充分的记录。更广泛的影响包括对论文学生的培训。此外，对于当地的讲者社区，该项目将帮助当地的教育工作者，为今后编写教学材料奠定基础，包括编写一本入门语法书。该项目通过加强美国和加纳之间现有的密切关系，特别是教育和科学机构之间的关系，福尔斯国家利益。自1998年以来，已有三位总统访问加纳，这一事实证明了加纳人民及其多元文化对美国的重要性。该项目涉及B ugrave; ligrave;中的从属从句，已被发现具有几个令人惊讶的性质。最引人注目的发现涉及这样一个事实，即某些有争议的抽象元素，被认为是英语等语言语法的一部分，在B ugrave;l igrave;中是明显的和发音的。 特别是，英语中某些不定式从句的不发音主语位置被认为是由一个元素占据的，这个元素存在于说话者的心理表征中，尽管它是不发音的。 这个提议对于我们理解支配句子结构的一般规律很重要，但由于它有复杂的后果，一些研究者提出了免除不发音主语位置的先进理论。 In B& ugrave;& ligrave;然而，在英语中，一些（但有趣的是，不是所有）被假定为无声主语的位置被显性代词占据。 这个代词的存在似乎支持所有从句都有结构主语这一要求的普遍性，但关于其分布细节的假设和对这些假设的检验将表明这一结论是否得到支持。 这些关于B& ugrave&;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，被认为值得支持。