Structural and areal challenges to models of language change

虽然语言学家意识到语言转移（一群人从一种语言转变为另一种语言的过程）如何在语言的消亡中发挥作用，但仍然存在重大问题，包括社会和认知约束如何塑造语言结构，以及认知、社会和历史因素如何相互作用导致语言转移。一个相关的问题是，语言学家所知道的主要来自印欧语言，如英语或拉丁语，这从两个方面限制了可能的数据集：这些语言缺乏的语言结构，以及语言转换发生的较小的社会情境。为了增加变化情况和语言结构的类型学，该项目将通过1967-1971年收集的乌干达东北部两种濒危语言的一套独特的实地笔记和录音，以及对剩余使用者的新实地调查来调查语言变化。由于本研究中的目标语言在类型学上与许多现有的语言停止使用时结构变化的样本不同，因此它们提供了一个控制，以反对可能的假设，即观察到的不同语言之间的结构相似性可归因于历史上偶然的干扰，而不是特定语法结构的普遍标记等级。该项目更广泛的影响包括促进博士后学者的培养，为语言学本科生创造学习机会，参与并为前沿研究做出贡献。该项目将确保Nyangi和Soo社区也能获得这些资料的副本，并为更广泛的科学研究人员社区提供访问途径。最后，该项目将促进美国和乌干达机构学者之间的国际合作。祖先语言被一种非欧洲语言所取代的情况的结果是很难理解的。在某种程度上，对语言向非欧洲语言转变的分析很难得到，因为这些语言往往缺乏开始转变之前的文献。这意味着没有参照点来比较当前的语言形式：语言学家对语言所经历的变化类型有终点，但没有起点。该项目通过提供尼扬吉语（nyp）和苏语（teu）的数据来解决这一问题，这两种语言现在正被非洲语言所取代。该项目中需要数字化和存档的数据包括大约26小时的盒式磁带和卷式磁带录音，以及大约3000页手写的实地记录。由此收集的数字化录音将被翻译成英语，并被翻译成Nyangi和Soo使用的更广泛的交流语言。将与苏族和尼扬族社区协商，对其中的部分内容进行分析和丰富的注释。对50年来在Soo和Nyang'i观察到的变化的类型学和实际动机的分析将被永久保存在一个安全且可访问的位置，在学术会议上分享和讨论，并在语言学期刊上发表。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。

While linguists are aware of how language shift (the process by which a community of speakers changes from one language to another) plays a role in the demise of a language, significant questions remain, including how social and cognitive constraints shape language structure and how cognitive, social, and historical factors interact to result in language shift. A related issue is that what linguists do know comes primarily from Indo-European languages like English or Latin, which restricts the possible data set in two ways: by the linguistic structures these languages lack and by the smaller set of social situations where language shift has occurred. In order to augment the typology of shift situations and linguistic structure, this project will investigate language change through a unique set of field notes and recordings of two endangered languages of northeastern Uganda collected from 1967-1971, and from new fieldwork with the remaining speakers. Because the target languages in this study diverge typologically from much of the existing sample of structural changes as languages cease to be spoken, they offer a control against the possible hypothesis that observed structural similarities across shifting languages are attributable to historically contingent interference rather than a universal markedness hierarchy of particular grammatical structures. Broader impacts of the project include advancing the training of a post-doctoral scholar and creating learning opportunities for undergraduate linguistics students to participate in and contribute to cutting-edge research. The project will ensure the Nyangi and Soo communities also get copies of the materials in this collection, as well as providing access to the broader community of scientific researchers. Finally, the project will promote international collaboration between scholars at American and Ugandan institutions.The outcomes of situations in which an ancestral language is replaced by a non-European language are poorly understood. In part, analyses of language shift in languages shifting to non-European languages have been hard to come by because such languages often lack documentation from before the time that they started to shift. This means that there is no reference point to compare current linguistic forms to: linguists have ending points for the types of change undergone by languages, but not starting points. This project addresses this problem by making data accessible from Nyangi (nyp) and Soo (teu), two languages that are now being replaced by African languages. The data to be digitized and archived in this project includes approximately 26 hours of audio recordings on cassette tapes and reel-to-reel tapes and approximately 3,000 pages of hand-written field notes. The resulting collection of digitized recordings will be translated into English and into the language of broader communication used by the Nyangi and Soo. A selection of its contents will be analyzed and richly annotated in consultation with the Soo and Nyangi communities. Analyses of the typological and areal motivations for the changes observed in Soo and Nyang'i in the 50 years since the recordings in this collection were made will be permanently archived in a secure and accessible location, shared and discussed at scholarly conferences, and published in linguistics journals.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.