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Structural and areal challenges to models of language change

语言变化模型的结构和领域挑战

基本信息

批准号：
1911571
负责人：
Lise Dobrin
金额：
$ 30.99万
依托单位：
University of Virginia Main Campus
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2019-08-01 至 2023-01-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1911571&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Structural areal challenges models language

项目摘要

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.

虽然语言学家意识到语言转变（一个语言群体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，但重要的问题仍然存在，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变。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和语言转换发生的较小的社会情境。为了增加转变情况和语言结构的类型学，本项目将通过一套独特的实地记录和1967年至1971年收集的乌干达东北部两种濒危语言的录音，以及对剩余发言人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偏离了许多现有的样本的结构变化的语言停止被口语，他们提供了一个控制可能的假设，观察到的结构相似性跨转换语言是由于历史偶然的干扰，而不是一个普遍的标记层次结构的特定语法结构。该项目的更广泛影响包括推进博士后学者的培训，并为本科语言学学生创造参与和促进前沿研究的学习机会。该项目将确保Nyangi和Soo社区也能获得这一系列材料的副本，并向更广泛的科学研究人员社区提供访问机会。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，对祖先语言被非欧洲语言取代的后果知之甚少。在某种程度上，对语言向非欧洲语言转变的分析很难得到，因为这些语言通常缺乏开始转变之前的文献。这意味着没有一个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Nyangi（nyp）和Soo（teu）的数据来解决这个问题，这两种语言现在正在被非洲语言所取代。在这个项目中将数字化和存档的数据包括大约26小时的盒式磁带和卷盘到卷盘磁带录音以及大约3 000页的手写实地记录。由此收集的数字化录音将被翻译成英文和Nyangi和Soo使用的更广泛的交流语言。将与Soo和Nyangi社区协商，对其中一些内容进行分析和丰富的注释。对自本收藏中的录音制作以来50年来在Soo和Nyang'i观察到的变化的类型学和区域动机的分析将永久存档在一个安全和可访问的位置，在学术会议上分享和讨论，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，被认为值得支持和更广泛的影响审查标准。