Grammatical Gender Representation in Natural Language

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济科学(SBE)博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)计划和SBE语言学计划的一部分提供的。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在哈佛大学Jonathan Bobaljik博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位研究语法性别的语言成分的早期职业科学家。这项研究通过三个相关的项目探索了性别--与形容词和限定词等其他成分一致地反映出来的名词的一种属性--是如何在语法上表现的：i)一项以理论为导向的融合性类型研究(形式在不同类别中共享)，ii)形态句法性别缺省的比较研究，以及iii)推定性别补充的研究(在该研究中，一对形式，如阿姨/叔叔，在语义上有规则的关系，但通过最大限度地不规则的形态关系来表达)。这些项目围绕性别特征如何分解和结构，以及性别特征如何在词法和句法中反映等问题展开。本研究的目的是加深我们对性别范畴的语言学定义及其与其他语法成分的相互作用的理解。该研究综合了形态和句法证据，为语法性别的特征表征提供理论依据，并对特征包容等假设进行了评估。它还考察了语法性别在根部补充中的作用。第一个项目通过收集关于性别融合的广泛的类型学证据来解决特征分解和标记性，这些证据可以用来揭示是否存在关于有证明的和未证明的融合模式的概括。因此，这项研究补充了最近对融合性和补充性的研究，这些研究观察到并提出了对健壮的跨语言概括的解释，例如*ABA：没有一种模式，在这种模式中，沿着某个等级的标记成员与不太标记的成员共享形式或属性，而不包括中间成员。*ABA在形容词等级、社群关系、数字和大小写等多个领域都得到了观察，尽管它还没有经过语法性别测试。这一类型学证据可以用来评估普遍的性别分解和标记性理论的可行性，如特征包容理论。研究的第二部分通过对形态句法性别缺省的比较研究来考察性别标记。特别是，这项研究考察了当一个诊断子集表明一个性别类别的行为是默认的，而另一个诊断子集指向不同性别的默认状态时，标记性如何反映在标准性别默认诊断的分割结果中。性别标记也是从不同的角度来考虑的，即从句法许可的角度来考虑。最后，这项研究考察了性别制约补给的问题，评估了形式不同的配对是否具有不同的性别表征，但拥有相同的“根源”。考虑了新类型的证据，包括可能被证明或可能不被证明的可想到的补充变更。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and SBE's Linguistics program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Jonathan Bobaljik at Harvard University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the linguistic ingredients of grammatical gender. The research explores how gender - a property of nouns reflected in agreement with other elements such as adjectives and determiners - is grammatically represented, through three related projects: i) a theoretically-oriented typological study of syncretism (the sharing of forms across categories), ii) a comparative study of morphosyntactic gender 'defaults', and iii) a study of putative gender suppletion (in which pairs of forms such as aunt/uncle have a semantically regular relationship but are expressed by a maximally irregular morphological relationship). These projects are centered around questions of how gender features are decomposed and structured, and how gender features are reflected in morphology and syntax. The objective of this research is to advance our understanding of how gender categories are linguistically defined and how they interact with other components of grammar.The research synthesizes morphological and syntactic evidence to inform the theory of the featural representation of grammatical gender, and evaluates hypotheses such as featural containment. It also examines the role of grammatical gender in root suppletion. The first project addresses featural decomposition and markedness through the gathering of extensive typological evidence on gender syncretism, which can be used to reveal whether there are generalizations about attested and unattested patterns of syncretism. The research thus complements recent studies of syncretism and suppletion which observe, and propose explanations for, robust cross-linguistic generalizations such as *ABA: the absence of a pattern in which a marked member along some hierarchy shares a form or property with a less marked member to the exclusion of intermediate members. *ABA has been observed in various domains including adjectival grade, clusivity, number, and case, though it has not yet been tested for grammatical gender. This typological evidence can be used to evaluate the viability of a universal theory of gender decomposition and markedness, such as the theory of featural containment. A second component of the research investigates gender markedness through a comparative study of morphosyntactic gender defaults. In particular, the study examines how markedness is reflected in split results for standard gender default diagnostics, when one subset of diagnostics indicates that one gender category behaves as a default, while another subset of diagnostics instead point to the default status of a different gender. Gender markedness is also considered from a different perspective, namely in terms of the role of syntactic licensing. Lastly, the research examines the issue of gender-conditioned suppletion, assessing whether pairs unlike in form have different gender representations while sharing the same 'root'. Novel types of evidence are considered, including conceivable suppletive alternations which may or may not be attested.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.