Doctoral Dissertation Research: On the Semantics of Evidentials

博士论文研究：论证据的语义

• 批准号: 1941045
• 负责人: Jon Gajewski
• 金额: $ 1.17万
• 依托单位: University of Connecticut
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-04-15 至 2022-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1941045&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Semantics; Evidentials

A central question in theoretical linguistics is what is a possible human language. What properties do all languages share and how much can languages differ from each other? The only way to adequately answer this question is to investigate the structure of as many of the world's actual languages as is possible. Consequently, there is an urgent need to study those languages that have not yet been the subject of significant study. This dissertation project will provide a comprehensive description and analysis of the evidential system in such an understudied language. Evidentials are markers that indicate the source of evidence for a piece of information reported in a sentence. For instance, in an English sentence such as "Mary went to the party, I heard," the source of evidence is a heard report, as is made explicit with "I heard". Languages like English do not have dedicated markers (such as verb endings) to indicate sources of evidence, but many other languages do have such markers. The documentation of evidential markers will provide the source material that will be analyzed in a doctoral dissertation. Broader impacts include a publicly available deposit of the recordings and transcriptions in a digital archive, as well as the linguistic training of linguists and language instructors. This dissertation project will document and analyze the evidential system of an understudied language, thus contributing an important data point for cross-linguistic comparisons of evidential systems. This project will investigate the distribution of the three evidential markers, namely the direct evidential, the indirect evidential, and the reportative evidential, and provide a semantic analysis. More generally, this project aims to locate a specific system of evidentials within the wider spectrum of evidential systems that have been identified cross-linguistically. The typological novelty of this system is two-fold. First, evidentiality is linked to focus marking. In particular, the direct evidential indicates which constituent is focalized, and determines how focus alternatives are evaluated. This marker will be likened to focus sensitive elements (e.g., English 'even') and discourse particles (e.g., German 'ja'). Within the studied language, it is possible to have more than one evidential marker in the same clause. This is rare among languages and thus relevant to tease apart different analyses of evidentials, as well as to establish generalizations regarding what combinations of evidentials can co-occur in the same sentence.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.

理论语言学的一个中心问题是什么是可能的人类语言。所有的语言都有哪些共同的特性？语言之间又有多少不同？要充分回答这个问题，唯一的方法是尽可能多地调查世界上实际语言的结构。因此，迫切需要研究那些尚未成为重要研究主题的语言。本论文将提供一个全面的描述和分析的证据系统在这样一个欠研究的语言。证据标记是指句子中所报道的信息的证据来源。例如，在一个英语句子中，如“玛丽去参加聚会，我听说了”，证据来源是一个听到的报告，因为是明确的“我听说”。像英语这样的语言没有专门的标记（如动词结尾）来表示证据的来源，但许多其他语言确实有这样的标记。证据标记的文档将提供将在博士论文中分析的源材料。更广泛的影响包括公开存款的录音和数字档案，以及语言学家和语言教师的语言培训。本论文项目将记录和分析一种未充分研究的语言的证据系统，从而为证据系统的跨语言比较提供重要的数据点。本研究将探讨直接证据标记、间接证据标记和间接证据标记的分布情况，并进行语义分析。更一般地说，这个项目的目的是在跨语言确定的更广泛的证据系统中找到一个特定的证据系统。这一系统的类型学新奇是双重的。第一，证据与焦点标记有关。特别是，直接证据表明哪个成分是焦点化的，并决定如何评估焦点替代方案。该标记将被比作焦点敏感元件（例如，英语“even”）和话语助词（例如，德语“ja”）。在所研究的语言中，同一个从句中可能有一个以上的证据标记。这在语言中是罕见的，因此与梳理不同的证据分析，以及建立关于证据组合可以在同一句话中共同出现的概括有关。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。