Collaborative IRES Track 1: Experimental Linguistics in the Caribbean: Examining the nature, processing and acquisition of Haitian Creole

美国学生，包括来自代表性不足群体的学生，没有按照美国所需的数量参加STEM相关的职业，尽管STEM职业机会正在迅速增长。这包括言语-语言-听觉-交流科学和计算语言学。高中生把语言学习与文学联系在一起，因此也就与艺术联系在一起;然而，语言语言学的科学研究涉及STEM相关技能，从基于逻辑论证的模型开发到假设的开发和测试，以及涉及技术，数据收集，定量分析和解释以支持假设或模型的确认/拒绝（Denam等人，2018年）。使用这些语言知识可以为学生，特别是英语以外的语言的使用者，获得STEM技能和熟悉STEM相关专业和研究领域铺平道路。该IRES奖，“实验语言学在加勒比地区，”将培训一组不同的美国学生就读于通信科学，认知科学，教育，语言学和心理学课程进行基于STEM的实验语言科学项目，重点是海地克里奥尔语的性质和可学性。 学生将参加为期七周的严格研究计划，涉及六个模块，他们可以随后在学术和专业旅程中转移到其他文化和语言环境。随着认知科学模型的发展和技术的进步，实验语言学的出现扩大了我们对语言习得和处理的理解。 该计划将培训16名美国学生，其中至少一半来自STEM代表性不足的群体，在非西方社会文化背景下对海地克里奥尔语的性质，加工和获取进行严格的实验协议，这要归功于与教师和学生的合作在海地的州立大学语言学。该项目将解决以前完全基于理论的研究的缺点，并对海地克里奥尔语的三个主要领域进行实证调查，即：（一）成人和儿童的语音感知和产生;（二）形态音位学和形态句法学：性质，处理和习得;（三）海地克里奥尔语/L1和法语/英语/西班牙语/L2/3/4的习得，学习和使用的背景。该计划将以三种不同的方式为该领域做出贡献：（i）学生研究项目的成果将提供共享数据，并有助于解决理论辩论;（ii）在复杂的社会语言学背景下建立实验语言学研究，这是许多发展中国家的特点，将为其他非西方国家的未来计划提供模式;（iii）它将使来自不同文化，种族和语言背景的学生在高等教育中的代表性不足，具备在学术和职业生涯中取得成功所需的学术，人际交往和协作技能。其目的是培养新一代的研究人员和从业人员，他们将把自己的少数群体地位视为一种专业资产，并将继续使用可转移的一般和特定领域的STEM技能，与代表性不足的族裔、文化和语言少数群体合作。该IRES Track I奖项由社会、行为和经济科学理事会行为和认知科学部的语言学项目共同资助。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。

U.S. students, including students from underrepresented groups, do not enroll in STEM-related careers in the numbers the U.S. needs, even though STEM career opportunities are quickly growing. This includes speech-language-hearing-communication sciences and computational linguistics. High school students associate the study of language with literature and therefore the Arts; however, the scientific study of language—linguistics—involves STEM-related skills from the development of models grounded in logical arguments to the development and testing of hypotheses and the use of research strategies that involve technologies, data collection, quantitative analyses and interpretations to support the confirmation/rejection of hypotheses or models (Denam et al., 2018). The use of such linguistic knowledge may pave the way for students, especially speakers of languages other than English, to gain STEM-based skills and familiarity with STEM-related professional and research fields. The IRES award, “Experimental Linguistics in the Caribbean,” will train a diverse group of U.S. students enrolled in communication science, cognitive science, education, linguistics and psychology programs to conduct STEM-based experimental language science projects focused on the nature and learnability of Haitian Creole. Students will participate in a rigorous seven-week program of research involving six modules that they can subsequently transfer to other cultural and linguistic contexts in the course of their academic and professional journey. Experimental linguistics emerging from the development of models in cognitive sciences and technological advances has expanded our understanding of language acquisition and processing. The program will train sixteen U.S. students, at least half from groups underrepresented in STEM, to conduct rigorous experimental protocols on the nature, processing and acquisition of Haitian Creole in a non-Western socio-cultural context, thanks to collaboration with the faculty and students in Linguistics at the State University of Haiti. The project will address the shortcomings of previous exclusively theoretically-based research and empirically investigate three main areas in Haitian Creole, namely: (i) Phonological Perception and Production in Adults and Children; (ii) Morphophonology and Morphosyntax: Nature, Processing and Acquisition; (iii) Contexts of Acquisition, Learning and Use of Haitian Creole/L1 and French/English/Spanish/L2/3/4. The program will contribute to the field in three distinct ways: (i) outcomes of student research projects will provide shared data and contribute to the resolution of theoretical debates; (ii) the establishment of experimental linguistic research in a complex sociolinguistic context that characterizes many developing countries will provide a model for future programs in other non-Western countries; (iii) it will equip students from diverse cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds under-represented in Higher Education with academic, interpersonal and collaborative skills required to become successful in their academic and professional careers. The aim is to foster a new generation of researchers and practitioners who will perceive their minority status as a professional asset and who will continue to use transferable general and field-specific STEM-based skills to work with and on under-represented ethnic, cultural and linguistic minorities. This IRES Track I award is cofunded by the Linguistics Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences.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.