Doctoral Dissertation Research: Investigating theories of the over-production of subject pronouns in bilinguals

博士论文研究：双语者主语代词过度产生的理论调查

• 批准号: 2017706
• 负责人: Silvina Montrul
• 金额: $ 1.7万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 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: 2020-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2017706&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Investigating; theories

A fundamental skill that children must acquire is the ability to use language to refer to people and objects around them. Pronominal subjects like ‘he’ and ‘she’ are universal linguistic devices used to refer to a person mentioned or implied in previous discourse. Pronouns allow speakers to avoid redundancy or repetition, thus making languages more economical. At the same time, the ability to track referents in discourse develops over time. How children learn to interpret and appropriately use these referential devices is a central question in language acquisition research, particularly because mastering pronominal subjects takes up to adolescence. Studying this ability in the bilingual development of children who speak typologically different but syntactically similar languages in the way pronouns are expressed is critical to understand the complementing roles of linguistic and cognitive development in children and adolescents. This project investigates the acquisition and development of pronominal subject expression in school-age monolingual and bilingual children in order to assess potential developmental delays in bilingual populations and to examine how parents’ linguistic choices may influence children’s linguistic behavior. 200 children ages 6 to 13 will be compared to 90 adults (half monolinguals, half bilinguals who simultaneously acquired two languages). The bilingual population will be tested to evaluate the acquisitional differences of the socio-politically majority language and the minority language in a society with stable bilingualism and a strong education system in the minority language. Children’s comprehension and production will be measured through oral production and comprehension tasks. Because the pair of languages studied are null subject languages, the results will contribute to evaluate two competing accounts of subject over-production in the bilingual literature ––crosslinguistic influence versus cognitive load–– that are also central questions in the acquisition of syntax.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.

儿童必须获得的一项基本技能是使用语言来指代人和周围的对象。像“他”和“她”这样的主题是通用的语言设备，用于指代先前话语中提到或暗示的人。代词允许演讲者避免冗余或重复，从而使语言更经济。同时，随着时间的推移，在话语发展中跟踪参考的能力。儿童如何学会解释和适当使用这些参考设备是语言获取研究中的一个核心问题，尤其是因为掌握词记主题占青少年。在表达代词的方式上说类型上不同但语法上相似的语言的儿童的双语发展中，研究这种能力对于了解儿童和青少年在语言和认知发展的互补作用至关重要。该项目调查了学科单语和双语儿童中代词主题表达的获取和发展，以评估双语人群中的潜在发展延迟，并研究父母的语言选择如何影响孩子的语言行为。将200名6至13岁的儿童与90名成年人（一半的单语言，一半双语者成功获得两种语言）进行比较。双语人群将经过测试，以评估社会政治多数语言的获取差异和具有稳定的双语主义和强大教育体系的社会中的少数派语言。儿童的理解和生产将通过口头生产和理解任务来衡量。因为所研究的两种语言是无效的学科语言，所以结果将有助于评估两种相互竞争的对主题过量生产的说明 - 双语文献 - 杂交影响与认知载荷 - 这也是语法中获得的核心问题，这些问题也反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估范围来评估奖励的范围。