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.

儿童必须掌握的一项基本技能是使用语言来指代周围的人和物体的能力。代词主语如“他”和“她”是普遍的语言手段，用来指前面的话语中提到或暗示的人。代词使说话者避免冗余或重复，从而使语言更经济。与此同时，追踪话语中所指对象的能力也随着时间的推移而发展。儿童如何学习解释和恰当地使用这些指称手段是语言习得研究的一个中心问题，特别是因为掌握代名词主语需要到青春期。研究这种能力在儿童的双语发展谁说类型不同，但句法相似的语言在代词的表达方式是至关重要的理解儿童和青少年的语言和认知发展的互补作用。本研究调查学龄期单语和双语儿童代词主语表达的习得和发展，以评估双语人群中潜在的发展迟缓，并研究父母的语言选择如何影响儿童的语言行为。200名6至13岁的儿童将与90名成年人（一半是单语者，一半是同时获得两种语言的双语者）进行比较。将对双语人口进行测试，以评估在一个拥有稳定的双语和强大的少数民族语言教育系统的社会中，社会政治上的多数民族语言和少数民族语言在习得方面的差异。儿童的理解和生产将通过口头生产和理解任务来衡量。因为所研究的这对语言是空主语语言，研究结果将有助于评估双语文献中两个相互竞争的主题过度生产的解释--跨语言影响与认知负荷--这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响力的支持审查标准。