权益分类	功能权益	普通用户	{{item.name}}会员
{{category.name}}	{{benefitItem.name}}

Animacy and resumption at the border of cognition and grammar

认知与语法边界的生命力与恢复

基本信息

批准号：
2019804
负责人：
Maziar Toosarvandani
金额：
$ 41.11万
依托单位：
University of California-Santa Cruz
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：
2020-08-01 至 2025-01-31
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2019804&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Animacy resumption border cognition grammar

项目摘要

Human language is uniquely structured in that it often requires us to link together two expressions at a distance. This is a source of cognitive pressure for language users, because one expression can appear far apart from where it must be interpreted and usually there is no audible or visible cue to the site of interpretation other than absence (a gap). For example, in the question “Who do you think the bill will help?”, “who” should be interpreted as the object of “help” even though it is pronounced many words, and several seconds, earlier. In some languages, a resumptive pronoun can optionally be used (as in pseudo-English, “Who do you think the bill will help them?”). The goal of this project is to better understand the source of the optionality, and why some languages have this expressive device, while others do not. Does the use of a pronoun reflect a language user’s dynamic reaction to limited cognitive resources? Or does it reflect conventionalized grammatical processes of particular languages? The project will provide research opportunities and training in experimental methods, fieldwork, and data analysis to undergraduate and graduate students. It will also feed synergistically into a range of public-facing activities that aim to share knowledge about indigenous languages. This project tests a new hypothesis: namely, that animacy, the property of whether or not an individual is alive, is a key factor in the use of resumptive pronouns. It will compare two genetically unrelated languages that show similarities in the use of these pronouns. The project will test the hypothesis that an optional resumptive pronoun in object position is more acceptable the more animate its referent is. A series of paired experiments combining eye-tracking and judgment studies will be conducted to specifically contrast the particular grammatical resources of a language that encodes a four-way animacy system throughout its grammar and a language with no grammatical animacy distinctions. Through this comparison, animacy as a conceptual category will be distinguished from animacy as a morphosyntactic category. The project will involve acceptability and comprehension studies across languages. For the language that encodes animacy grammatically, two comprehension studies will be used to trace the incremental comprehension of relative clauses involving co-arguments of differing animacies. The result will bring novel evidence to bear on three related issues: the problem of optionality in grammar, the relationship between resumptive pronouns and gaps, and how language users comprehend resumptive pronouns in real time.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.

人类语言的结构是独特的，因为它经常需要我们将两个表达联系在一起。这对语言使用者来说是一个认知压力的来源，因为一个表达可能出现在离它必须被解释的地方很远的地方，而且通常除了缺席(缺口)之外，没有声音或视觉提示指向解释的地点。例如，在“你认为法案将帮助谁？”的问题中，“谁”应该被解释为“帮助”的对象，尽管它的发音早了很多个词，甚至几秒钟。在一些语言中，可选择使用恢复代词(如在伪英语中，“您认为法案将帮助他们的人是谁？”)。这个项目的目标是更好地理解可选性的来源，以及为什么一些语言有这种表现力，而另一些语言没有。代词的使用是否反映了语言使用者对有限的认知资源的动态反应？或者它反映了特定语言的常规语法过程？该项目将为本科生和研究生提供实验方法、实地调查和数据分析方面的研究机会和培训。它还将协同推动旨在分享土著语言知识的一系列面向公众的活动。这个项目测试了一个新的假设：即生命力，即一个人是否活着的属性，是使用恢复代词的关键因素。它将比较两种基因上不相关的语言，这些语言在这些代词的使用上表现出相似之处。该项目将测试这样一种假设，即宾语位置上的可选恢复代词越有活力，越容易被接受。将进行一系列结合眼球跟踪和判断研究的配对实验，以具体对比一种在整个语法中编码四向有生命系统的语言和一种没有语法有生命区别的语言的特定语法资源。通过这种比较，我们将区分作为概念范畴的有生体和作为形态句法范畴的有生体。该项目将涉及跨语言的可接受性和理解性研究。对于在语法上编码生命的语言，将使用两项理解研究来追踪涉及不同生命的共同论元的关系从句的递增理解。这一结果将在三个相关问题上带来新的证据：语法的可选性问题，恢复代词与差距之间的关系，以及语言使用者如何实时理解恢复代词。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。