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

Doctoral Dissertation Research: The realization of nasality across the typological spectrum

博士论文研究：鼻音在整个类型学谱系中的实现

基本信息

批准号：
2029704
负责人：
Lev Michael
金额：
$ 1.89万
依托单位：
University of California-Berkeley
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：
2020-09-15 至 2023-08-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2029704&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Doctoral Dissertation Research realization nasality

项目摘要

This dissertation project will advance our understanding of speech sounds in human languages by investigating nasality in languages with rare nasal speech sound systems. Nasal sounds are produced with air flowing through the nasal cavity, such as [m] and [n] in English, and are present in nearly all of the world’s languages. However, much remains unknown about the range of possible nasal speech sounds systems in human languages, and what is responsible for the emergence of different types of nasal systems, meaning that there is a significant gap in our understanding of this fundamental aspect of human language. This study will help fill this gap by: 1) investigating nasality systems in languages that represent two distinct ends of the typological spectrum in terms of the size of the domains over which duration and intensity of nasality are controlled by speakers; and 2) investigating the hypothesis that nasality systems which are very sensitive to the duration and intensity of nasality are associated with languages where nasality plays an important role in making distinctions in meaning. With respect to the typological spectrum of nasality, at one extreme this project will investigate a language that distinguishes speech sounds that differ in the duration of nasality within individual sound segments, as evidenced in contrasts between prenasalized [nt] and postoralized [nt]. At the other extreme, it will investigate a language that exhibits a slow, gradual increase in nasality over entire words, and where nasality is thus less clearly tied to individual sound segments, but rather larger domains encompassing many sound segments. These rare phenomena indicate that speakers of human languages are sensitive to minute distinctions in nasality, both in its temporal extent as well as in the amount of nasal airflow. That speakers of human languages are sensitive to such fine-grained differences in nasality raises the question of why these phenomena are observed in some languages, but not others. This study investigates the hypothesis that part of the answer lies in the functional load of nasality (a measure of the amount of "work" that any particular contrast does in a language) in different human languages. The functional load of nasality is likely much higher in languages at these extremes of the typological spectrum than it is in other languages for which nasality has commonly been investigated, e.g. English or French, making such languages critical for understanding how the range of nasality systems found in human languages may arise. This project is based on intensive fieldwork with speakers of languages exhibiting different kinds of nasality systems, and relies on two key methodologies. First, interview-style elicitation techniques will allow for a detailed description of the rules that govern the realization of nasality in these languages. Second, the project will develop a corpus of oral narratives in these languages, which will be transcribed, translated, and archived for the preservation and dissemination of these data. An analysis of the corpora will make it possible to measure the functional load of nasality in these languages and shed light on how functional load is related to the types of speech sounds found in human languages.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.

本论文项目将通过研究具有罕见鼻音语音系统的语言中的鼻音来增进我们对人类语言语音的理解。鼻音是空气流过鼻腔时发出的声音，例如英语中的 [m] 和 [n]，并且存在于世界上几乎所有语言中。然而，对于人类语言中可能存在的鼻语音系统的范围，以及是什么导致了不同类型的鼻语音系统的出现，我们仍然知之甚少，这意味着我们对人类语言这一基本方面的理解存在重大差距。这项研究将通过以下方式帮助填补这一空白：1）调查语言中的鼻音系统，这些语言代表了类型学谱的两个不同端，即说话者控制鼻音持续时间和强度的领域的大小； 2）研究这样的假设：对鼻音的持续时间和强度非常敏感的鼻音系统与鼻音在区分意义方面发挥重要作用的语言相关。关于鼻音的类型谱，在一个极端，该项目将研究一种能够区分各个声音片段内鼻音持续时间不同的语音的语言，如前鼻化 [nt] 和后口化 [nt] 之间的对比所证明的那样。在另一个极端，它将研究一种在整个单词上鼻音缓慢、逐渐增加的语言，因此鼻音与单个声音片段的关系不太明显，而是包含许多声音片段的更大领域。这些罕见的现象表明，人类语言的使用者对鼻音的细微差别很敏感，无论是时间范围还是鼻气流量。人类语言的使用者对鼻音的这种细粒度差异很敏感，这引发了一个问题：为什么在某些语言中观察到这些现象，而在其他语言中却观察不到。这项研究调查了这样一个假设：部分答案在于不同人类语言中鼻音的功能负荷（衡量任何特定对比在语言中所做的“工作”量）。在类型学谱的这些极端语言中，鼻音的功能负荷可能比通常研究鼻音的其他语言（例如，英语）要高得多。英语或法语，使得此类语言对于理解人类语言中的鼻音系统范围如何出现至关重要。该项目基于对具有不同鼻音系统的语言使用者进行的深入实地调查，并依赖于两种关键方法。首先，访谈式启发技术将允许详细描述控制这些语言中鼻音实现的规则。其次，该项目将开发这些语言的口头叙述语料库，并将对其进行转录、翻译和存档，以保存和传播这些数据。对语料库的分析将能够测量这些语言中鼻音的功能负荷，并揭示功能负荷与人类语言中语音类型的关系。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并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，被认为值得支持。