Doctoral Dissertation Research: The grammar and use of elaborate verb morphology by elderly monolinguals

博士论文研究：老年单语者的语法和复杂动词形态的使用

• 批准号: 2035185
• 负责人: Anthony Woodbury
• 金额: $ 1.89万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 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=2035185&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; grammar; use

The way bilinguals and monolingual elders speak an endangered indigenous language is not uniform. Bilinguals are typically more dominant in one of their two languages, in most cases not their indigenous one but the national or dominant language in their country of origin. Monolingual speakers differ from bilinguals in having one single, fully developed, linguistic system. This difference can be seen in their use of words, especially complex verbs, since a range of semantic nuances that are idiosyncratic to their speech are displayed. The speech of elderly monolinguals in indigenous languages is vanishing as villages decrease in population, leading to significant losses of cultural diversity. In this dissertation project, the doctoral student will document naturalistic spoken monolingual speech and provide an in-depth analysis of the grammar and the semantics of verbal morphology in a particular monolingual variety that will allow answering questions such as: What is the verbal morphology of elderly monolinguals like and what grammar underlies such complex systems? What semantic information is prominently displayed through the verbs used by monolinguals that is not present in bilingual speech? These questions remain just loosely explored in current literature. The results of this project will enhance understanding of the diversity of endangered indigenous languages as it brings into the analysis monolingual systems which are morphologically more elaborate, thus allowing researchers to evaluate different cross-linguistic theories of morphologically complex languages. Since the doctoral student is bilingual, data collection will include her participation in everyday conversations. This interactive process will guarantee gathering real speech while spontaneously interacting with elderly monolinguals. Complementary elicited data will also be gathered to help achieve a better understanding of the semantics of verbal morphology. The naturalistic data corpus collected will be transcribed, annotated and analyzed, and will then be curated and deposited in a digital archive for the use of a wide range of stakeholders including indigenous language speakers, linguists, and other researchers.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.

双语老人和单语老人说濒临灭绝的土著语言的方式并不一致。双语者通常在他们的两种语言中的一种更占优势，在大多数情况下，不是他们的母语，而是他们原籍国的民族或主导语言。单语者与双语者的不同之处在于，他们只有一个完全成熟的单一语言系统。这种差异可以在他们对单词的使用上看到，特别是复杂动词，因为他们的语音显示了一系列特殊的语义细微差别。随着村庄人口的减少，老年单语者使用土著语言的语言正在消失，导致文化多样性的严重丧失。在这篇论文项目中，博士生将记录自然口语的单语演讲，并在一种特定的单语变体中对动词形态的语法和语义进行深入的分析，这将允许回答以下问题：老年单语者的动词形态是什么？这种复杂的系统背后是什么语法？什么语义信息是通过单语者使用的动词突出显示的，而双语言语中没有出现？这些问题在当前的文献中仍然只是松散地探讨。这一项目的结果将加强对濒危土著语言多样性的理解，因为它将形态更复杂的单语系统纳入分析，从而使研究人员能够评估形态复杂语言的不同跨语言理论。由于博士生会说两种语言，数据收集将包括她参与日常对话。这种互动过程将确保收集真实的语音，同时自发地与年长的单语者互动。补充引出的数据也将被收集，以帮助更好地理解动词词法的语义。收集的自然语料库将被转录、注释和分析，然后将被保存在数字档案中，供包括土著语言使用者、语言学家和其他研究人员在内的广泛利益相关者使用。这一奖项反映了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。