Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Acquisition of Verbal Morphology in a Polysynthetic Language

博士论文研究：多综合语言中言语形态的习得

• 批准号: 2116683
• 负责人: Anthony Woodbury
• 金额: $ 1.51万
• 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: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2116683&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Acquisition; Verbal

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).The first few years of a child's life are spent creating order out of the chaos of her native language, a highly complex signal comprised of a finite number of sounds arranged into an enormous number of words in an infinite number of configurations. This dissertation research seeks to determine how children tease apart the interactions among sound, grammar, and culture to master the intricacies of verbal morphology in a highly concatenative language with productive stem alternation and hierarchical alignment. It is the first holistic description of the acquisition of any language belonging to its family. This analysis will yield unique insight into how children internalize, shape, and reproduce linguistic knowledge, which has significant implications for the fields of linguistics, cognitive science, and developmental psychology, as well as for our broader understanding of the human language faculty.Using a combined longitudinal and cross-sectional approach, this study will investigate the naturalistic speech of three children between 2;0 and 4;0 over the course of 12 months to describe their morphological development. In close collaboration with a native speaker, the recordings made will be transcribed, translated, and coded for the structural characteristics of child and adult speech to facilitate the comparison of child productions, child-directed speech, and adult-adult discourse overheard by the child. Qualitative analyses will include which morphemes occur with which verb stems, as well as morpheme productivity. Quantitative analyses will include Mean Length of Utterance, total number of utterances per hour, and frequencies of each verb stem and affix.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.

该奖项全部或部分由2021年美国救援计划法案（公法117-2）资助。孩子生命的最初几年是在她的母语的混乱中创造秩序，这是一种高度复杂的信号，由有限数量的声音组成，以无限数量的配置排列成大量的单词。本论文的研究旨在确定儿童如何戏弄除了声音，语法和文化之间的相互作用，掌握在一个高度连接的语言与生产干交替和层次对齐的动词形态的错综复杂。它是第一个全面描述任何语言的收购属于它的家庭。本研究采用纵向和横向相结合的研究方法，对3名2岁至4岁儿童的自然言语进行了研究，并对儿童的自然言语进行了分析。0在12个月的过程中，以描述其形态发育。在与母语者的密切合作下，录音将被转录，翻译和编码的儿童和成人语音的结构特征，以促进儿童作品，儿童指导的讲话，和成人的话语无意中听到的儿童比较。定性分析将包括哪些词素出现与哪些动词干，以及词素生产力。定量分析将包括平均话语长度，每小时的话语总数，以及每个动词词干和词缀的频率。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得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的支持。