Collaborative Research: How Events are Conceptualized by Users of Homesign and by Users of an Established Sign Language

人类语言以系统的方式描述事件。例如，人们会说“Layla吃了苹果”而不是“苹果吃了Layla”来描述日常的进食事件，因为在英语和其他语言的主动句中，动作的实施者（施者）放在动词之前，受影响的实体（受者）放在动词之后。像代理人和病人这样的概念从何而来？它们是随着一门语言在历史上的发展而逐渐形成的，然后在孩子们学习这门语言时遗传给他们吗？或者它们是人类思维的基本特征，塑造了我们可以创造和学习的语言？为了回答这些问题，本研究探讨了无法接触现有语言的聋人如何思考事件以及事件概念如何随着新语言的发展而变化。这项工作有助于我们对人类思维和语言起源的科学理解，并为手语的创造和语言孤立人群的经历提供了具体的见解。该项目将有助于培养一名聋人科学家、研究生研究助理和本科生实习生。该项目调查了两个群体：1)家庭手语者：没有学习过手语的聋人，也无法接触到他们所在社区的口语。这些成年人都创造了自己的手语交流系统。2)使用一种新的手语（NSL），这是聋哑儿童在学校聚集时出现的。每一群进入社区的孩子都会引入语言的复杂性，这是他们学习的成年人似乎无法获得的。因此，NSL的老年手语者代表语言的早期阶段，而年轻的手语者代表语言的后期阶段。这个项目将考察前三个年龄段的手语者的表现，跨越近30年的语言发展。使用的任务评估事件角色的概念化（如agent、patient、source和goal）和事件维度的概念化（如运动的方式和路径）。如果事件概念是所有人都可以使用的，无论语言经验如何，那么无论是家手语还是非母语手语都应该系统地区分这些概念，并适当地概括它们。如果这些概念是从逐渐形成语言的历史过程中产生的，那么这些概念应该在所有这些群体中都不存在。出现的中间模式也是可能的，因此这些概念可能在家庭手语和/或年长的非母语手语使用者中不存在，但在年轻的手语使用者中存在。这表明这样的表示是通过有机会进行迭代学习的用户社区产生的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Human languages describe events in systematic ways. For example, one would say "Layla ate the apple" and not "The apple ate Layla" to describe an everyday eating event because, in active sentences, English and other languages place the doer of the action (the agent) before the verb and the affected entity (the patient) after. Where do concepts like agent and patient come from? Are they created gradually as a language develops over historical time and then passed down to children when they learn that language? Or are they basic features of human thought that shape the kind of languages that we can create and learn? To answer these questions, this research explores how deaf individuals with no access to an existing language think about events and how event concepts change as a new language evolves. This work contributes to our scientific understanding of the human mind and the origins of languages and provides specific insights into the creation of sign languages and the experiences of linguistically isolated people. This project will contribute to the training of a Deaf scientist, postbaccalaureate research assistants, and undergraduate interns.The project examines two groups: 1) Homesigners: Deaf people who have not learned a sign language and cannot access the spoken language of their community. Each of these adults has created their own signed system to communicate. 2) Users of a new sign language (NSL) which emerged when Deaf children came together at school. Each group of children to enter the community introduces linguistic complexity that the adults they learn from seem unable to acquire. Accordingly, the NSL older signers represent earlier stages of the language, and younger signers represent later stages. This project will examine the performance of signers from the first three age cohorts, spanning almost 30 years of the language’s development. The tasks that are used assess the conceptualization of event roles (like agent, patient, source and goal) and the conceptualization of event dimensions (like manner and path of motion). If event concepts are available to all humans regardless of linguistic experience, then both homesigners and NSL signers should systematically differentiate these concepts and generalize them appropriately. If these concepts arise from historical processes that gradually shape languages, then these concepts should be absent in all of these groups. An intermediate pattern of emergence is also possible, whereby these concepts might be absent in homesigners and/or older NSL signers, but present in younger signers. This would suggest that such representations arise via a community of users who have the opportunity for iterated learning.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.