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 ate the apple”而不是“The apple ate Layla”来描述日常饮食事件，因为在主动句中，英语和其他语言将动作的施动者（施事者）放在动词之前，受影响的实体（受事者）放在动词之后。施事和受事的概念从何而来？ 它们是随着语言在历史上的发展而逐渐创造出来的，然后在孩子们学习语言时传给他们吗？ 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，本研究探讨了无法使用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的人的经历提供了具体的见解。该项目将有助于培训聋人科学家、学士后研究助理和本科生实习生。该项目研究两个群体：1）家庭手语者：没有学习手语和无法使用社区口语的聋人。这些成年人中的每一个都创造了自己的签名系统来交流。 2)使用一种新的手语（NSL）的人，这种手语是在聋哑儿童在学校聚会时出现的。 每一组进入社区的儿童都引入了他们所学习的成年人似乎无法获得的语言复杂性。因此，NSL年长的签名者代表语言的早期阶段，而年轻的签名者代表语言的晚期阶段。该项目将研究前三个年龄组的签名者的表现，跨越了近30年的语言发展。所使用的任务评估事件角色的概念化（如代理，患者，源和目标）和事件维度的概念化（如运动的方式和路径）。 如果事件概念对所有人都是可用的，而不管语言经验如何，那么homesigners和NSL签名者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塑造语言的历史过程中产生的，那么这些概念在所有这些群体中都应该是不存在的。一个中间模式的出现也是可能的，这些概念可能不存在于家庭签名者和/或老年NSL签名者，但存在于年轻的签名者。这将表明，这种代表性是通过一个社区的用户谁有机会迭代learning.This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。

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.