Documentation of morphophonological interactions in phrasal domains: Grammatical tone, vowel harmony, and phonological agreement

短语域中形态语音交互的记录：语法语气、元音和谐和语音一致性

• 批准号: 2125618
• 负责人: Hannah Sande
• 金额: $ 20.58万
• 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: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-01-01 至 2022-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2125618&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Documentation; morphophonological; interactions; phrasal; domains

Linguists estimate that over half the world's 7,000 languages are tonal, with many of these endangered and not being acquired by children due to urbanization and an emphasis on formal education. This project will answer some of the many questions remaining about tone by focusing on a language displaying a rich tonal inventory, and a typologically unexpected system of consonant patterns and vowel harmony. These features interact in complex and poorly understood ways in phrases and sentences. This project will describe and analyze these phenomena in detail with a specific emphasis on word building (morphology) and sound patterns (phonology). The project will provide new insights into many questions remaining about tone and its scalar properties in this language, and on the behavior of complex tonal and vowel harmony systems in morphology and syntax. The results will be disseminated via journal articles on the descriptive and theoretical findings, a reference grammar and archived, annotated language data. In addition to its documentary goals, this project will support underrepresented students in international fieldwork and language documentation training. It will enhance the global competitiveness of the STEM workforce by fostering collaborative international relationships as sites of student learning. This project will investigate Guébie, an understudied endangered Kru (Niger-Congo) language spoken in southwestern Côte d'Ivoire, as part of a collaborative effort by by linguists at Georgetown University, linguists at Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Guébie community. Kru languages in general are underdocumented, though extant work shows that languages within the Kru family show typologically rare linguistic properties. These include: 1) complex tonal systems with four tone heights, where tone distinguishes both lexical and grammatical contrasts; 2) unexpected patterning of implosive consonants with liquid consonants like rather than stops; 3) large vowel inventories with multiple types of vowel harmony, often conditioned by morphosyntactic environment; and 4) phonologically determined noun class agreement within noun phrases. Investigating these four properties and others will increase the scientific knowledge that depends critically on these linguistic features that are not found in languages like English, Spanish or their Indo-European relatives. These patterns include such typologically rare phenomena as scalar tone alternations as the sole markers of case and aspect distinctions. Due to the atypical nature of the phonological inventory and morphological properties of Guébie, a complete understanding of the morphophonological system of the language has much to contribute to our collective understanding of the possible linguistic features of a natural language, and the theoretical tools most appropriate for modeling morphophonological phenomena. Prosodic and phonological features, like those exhibited by Guébie, are highly vulnerable as languages become more endangered, which is happening in the Guébie community. This project also fosters strong connections between Ivoirians and Americans at globally focused academic institutions, which serves the national interest by helping to strengthen democracy and governance in Africa.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.

语言学家估计，全球7,000多种语言是音调的，其中许多语言濒临灭绝，并且由于城市化和强调正规教育而被儿童获得。该项目将通过专注于显示丰富的音调清单的语言以及一种辅音模式和元音和谐的类型系统来回答有关音调的众多问题中的一些问题。这些特征以复杂而差的方式相互作用，理解短语和句子中的方式。该项目将详细描述和分析这些现象，以对单词构建（形态）和声音模式（语音学）的特定重视。该项目将提供有关此语言中有关音调及其标量特性的许多问题的新见解，以及形态和语法中复杂音调和元音和谐系统的行为。结果将通过有关描述性和理论发现，参考语法和存档的注释语言数据的期刊文章进行传播。除了其纪录片目标外，该项目还将在国际野外工作和语言文档培训中为代表性不足的学生提供支持。它将通过促进协作国际关系作为学生学习的网站来增强STEM劳动力的全球竞争力。该项目将调查吉比（Guébie），这是一种濒临灭绝的Kru（Niger-Congo）语言，在Côted'Ivoire中使用的语言，作为语言学家在乔治敦大学（Georgetown University）进行的合作的一部分，FélixHoupho的语言学家在Abidjan，Abidjan，Côtedd'ivoireand Guebie和guebie和guebie和guebie。 KRU语言通常是有记录的，尽管广泛的工作表明Kru家族中的语言在类型上具有罕见的语言特性。其中包括：1）具有四个音调高度的复杂音调系统，其中音调的词汇和语法对比度均具有鲜明的对比； 2）具有液体辅音诸如诸如而不是停止的液体辅音的意外图案； 3）具有多种类型的元音和谐的大型元音清单，通常以形态同步环境为条件； 4）语音确定的名词类别一致性在名词短语中。调查这四个特性和其他特性将增加科学知识，这些科学知识严格取决于这些语言特征，而这些语言特征在英语，西班牙语或其印欧亲戚等语言中未发现。这些模式包括类型上罕见的现象，例如标量替代品，例如案例和方面区分。由于Guébie的语音清单和形态学特性的非典型性质，对语言的形态学系统的完全理解有助于我们对自然语言的可能语言特征的集体理解，以及最适合对形态学现象进行建模的理论工具。像Guébie所展示的韵律和语音特征一样，随着语言变得更加濒危，这在Guébie社区中发生。该项目还促进了全球专注的学术机构之间的伊沃里亚人与美国人之间的牢固联系，该机构通过帮助加强非洲的民主和治理来为国家利益提供服务。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，我们被认为是通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查审查的审查标准来通过评估来诚实的支持。