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，世界上 7,000 种语言中有一半以上是有声调的，其中许多语言濒临灭绝，并且由于城市化和对正规教育的重视而无法被儿童习得。该项目将通过关注显示丰富音调库存的语言以及类型学上意想不到的辅音模式和元音和谐系统来回答有关音调的许多剩余问题。这些特征在短语和句子中以复杂且难以理解的方式相互作用。该项目将详细描述和分析这些现象，特别强调单词构建（形态学）和声音模式（音系学）。 该项目将为该语言中有关声调及其标量属性的许多问题提供新的见解，以及复杂的声调和元音和谐系统在形态和句法中的行为。结果将通过有关描述性和理论发现、参考语法和存档的带注释的语言数据的期刊文章进行传播。除了其文献目标外，该项目还将支持代表性不足的学生进行国际实地考察和语言文献培训。它将通过促进国际合作关系作为学生学习的场所，提高 STEM 劳动力的全球竞争力。作为乔治城大学语言学家、科特迪瓦阿比让菲利克斯·乌弗埃-博瓦尼大学语言学家和 Guébie 社区合作努力的一部分，该项目将调查 Guébie 语，这是科特迪瓦西南部使用的一种尚未得到充分研究的濒危克鲁语（尼日尔-刚果）语言。总体而言，克鲁语言的文献记载不足，但现有的研究表明，克鲁语家族中的语言表现出类型学上罕见的语言特性。其中包括：1）具有四种声调高度的复杂声调系统，其中声调区分词汇和语法对比； 2) 内爆辅音与流辅音的意想不到的模式，比如而不是塞音； 3）大量元音库存，具有多种类型的元音和声，通常受形态句法环境的限制； 4) 名词短语内按语音确定的名词类一致性。研究这四个属性和其他属性将增加科学知识，而科学知识很大程度上依赖于这些语言特征，而这些语言特征在英语、西班牙语或其印欧语系亲戚中是没有的。这些模式包括类型学上罕见的现象，例如标量音调交替，作为格和体区别的唯一标记。由于 Guébie 的音系清单和形态特性的非典型性，对语言的形态音系系统的完整理解有助于我们对自然语言可能的语言特征的集体理解，以及最适合对形态音系现象进行建模的理论工具。随着语言变得更加濒危（Guébie 社区正在发生这种情况），韵律和语音特征（如 Guébie 所展示的那样）变得非常脆弱。该项目还促进了科特迪瓦人和美国人在全球重点学术机构中的牢固联系，通过帮助加强非洲的民主和治理来服务于国家利益。该奖项反映了 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。