Doctoral Dissertation Research: Acquisition of grammatical variation: Differential object marking in heritage speakers

博士论文研究：语法变异的习得：传统说话者的差异对象标记

• 批准号: 2140586
• 负责人: Karen Miller
• 金额: $ 1.55万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-03-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2140586&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Acquisition; grammatical

According to the Census Bureau, more than 41 million people in the US speak Spanish at home. It is important to understand how the growing number of US children who are raised speaking Spanish at home come to acquire and use language as adults. The goal of this project is to explore the use of a variable grammatical form in bilingual adults who were raised in the US speaking Spanish at home and English in school; these bilingual adults are also known as “heritage speakers”. Examining variable patterns leads to a more comprehensive understanding of bilingual language acquisition in the US context. Disseminating the findings from this project through both scientific and public channels helps researchers and educators to develop more effective educational strategies and improves speech-language pathologists' ability to assess language abilities in clinical settings. Previous studies have shown that heritage speakers demonstrate significant variability in their use of grammatical forms. This variability can be traced to language-specific factors as well as aspects of an individual’s language experience. While variable grammatical patterns appear across languages and speech communities, these patterns are rarely studied in heritage speakers. This project uses a sentence repetition task with heritage language speakers and monolinguals to examine the trade-off between competing influences on the distribution of differential object marking (DOM), a phenomenon found in a number of languages where certain objects in a sentence are accompanied by a prefix/suffix, preposition, or other marker. The project addresses the following questions: (1) How do heritage speakers acquire variable grammatical patterns such as DOM? (2) What are the linguistic and extralinguistic factors that constrain heritage speakers’ use of variable patterns? (3) How does variable usage change across generations of bilingual speakers? This novel approach combining the study of variation, language acquisition, and cross-generational heritage speakers has significant potential to contribute to our understanding of bilingualism and language acquisition.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.

根据人口普查局的数据，美国有超过 4100 万人在家说西班牙语。了解越来越多在​​家里讲西班牙语长大的美国儿童成年后如何习得和使用语言非常重要。该项目的目标是探索在美国长大、在家讲西班牙语、在学校讲英语的双语成年人如何使用可变语法形式；这些双语成年人也被称为“传统发言人”。检查变量模式可以更全面地了解美国背景下的双语习得。通过科学和公共渠道传播该项目的研究结果有助于研究人员和教育工作者制定更有效的教育策略，并提高言语病理学家评估临床环境中语言能力的能力。先前的研究表明，传统语言使用者在语法形式的使用上表现出显着的差异。这种差异可以追溯到语言特定因素以及个人语言体验的各个方面。虽然各种语言和语音社区中都出现了不同的语法模式，但很少有人对传统说话者进行这些模式的研究。该项目使用传统语言使用者和单语者的句子重复任务来检查差异对象标记（DOM）分布的竞争影响之间的权衡，这种现象在许多语言中都存在，其中句子中的某些对象伴随着前缀/后缀、介词或其他标记。该项目解决了以下问题：（1）传统说话者如何获得可变的语法模式，例如 DOM？ (2) 限制传统说话者使用可变模式的语言和语言外因素有哪些？ (3) 不同世代的双语使用者之间的变量用法有何变化？这种新颖的方法结合了变异、语言习得和跨代遗产说话者的研究，具有巨大的潜力，有助于我们对双语和语言习得的理解。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。