Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of Language Contact on Relative Clauses in Two Signed Languages

在广泛使用双语的社区中，使用两种语言的人使用的语法可以趋同，随着时间的推移变得越来越相似。对于使用多种手语的社区会发生什么情况，我们知之甚少。接触中的手语会随着时间的推移而趋同吗？本论文研究的目的是记录和描述不同社区的单语和双语手语者在使用语言语法结构方面的差异。该项目旨在揭示弱势和未被充分研究的手语的语法特性，并深入了解多种语言如何更普遍地影响语言结构。这个研究项目的重点是在主要的单语和双语手语社区使用关系从句。关系分句是修饰名词的句子，以帮助将一个人或一件事与一组人或一件事区分开来，或者增加有关它的更多信息。例如：“读这本书的女孩”或“我正在抚摸的猫”都是带有关系从句的名词，这些从句提供了更多关于这些名词的信息。语言标记关系从句的方式各不相同：用“who”或“that”等专门的连接词，用词序的变化，或用韵律/语调。在口语中，像关系从句这样的语法结构会受到广泛的语言接触和多语言使用的影响，从而导致接触语言的新品种，这些新品种与单语语言品种不同。然而，手语中的关系从句、双语和语言接触的研究还在进行中。该项目使用现有的评估工具来确定两种手语的关系从句在两种手语的双语水平较高的社区中是否变得更加相似。从不同社区的单语和双语手语中收集两种手语的叙事、对话、描述和语法数据。将比较每一种语言的单语和双语签名者之间的关系子句语法结构和使用，以确定社区特定的语法模式，并确定单语和双语语言使用之间的任何差异是否是由于双语社区的语法趋同。总之，本项目旨在梳理语法结构使用中的细微差别，以确定手语双语对语法的影响。这项研究通过增加关于手语的科学知识，以及社区和个人如何使用手语，以及增加语言基础设施，有助于我们理解语言作为人类的一种能力。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。

In communities with extensive spoken language bilingualism, the grammars of the languages speakers use can converge, becoming more similar to each other over time. Very little is known about what happens in communities where more than one signed language is used. Do signed languages in contact converge over time? The goal of this dissertation research is to document and describe how monolingual and bilingual signers in different communities differ in their use of grammatical structures in their languages. The project seeks to shed light on the grammatical properties of vulnerable and understudied signed languages, as well as provide insight into how multilingualism impacts the structure of language more generally.This research project focuses on the use of relative clauses in predominantly monolingual and bilingual signing communities. Relative clauses are sentences that modify nouns to help distinguish a person or thing from a group or add more information about it. For example: "The girl who read the book" or "The cat that I was petting" are nouns with relative clauses that provide more information about those nouns. How languages mark relative clauses varies: with a specialized linking word such as "who" or "that", with changes in word order, or with prosody/tone. In spoken languages, grammatical structures like relative clauses can be impacted by extensive language contact and multilingualism, leading to new varieties of the languages in contact that are distinct from monolingual language varieties. However, relative clauses are under researched in signed languages, as is bilingualism and language contact. This project uses existing assessment tools to determine if relative clauses in two signed languages are becoming more similar to each other in communities with high levels of bilingualism in those signed languages. Narrative, conversation, description, and grammaticality data from two signed languages will be collected with monolingual and bilingual signers in different communities. Relative clause grammatical structure and use will be compared across monolingual and bilingual signers in each language in order to identify community-specific grammatical patterns and to determine whether any differences between monolingual and bilingual language use are due to grammatical convergence in bilingual communities. Together, this project aims to tease apart subtle distinctions in the use of grammatical structure to identify outcomes of signed language bilingualism on grammar. This research contributes to our understanding of language as a human faculty by increasing scientific knowledge about signed languages and how they are used by communities and individuals, as well as increasing language infrastructure.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.