CAREER: Documentation, description, and analysis of multiword tone and harmony systems in four languages

这个CAREER项目调查了四种未被研究的语言的语言系统。在项目的每一年，PI都会培训一个由本科生和研究生组成的团队学习语言文档编制方法，团队会前往每个目标语言的社区工作。该团队记录每种语言的自然语音，并提取特定的单词和句子，以记录语法的各个方面。录制的材料存档在加州语言档案馆，保存语言数据到未来，使他们可供语言学家，其他学者和扬声器社区。这项工作填补了经验上的空白，记录了未充分研究的语言的语法，这是为目标语言开发语言资源以及语言理论和类型学的重要第一步。它也对我们理解语言的工作方式有重要意义。该项目加强了学术界之间现有的国际关系，并与农村社区建立了关系，促进了文化交流和理解。该项目还为本地和国际学生提供培训，为下一代语言研究人员的发展和多样化做出贡献。该项目研究的四种语言都显示出跨词边界的特定语素语音过程。在一种语言中，未完成体的特点是语气的变化，这种变化既影响句子的动词，也影响句子的主语。词素特定的跨词音系没有很好地记录在不同语言中，所以这项研究开始填补类型学知识的空白。此外，大多数形态学和音系学之间的相互作用的正式理论预测，词素特定的音系学应限于词或子词域。这四种语言的和声和声调数据表明，这是一个错误的预测。对跨词语素特定音位学的边界以及它们是否与形态句法或韵律边界相一致的更深入理解，为关于需要何种正式机制来解释跨语言的形态学和音位学之间的相互作用的辩论提供了信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为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来支持。

This CAREER project investigates the linguistic system of four understudied languages. Each year of the project, the PI trains a team of undergraduate and graduate students in language documentation methods, and the team travels to work with communities of each of the target languages. The team records natural speech in each language and elicits specific words and sentences in order to document aspects of the grammar. The recorded materials are archived in the California Language Archive, preserving language data into the future so that they are available to linguists, other academics, and speaker communities. This work fills an empirical gap, documenting the grammar of understudied languages, which is an important first step for developing language resources for the target languages, as well as for linguistic theory and typology. It also has important implications for our understanding of how languages work. The project strengthens existing international relationships between academics and builds relationships with rural communities, fostering cultural exchange and understanding. It also provides training to both local and international students, contributing to the development and diversification of the next generation of language researchers.The four languages studied in this project all display morpheme-specific phonological processes that cross word boundaries. In one language, the imperfective aspect is marked by a shift in tone that affects the verb as well as the subject of the sentence. Morpheme-specific cross-word phonology is not well documented across languages, so this study begins to fill a gap in typological knowledge. Additionally, most formal theories of the interaction between morphology and phonology predict that morpheme-specific phonology should be limited to word or sub-word domains. The data from harmony and tone in these four languages shows this is an incorrect prediction. A deeper understanding of the boundaries of cross-word morpheme-specific phonology, and whether they align with morphosyntactic or prosodic boundaries, informs debates on what formal mechanisms are needed to account for interactions between morphology and phonology across languages.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.