Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Documenting Dialect Divergences Across Space and Time

博士后奖学金：SPRF：记录跨空间和时间的方言差异

• 批准号: 2313787
• 负责人: Mirella Blum
• 金额: $ 16万
• 依托单位: Blum, Mirella L
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2313787&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; SPRF; Documenting; Dialect

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) and Linguistics programs. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Laura McPherson at Dartmouth College, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating the diversity of linguistic tone and patterns in tonal evolution. The goal of the project is to apply these questions to a typologically unusual language. Few languages exist that possess all of the elements of the the target language sound system, and in even fewer do the elements function independently. Where other languages might use affixation to express lexical or grammatical distinctions, the target language's way of doing this is almost entirely suprasegmental (not having to do with the segmental sounds of consonants and vowels). A phonation contrast (whether the voice sounds creakier or breathier) and tone contrasts (the pitch melody of a given word) function independently in this language but are linked in almost every other language. The target language also exhibits features previously theorized to be impossible. For example, there are three degrees of vowel length (short, long, and overlong), and contrastive tonal alignment (a word’s meaning can be changed by the time point at which a vowel’s phonetic fall in pitch begins). This project focuses on undocumented dialects of the target language; the goal of the project is to describe their tone systems and investigate grammatical phenomena in which tone is involved. The project will also ultimately lead to comparative studies: investigations into how these dialects are similar and dissimilar to one another, and how they might have evolved from a common ancestor. Careful documentation of many dialects of a typologically unique language will contribute to understanding of the possible range of tonal phenomena in human language and deepen knowledge of highly complex tone systems. Most previous research on tone in the target language has focused on single dialects of the language, but the tone systems can differ considerably across dialects. This project will document the range of tonal behavior and phenomena by analyzing the tone systems of several undocumented or under-described dialects from multiple dialect clusters, forming hypotheses about how the tone systems evolved and diverged from one another, and collecting data that can be used for in-depth studies of tone in each dialect and for cross-dialect comparison. Primary research methods include the collection of controlled datasets and analysis of recorded spontaneous speech. The project also promotes accessible remote methodologies for conducting linguistic fieldwork.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.

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）和语言学项目的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在达特茅斯学院劳拉·麦克弗森博士的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金奖支持一位早期职业科学家研究语言音调的多样性和音调演变中的模式。该项目的目标是将这些问题应用到一种不同寻常的语言中。很少有语言拥有目标语语音系统的所有要素，而这些要素独立发挥作用的语言就更少了。其他语言可能会使用词缀来表达词汇或语法上的区别，而目标语言的这种表达方式几乎完全是超段音（与辅音和元音的段音无关）。发音对比（声音听起来更脆还是更喘）和音调对比（给定单词的音高旋律）在英语中各自独立发挥作用，但在几乎所有其他语言中都是相互联系的。目标语言也表现出先前理论认为不可能的特征。例如，元音长度有三种程度（短、长和过长），以及对比的音调对齐（一个单词的意义可以通过元音开始语音下降的时间点来改变）。这个项目的重点是目标语言的未记录方言；该项目的目的是描述他们的语气系统和调查语法现象，其中语气涉及。该项目还将最终导致比较研究：调查这些方言彼此之间的相似和不同之处，以及它们如何从一个共同的祖先进化而来。对一种类型独特的语言的许多方言进行仔细的记录，将有助于理解人类语言中音调现象的可能范围，并加深对高度复杂的音调系统的认识。以往对目标语言声调的研究大多集中在该语言的单一方言上，但不同方言之间的声调系统可能存在很大差异。本项目将通过分析多个方言群中几种未记录或描述不足的方言的音调系统，形成关于音调系统如何演变和彼此分化的假设，并收集可用于每种方言的音调深入研究和跨方言比较的数据，从而记录音调行为和现象的范围。主要的研究方法包括收集受控数据集和分析记录的自发语音。该项目还促进进行语言实地工作的无障碍远程方法。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。