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.

该奖项是作为NSF社会、行为和经济学博士后研究奖学金(SPRF)和语言学项目的一部分提供的。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职业生涯培养有前途的、早期职业博士水平的科学家。SPRF奖项包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行两年的培训，并鼓励博士后研究员进行独立研究。国家科学基金会致力于促进科学界所有阶层的科学家参与其研究方案和活动，包括那些来自代表性不足的群体的科学家；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的一个重要水平。每个博士后研究员都必须解决推动各自学科领域向前发展的重要科学问题。在达特茅斯学院劳拉·麦克弗森博士的赞助下，这一博士后奖学金奖项支持一位早期职业科学家研究声调演变中的语言语调和模式的多样性。该项目的目标是将这些问题应用于一种类型学上不寻常的语言。很少有语言拥有目标语言语音系统的所有元素，而在更少的语言中，这些元素能够独立发挥作用。当其他语言可能使用词缀来表达词汇或语法差异时，目标语言的方法几乎完全是超音段的(与辅音和元音的音节发音无关)。发音对比(声音听起来更吱吱或更喘息)和音调对比(给定单词的音调旋律)在这种语言中独立发挥作用，但在几乎所有其他语言中都是联系在一起的。目标语言还表现出以前被理论认为是不可能的特征。例如，有三种元音长度(短、长和过长)和对比性声调对齐(一个单词的意思可以通过元音在音高中开始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；该项目的目标是描述他们的语调系统，并调查涉及语调的语法现象。该项目还将最终导致比较研究：调查这些方言如何彼此相似和不同，以及它们可能是如何从共同的祖先进化而来的。仔细记录一种具有独特类型的语言的许多方言将有助于理解人类语言中可能存在的各种声调现象，并加深对高度复杂的声调系统的了解。以前对目的语声调的研究大多集中在该语言的单一方言上，但不同方言的声调系统可能会有很大的差异。这个项目将通过分析来自多个方言集群的几个未记载或未被描述的方言的声调系统，形成关于声调系统如何演变和彼此偏离的假设，并收集可用于深入研究每一种方言的声调和用于跨方言比较的数据，来记录声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言语。该项目还促进可利用的远程方法进行语言实地调查。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。