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 NSF 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 项目的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门以及政府的科学职业培养有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。 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。 NSF 致力于促进科学界各个领域的科学家（包括来自代表性不足群体的科学家）参与其研究计划和活动；博士后时期被认为是实现这一目标的重要专业发展阶段。每个博士后研究员必须解决推动各自学科领域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，该博士后奖学金资助一位早期职业科学家研究语言声调和声调演变模式的多样性。该项目的目标是将这些问题应用于类型学上不寻常的语言。很少有语言能够拥有目标语言声音系统的所有元素，而这些元素独立发挥作用的语言就更少了。其他语言可能使用词缀来表达词汇或语法区别，而目标语言的做法几乎完全是超音段的（与辅音和元音的音段声音无关）。语音对比（声音是否听起来更脆或更呼吸）和音调对比（给定单词的音高旋律）在这种语言中独立发挥作用，但在几乎所有其他语言中都相互关联。目标语言还表现出以前理论上不可能的功能。例如，元音长度分为三种程度（短、长和超长），以及对比音调对齐（单词的含义可以通过元音的语音音高开始下降的时间点来改变）。该项目重点关注目标语言中未记录的方言；该项目的目标是描述他们的声调系统并研究涉及声调的语法现象。该项目最终还将进行比较研究：调查这些方言如何彼此相似和不同，以及它们如何从共同的祖先演变而来。对类型学上独特的语言的许多方言进行仔细记录将有助于理解人类语言中可能存在的声调现象，并加深对高度复杂的声调系统的了解。之前大多数关于目标语言声调的研究都集中在该语言的单一方言上，但不同方言的声调系统可能存在很大差异。该项目将通过分析来自多个方言簇的几种未记录或未充分描述的方言的声调系统，形成关于声调系统如何演化和分化的假设，并收集可用于深入研究每种方言的声调和跨方言比较的数据，记录声调行为和现象的范围。主要研究方法包括收集受控数据集和分析录制的自发语音。该项目还推广可用于进行语言实地考察的远程方法。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。