Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Neurolinguistic Mechanisms of Grammatical Processing across Different Dialects

该奖项是NSF社会，行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）和语言学计划的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界，工业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的奖励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致力于促进来自科学界各部门的科学家，包括来自代表性不足的群体的科学家参与其研究计划和活动;博士后期间被认为是实现这一目标的专业发展的重要水平。每个博士后研究员必须解决推进各自学科领域的重要科学问题。在宾夕法尼亚州立大学的珍妮特货车地狱博士的赞助下，这个博士后奖学金支持了一位研究方言变化的神经认知过程的早期职业科学家。每个人都会经历与不同语言变体（也称为方言）相关的语法多样性。例如，在英语的许多变体中，无论句子的主语是单数还是复数，都使用“was”（例如，“他们很幸福”）。大多数来自美国的英语使用者都能识别出这种模式，并且似乎能以最小的困难适应方言差异，但人们对这一过程在大脑中如何在真实的时间内展开却知之甚少。该项目提供了听众如何适应方言之间的语法差异的第一个帐户之一，建立在以前的神经认知研究集中在不同口音和语言的语言处理。我们预测，人们会根据他们听到的方言来调整他们对语法的期望，但他们的确切策略将取决于他们自己对特定方言的经验。为了验证这一假设，我们将使用神经认知（EEG）方法完成一系列实验，测量正在进行的大脑活动。参与者将听到由各种说话者说出的带有规则化主谓一致的句子（“他们很高兴”），并伴有图像。将在不同语言背景的参与者之间比较对规则化主谓一致的事件相关电位（ERP）。在此之后，单音节参与者将完成一项培训研究，以确定增加的暴露如何影响对语法规则的实时神经认知调整。在最后一项研究中，我们将测试听众如何适应一个扬声器内的方言转换，测试的假设，即听众谁是暴露于两种英语语言品种会期望一个给定的扬声器之间的语法系统转换在社会条件的方式。该项目将多样性，特别是语言多样性置于人类认知理论的中心。此外，它还可以为跨方言交流给少数群体说话者造成负担的情况提供信息，例如教育系统，在教育系统中，少数群体学生往往被要求用不熟悉的方言学习，以及刑事司法系统，主要发言人对少数民族方言的理解能力较低，可能会导致有偏见的判断。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得的。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来提供支持。

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. Janet van Hell at the Pennsylvania State University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating neurocognitive processing of dialect variation. Everyone experiences grammatical diversity associated with different language varieties, also known as dialects. For example, in many varieties of English, "was" is used regardless of whether the subject of the sentence is singular or plural (e.g., "They was happy"). Most speakers of English from the United States recognize such patterns and appear to adjust to dialect differences with minimal difficulty, but little is known about how this process unfolds in real time in the brain. This project provides one of the first accounts of how listeners adjust to grammatical differences between dialects, building from previous neurocognitive research focused on language processing across different accents and languages. We predict that people will adjust their expectations of grammar based on the dialect they hear, but their exact strategy will depend on their own experience with a given dialect. To test this hypothesis, we will complete a series of experiments using neurocognitive (EEG) methods that measure ongoing brain activity. Participants will hear sentences with regularized subject-verb agreement ("They was happy") spoken by a variety of speakers with accompanying images. Event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to regularized subject-verb agreement will be compared across participants with different linguistic backgrounds. Following this, monodialectal participants will complete a training study to determine how increased exposure affects real-time neurocognitive adjustment to grammatical rules. In a final study, we will test how listeners adjust to dialect shifts within a speaker, testing the hypothesis that listeners who are exposed to both English language varieties would expect a given speaker to shift between grammatical systems in socially conditioned ways. This project places diversity, particularly linguistic diversity, at the center of theorizing about human cognition. Moreover, it could inform applied questions regarding situations where cross-dialect communication poses a burden to minoritized speakers, such as the education system, where minoritized students are often expected to learn in an unfamiliar dialect, and the criminal justice system, where dominant speakers’ lower comprehension of minoritized dialects may contribute to biased judgments.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.