Structural priming and language change in experiments, historical corpora, and translation: Towards a psycholinguistically informed approach to historical corpus analysis

实验、历史语料库和翻译中的结构启动和语言变化：走向历史语料库分析的心理语言学方法

• 批准号: 469940249
• 负责人: Dr. Gunnar Jacob
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Anglistisches Seminar
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/469940249?language=en
• 关键词: Structural; priming; language; change; experiments

An obvious obstacle for any psycholinguistic approach to historical language change is that it is impossible to conduct psycholinguistic experiments with speakers from previous centuries. In more general terms, the types of empirical data typically used in experimental psycholinguistics and historical linguistics differ considerably between the two disciplines. The aim of the present project is to overcome these methodological differences and to establish a link between experimental psycholinguistics and historical corpus analysis. Specifically, we will develop a methodological toolset which allows us to simulate psycholinguistic experiments in a corpus analysis. To achieve this, we focus on particular phenomena which have been used in psycholinguistic experiments to gain insight into mechanisms of language processing, but can also be observed in corpus data. In other words, while we cannot conduct psycholinguistic experiments on, for example, speakers of Middle English, it is potentially possible to simulate such experiments in a quantitative historical corpus analysis, which focuses on the same phenomena as experimental research.A promising phenomenon to be investigated in both psycholinguistic experiments and (historical) corpus analyses is structural priming , i.e. the tendency of speakers to repeat structures previously encountered. Both within-language and cross-linguistic structural priming have been investigated extensively in psycholinguistic experiments, and has provided valuable insights into a wide variety of issues of monolingual and bilingual language processing, production, and development. These studies led to the development of elaborate theoretical models (e.g. Hartsuiker et al., 2004; Jacob et al., 2016; van Gompel & Arai, 2017) which establish links between observable priming effects, structural representations, and mechanisms of syntactic processing. The present proposal investigates the role of structural priming in two phenomena which have been extensively studied in historical linguistics, (a) frequency changes of the dative alternation in Middle English and (b) language change caused by Language Contact Through Translation for texts translated from Old French to Middle English. Based on Gries‘ (2005) rationale for determining structural priming effects in quantitative corpus analyses and Maier, Pickering and Hartsuiker’s (2017) work on the role of structural priming in translation, we will simulate structural priming experiments which allow us to gain insight into the psycholinguistic processes and mechanisms underlying these instances of historical language change.

任何研究历史语言变迁的心理语言学方法的一个明显障碍是不可能对前几个世纪的说话者进行心理语言学实验。更一般地说，实验心理语言学和历史语言学通常使用的经验数据类型在这两个学科之间存在很大差异。本项目的目的是克服这些方法论差异，并在实验心理语言学和历史语料库分析之间建立联系。具体来说，我们将开发一个方法论工具集，使我们能够在语料库分析中模拟心理语言学实验。为了实现这一目标，我们专注于心理语言学实验中使用的特定现象，以深入了解语言处理机制，但也可以在语料库数据中观察到。换句话说，虽然我们无法对中古英语的使用者进行心理语言学实验，但有可能在定量历史语料库分析中模拟此类实验，该分析侧重于与实验研究相同的现象。在心理语言学实验和（历史）语料库分析中要研究的一个有前景的现象是结构启动，即说话者重复先前遇到的结构的倾向。语言内和跨语言结构启动在心理语言学实验中得到了广泛的研究，并为单语和双语语言处理、产生和发展的各种问题提供了宝贵的见解。这些研究导致了复杂理论模型的发展（例如 Hartsuiker 等人，2004 年；Jacob 等人，2016 年；van Gompel 和 Arai，2017 年），这些模型在可观察到的启动效应、结构表征和句法加工机制之间建立了联系。本提案研究了结构启动在历史语言学中广泛研究的两种现象中的作用，（a）中古英语中与格交替的频率变化和（b）从古法语翻译到中古英语的文本中通过翻译进行语言接触引起的语言变化。基于 Gries (2005) 在定量语料库分析中确定结构启动效应的基本原理以及 Maier、Pickering 和 Hartsuiker (2017) 关于结构启动在翻译中的作用的工作，我们将模拟结构启动实验，这使我们能够深入了解这些历史语言变化实例背后的心理语言学过程和机制。