The Scots Syntactic Atlas

虽然传统的方言地图集工作主要集中在语音和词汇变化上，但近年来方言句法方面的工作激增，特别是在欧洲。在苏格兰的背景下，有一些关于少数特定苏格兰方言的形态句法的研究，但还没有系统地报道这里提出的类型，实际上到目前为止还没有在任何英语方言地区进行过这样的研究。这不仅是描述性记录中的重大差距，也是分析图景中的差距：先前的句法图集项目已经表明，地理上复杂的微观比较方法是测试对不同方言之间不同的句法属性的理论解释的强大工具，并且由于苏格兰方言在许多理论上有意义的句法现象(例如主语-动词一致、否定和相对化)方面表现出很大的差异，SCOSYA的主要目标是通过对当代苏格兰方言的非标准句法属性提供系统的和在理论上知情的描述，并将结果可视化地呈现在在线地图集上，从而开始填补这一空白。我们将从分布在苏格兰和北爱尔兰的122个地点的4名发言者那里收集数据；主要的数据来源将是语法判断，使用在其他项目中成功使用的访谈方法收集的数据，但将辅之以方言发言者之间的对话谈话录音，这些录音将被转录并在网站上提供。判断数据将被输入一个数据库，该数据库将构成在线地图集的基础；这将是完全互动的，使用户能够生成自己的地图，绘制具有各种可视化选项的单个句法现象或现象组合的分布图。地图集将有两个界面，一个供非专家使用，另一个供专家使用；前者将辅之以评注和说明，以确保它对一般公众方便，而后者将链接到文字记录和完整的声音文件，以供研究之用。除了地图集的数据外，我们还将收集迄今为止尚未得到充分研究的特定地区感兴趣的现象的判断数据，从而大大扩展对苏格兰方言语法的描述。然后，我们将利用这一大量的描述性资源来实现一些分析和理论目标。关键的分析问题是：(I)方言变化的句法现象在多大程度上是共现的(以一种不直接归因于地理/社会历史因素的方式)？(Ii)句法现象的变化范围在多大程度上实现了完整的范式，如果不是，范式中是否存在显著的差距，以及这些差距的原因是什么？(Iii)年长的和年轻的说话者的方言之间有什么不同，方言之间的任何差异是否在方言地区与其他人共同出现？对这些分析性问题的回答将使我们对句法现象的本质有新的认识。该项目的中心理论目标是使用图集提供的经验图来重新评估句法变化的哪些方面应该由参数来解释，哪些是规则的结果，这些规则协商句法表示如何在形态上实现(通过基本的句法后规则)；即，句法变化在多大程度上是句法后的，这需要什么样的句法理论？

While traditional dialect atlas work has concentrated on phonological and lexical variation, recent years have seen a surge in work on dialect syntax, particularly in Europe. In the context of Scotland, there are a few studies on the morphosyntax of a small number of specific Scots dialects, but there has been no systematic coverage of the type proposed here, and indeed no such project has been conducted on any English dialect region to date. This is not only a substantial gap in the descriptive record, but also a gap in the analytical landscape: previous syntactic atlas projects have shown that the geographically sophisticated microcomparative method is a powerful tool for testing theoretical accounts of syntactic properties that vary across dialects, and since Scots dialects show substantial variation with respect a number of theoretically significant syntactic phenomena (e.g. subject-verb agreement, negation and relativization), it presents the analyst with a major opportunity to reassess many key issues in English syntax and indeed theoretical linguistics more widely.The primary goal of SCOSYA is to begin to fill this gap by providing a systematic and theoretically informed description of the non-standard syntactic properties of contemporary dialects of Scots and representing the results visually in an online atlas. We will gather data from four speakers in 122 locations distributed across Scotland and Northern Ireland; the main source of data will be grammaticality judgements, gathered using the interview method employed successfully in other projects, but this will be supplemented by recordings of conversational discourse between dialect speakers, which will be transcribed and made available through the website. The judgement data will be entered into a database which will form the basis for the online atlas; this will be fully interactive, allowing users to generate their own maps plotting the distribution of individual syntactic phenomena or combinations of phenomena, with various visualisation options. The atlas will have two interfaces, one for non-experts and one for experts; the former will be supplemented by commentary and instructions to ensure that it is user-friendly for the general public, while the latter will link to transcripts and full sound files for research purposes. In addition to the atlas data, we will also gather judgement data on locale-specific phenomena of interest that have remained understudied until now, thus extending the description of the grammar of Scots dialects substantially.We will then use this substantial descriptive resource to pursue a number of analytical and theoretical goals. The key analytical questions are: (i) to what extent do dialectally variable syntactic phenomena co-occur (in a manner not directly attributable to geographic/sociohistoric factors)? (ii) to what extent does the range of variation with syntactic phenomena realise full paradigms, and if not, are there significant gaps in the paradigms, and what would account for those gaps? (iii) what differences are there between the dialects of older and younger speakers, and do any differences between dialects co-occur with others across dialect regions? The answers to these analytical questions will give us new insight into the nature of the syntactic phenomena. The central theoretical goal of the project is to use the empirical picture provided by the atlas to reassess just which aspects of syntactic variation are to be accounted for by parameters, and which are the result of rules that negotiate how syntactic representations are realized morphophonologically (by fundamentally post-syntactic rules); that is, how much syntactic variation is post-syntactic, and what kind of theory of syntax does this require?