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Loss of Inflection

失去屈折变化

基本信息

批准号：
AH/N00163X/1
负责人：
Matthew Baerman
金额：
$ 52.37万
依托单位：
University of Surrey
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2016 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FN00163X%2F1
关键词：
Loss Inflection

项目摘要

A major point of contrast between languages comes from the role played by inflection. For example, in a language with inflection, like Spanish, there are dozens of verb forms that express differences in categories such as subject person and tense, as in bebo 'I drink', bebes 'you drink', bebiste 'you drank'. In a language without inflection, such as Vietnamese, the corresponding verb will have just one form: uong 'drink'. But this is not just a property that characterizes individual languages, it also distinguishes different historical stages of the same language. Over the last 1200 years English has lost nearly all of its complex inflectional system, radically transforming its character, and similar developments have occurred in the histories of language all across the world. At first glance this looks simply like decay, and this is often how it figures in the public imagination, as complaints about the death of the 'who' ~ 'whom' distinction in English can attest. But the loss of inflection is a complex and multidimensional process. From the perspective of the word, an inflectional paradigm is a system of interlocking parts, whose network of relationships change in response to any change in its constituents. And from the perspective of the grammar as a whole, a loss in the expressive properties of words will have to be compensated for somehow, for example by using word order and function words to do the same job. The processes of inflectional loss are a potential source of insight into the workings of grammar, seen from a unique perspective. We exploit this through the following research questions. (1) Are some morphosyntactic features more likely to be lost than others? (2) Are some types of morphological marking more likely to be lost than others? (3) Does the complexity of an inflectional system affect its stability? (4) What is the relationship between inflectional loss and syntactic change? (5) Is the 'natural' loss of inflection different from contact-induced change?Although many languages have lost some or all of their inflectional systems over the course of their history, we lack satisfactory answers to these questions. This is partly due to the fact that the morphological particulars of each language are idiosyncratic, discouraging large-scale generalizations. And of course the obvious imperfections in the historic record leave large gaps in our knowledge. Therefore we adopt two parallel research strategies. One is to compile a cross-linguistic sample of instances of inflectional loss, comprising all the plausible examples so far described. These will form the basis of a cross-linguistic database whose parameters will be organized around the five research questions. This will ensure breadth of coverage, and allow us to compare sets of examples that previously had been studied only in isolation. The second strategy will be to look in detail at the morphological, syntactic and discourse factors involved. Because this would be difficult or impossible to recover from most of the available data (which is based on textual evidence or reconstruction), we can gain a fair picture of the mechanisms by studying contemporary variation across related languages or varieties of a language, where different degrees of conservation and innovation mirror the historic processes. Therefore we will conduct five in-depth case studies of individual language and dialect groups, in close consultation with chosen experts in these areas.

语言之间的一个主要对比点来自屈折变化所扮演的角色。例如，在一种有屈折变化的语言中，如西班牙语，有几十种动词形式表达了诸如主语、人称和时态等类别的差异，如bebo“我喝了”，bebes“你喝了”，bebiste“你喝了”。在没有屈折变化的语言中，例如越南语，对应的动词只有一种形式：uong 'drink'。但是，这不仅是一个特性，个别语言的特点，它也区分不同的历史阶段，同一种语言。在过去的1200年里，英语几乎失去了所有复杂的屈折系统，从根本上改变了它的性格，世界各地的语言历史都发生了类似的发展。乍一看，这看起来像是腐朽，这也是它在公众想象中的形象，正如对英语中“who”~“whom”区别的死亡的抱怨可以证明的那样。但是，音调变化的消失是一个复杂的、多方面的过程。从词的角度来看，屈折范式是一个由相互关联的部分组成的系统，其关系网络随着其组成部分的变化而变化。从整个语法的角度来看，单词表达特性的损失必须以某种方式得到补偿，例如使用词序和功能词来完成同样的工作。从一个独特的角度来看，屈折变化的损失过程是洞察语法运作的潜在来源。我们通过以下研究问题来利用这一点。(1)是否有些形态句法特征比其他特征更容易丢失？(2)某些类型的形态标记是否比其他类型更容易丢失？(3)屈折系统的复杂性会影响它的稳定性吗？(4)屈折损失和句法变化之间的关系是什么？(5)“自然”的音调变化与接触引起的变化不同吗？尽管许多语言在其历史过程中已经失去了部分或全部的屈折系统，但我们对这些问题缺乏满意的答案。这部分是因为每种语言的形态细节都是独特的，不利于大规模的概括。当然，历史记录中明显的不完美之处给我们的知识留下了巨大的空白。因此，我们采取了两种平行的研究策略。一个是编制一个跨语言的例子屈折损失的样本，包括所有的合理的例子，到目前为止描述。这些将构成一个跨语言数据库的基础，其参数将围绕五个研究问题进行组织。这将确保覆盖面的广度，并使我们能够比较以前只单独研究的几组例子。第二个策略是详细研究所涉及的形态、句法和语篇因素。因为这将是困难的或不可能恢复从大多数可用的数据（这是基于文本证据或重建），我们可以获得一个公平的画面的机制，通过研究当代的变化在相关的语言或品种的语言，不同程度的保护和创新反映了历史进程。因此，我们将与这些领域的专家密切磋商，对个别语言和方言群体进行五次深入的案例研究。