DOCTORAL DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Syntactic and Psycholinguistic Investigations of Odawa

正式的语言学家和心理语言学家从标准的假设开始，即所有的人类大脑都按照相同的原则运作，所有人类语言和人类句子处理都必须遵守这些原则，而不考虑任何给定语言的表面特征。然而，已经进行的绝大多数心理语言学研究(包括语言产生和理解)都集中在世界上极少数的语言上。除了少数例外，所有的语言在类型上都是相同的，因此在句法上也是相似的。这项拟议的研究主要寻求将心理语言学研究扩展到奥达瓦语，这是一种与奥吉布瓦和其他阿尔冈昆语关系密切的美洲原住民语言，在加拿大安大略省南部使用。小达瓦在类型和句法上与心理语言学家所研究的任何语言都有很大的不同，从而为人类句子处理的各种现有和相互竞争的理论提供了一个全新的视角。小达瓦经常被称为非构造型语言，因为它在独立从句中的词序极其自由。任何由两个名词短语论元和一个动词组成的及物句在语法上都可以以六种可能的词序中的任何一种出现。然而，在表现出一定程度的语序自由的语言中观察到的那种丰富的、传统的格系统并没有促进这种语序，心理语言学家(例如，德语、日语)已经研究过这种语序。这种语序自由是目前任何句子产生或理解模型都没有考虑到的。学生调查员获得了前所未有的机会，将他在形式句法、心理语言学和小川语言方面的培训结合在一起，在加拿大安大略省威克韦米孔镇进行了大量的产生和理解实验，那里的7000名居民中约有50%仍以这种语言为母语。将进行生产实验，以评估各种结构方案的基线偏好，并确定这些偏好是否可以通过各种启动操作来改变。理解实验将试图建立暂时的歧义，然后观察参与者从这些歧义中恢复的方式和时间过程。关键的是，Odawa的句法允许对当前句子处理理论所做的关键假设进行批判性检查。

Formal linguists and psycholinguists start with the standard assumption that all human brains operate according to the same principles, and that all human language and human sentence processing must adhere to these principles, regardless of the surface characteristics of any given language. Yet the vast majority of psycholinguistic research (on both production and comprehension) that has been conducted has focused on a tiny number of the world's languages. With only a few exceptions, all of the languages have been typologically homogeneous and therefore syntactically similar. The proposed research seeks primarily to extend psycholinguistic research to the Odawa language, a Native American language closely related to Ojibwa and other Algonquian languages and spoken in southern Ontario, Canada. Odawa is typologically and syntactically very different from any language ever investigated by psycholinguists and thus offers a totally new perspective on the various current and competing theories of human sentence processing.Odawa is often referred to as a nonconfigurational language due to its extremely free word order in independent clauses. Any transitive sentence consisting of two noun phrase arguments and a verb can occur grammatically in any of the six possible word orders. Yet this word order is not facilitated by a rich, conventional case system of the sort observed in languages that exhibit certain degrees of word order freedom and which have been studied by psycholinguists (e.g., German, Japanese). This degree of word order freedom is something that is not taken into consideration in any current model of sentence production or comprehension.The Student Investigator has the unprecedented opportunity to combine his training in formal syntax, psycholinguistics, and the Odawa language to perform a large number of production and comprehension experiments in the town of Wikwemikong, Ontario, Canada, where approximately 50% of the 7,000 residents are still native speakers of the language. The production experiments will be conducted to assess baseline preferences for various structural alternatives, and to determine whether the preferences can be changed with various priming manipulations. The comprehension experiments will seek to establish temporary ambiguities and then observe the manner and time course of participants' recovery from such ambiguities. Critically, the syntax of Odawa allows key assumptions made by current theories of sentence processing to be critically examined.