Collaborative Research: The Comparative Morpho-Syntax of Appalachian English

阿巴拉契亚英语是一组在阿巴拉契亚山脉的中部和南部粗略使用的语言变体，或称“方言”。这些方言可能在许多方面与标准英语不同。例如，就句子和句子中的单词的结构属性(形态句法)而言，它们允许这样的句子，如“女孩喜欢披萨”，其中第三人称复数主语与带有-S后缀的动词一起出现(在标准英语中，这是为单数主语保留的)。在关系从句方面，阿巴拉契亚英语允许这样的例子，比如“起初，你不会相信字符来到我的门上”，其中省略了“Who”/“That”，这在标准英语中是不可能的。在国家科学基金会的支持下，来自四个不同学术机构的朱迪·伯恩斯坦、马塞尔·登·迪肯、克里斯蒂娜·托托拉和拉斐拉·扎努蒂尼博士将结合他们在理论语言学方面的专业知识和实地调查经验，共同研究这些现象，目的是更深入地理解语法变异，特别是在主语句法和主谓一致方面。研究不同的语言变体很重要，原因有很多，包括那些不构成“标准”语言的变体。语言学家将说话者对其语言的了解视为科学研究的对象，并将其建模为对所有语言都有效的相互作用原则的系统，以及与这些原则有关的一些选择点，这些原则可能会在语言上有所不同。因此，从科学的角度对英语变体的形态和句法特征进行比较研究，将为我们提供一个机会，用放大镜来看待这些语法系统，并确定它们到底可以在哪里变化，以及如何变化。这可以加深对语法本质的理解。从教育角度来看，该项目将培训年轻学者分析和描述鲜为人知的语言变体，因为研究小组将包括两名研究生和一名区域顾问。因此，该项目的这一培训部分将增加熟练掌握语文文献的学者队伍。

Appalachian English is a group of linguistic varieties, or "dialects", spoken roughly in the central and southern part of the Appalachian Mountain range. These dialects can differ from standard English in a number of ways. For example, with respect to the structural properties of sentences and the words inside them (the 'morpho-syntax'), they allow sentences like "The girls likes pizza", where a third person plural subject occurs with a verb carrying the -s suffix (which is reserved for singular subjects in standard English). In the domain of relative clauses, Appalachian English permits examples like "At first, you wouldn't believe the characters come knocked on my door", in which "who"/"that" are omitted, something that is not possible in standard English. With support from the National Science Foundation, Drs. Judy Bernstein, Marcel den Dikken, Christina Tortora and Raffaella Zanuttini, a team of researchers from four different academic institutions, will combine their expertise in theoretical linguistics and experience in fieldwork and work together to investigate these phenomena with the aim of reaching a deeper understanding of grammatical variation, particularly in the areas of the syntax of subjects and subject-verb agreement. There are many reasons why it is important to study different linguistic varieties, including those that do not constitute a "standard" language. Linguists view a speaker's knowledge of his or her language as an object of scientific investigation, and model it as a system of interacting principles, valid for all languages, and a number of choice-points relating to these principles on which languages may vary. Thus, from a scientific perspective, a comparative study of the morphological and syntactic properties of varieties of English will provide an opportunity to look at these grammatical systems with a magnifying glass, and to determine where exactly they can vary, and how. This can lead to a deeper understanding of the nature of grammar. From an educational point of view, this project will train young scholars in the analysis and description of lesser-known linguistic varieties, as the research group will include two graduate students and a regional consultant. This training component of the project will thus add to the pool of scholars who are skilled in the documentation of languages.