Doctoral Dissertation Research: Optionality in Comparative Inflection

尽管认知科学家在过去的一百年里极大地扩展了我们对语言这一人类适应的典型知识，但我们仍然远未对该领域的大多数基本问题给出可靠、完整的答案：例如，语言是如何学习的，它们在大脑中是如何表现和处理的？在法雷尔·阿克曼博士的指导下，杰里米·博伊德先生将通过关注英语语法中一个定义明确的小领域来解决这些关键问题：一些形容词在“-er”和“more”比较级形式之间的交替出现，例如“angier”和“more愤怒”。在这些例子中，相互竞争的形式在意义上是完全相同的，被称为“语法可选性”的例子。对比较可选择性的研究有可能为语言研究中一些最古老和最棘手的问题提供新的线索。因为参与可选关系的形式在意义上是完全相同的，所以可以梳理说话者在选择一个形式而不是另一个形式时考虑的句法、语义和处理因素。这一同样的特性也让研究人员更清楚地看到，在发育过程中，处理偏好是如何与学习相互作用的。可选的比较形式没有儿童想要达到的固定的“-er”或“more”目标。这意味着，例如，在7岁左右选择“更成熟”而不是“更成熟”，潜在地揭示了7岁儿童正在娱乐的潜在心理表征，这是一种普遍的“更+形容词”曲折模式。这一研究的最终目标是利用从儿童和成人的实验工作中获得的见解来提出一种新的构词理论，该理论足够灵活，可以解释可选性现象所呈现的事实，但也足够严格，可以对语言教师的性质做出可检验的预测。

Although cognitive scientists over the past hundred years have greatly expanded our knowledge of language, the quintessential human adaptation, we are still quite far from solid, complete answers to most of the fundamental questions in the field: e.g., how are languages learned, and how are they represented and processed in the mind? Under the direction of Dr. Farrell Ackerman, Mr. Jeremy Boyd will address these vital questions by focusing on a small, well-defined area of English grammar: the alternation that occurs for some adjectives in the comparative between "-er" and "more" forms, e.g. "angrier" versus "more angry." Instances like these, in which competing forms are completely equivalent in terms of meaning, are referred to as examples of "grammatical optionality." The study of comparative optionality has the potential to shed new light on some of the oldest and thorniest issues in language research. Because forms that participate in optional relationships are absolutely identical in terms of meaning, it is possible to tease apart the syntactic, semantic, and processing factors that speakers consider when choosing one form over the other. This same property also allows researchers to see more clearly how processing preferences interact with learning over the course of development. Optional comparative forms have no fixed "-er" or "more" targets that children are trying to achieve. This means, for example, that the choice of "more mellow" over "mellower" at around age seven potentially reveals the underlying mental representation that seven-year-olds are entertaining, a general "more+ADJ" pattern of inflection. The ultimate goal in this line of research is to use the insights garnered from experimental work with children and adults to inform a new theory of word formation, one that is flexible enough to account for the facts presented by the phenomenon of optionality, but rigorous enough to make testable predictions about the nature of the language faculty.