Binding in Adult and Child Thai

约束原则，也许是人类语言中研究得最好的原则，规定了名词在句子中的位置（例如，代词、普通名词和专有名词等）可能发生的，以及它们可能/可能不指的。许多著名的研究人员认为，这些原则是我们与生俱来的语言天赋的一部分，因为（i）它们出现在我们有数据的绝大多数语言中，（ii）迄今为止研究的每种语言的儿童在最早的可测试年龄表现出这些原则。这种先天性的论点在某种程度上受到了少数语言的威胁，例如，泰文，其中似乎不适用《约束性原则》。如果这些原则是与生俱来的，那么像泰语这样的特殊语言就不应该存在。泰国儿童掌握着这一难题的答案：如果泰国儿童与泰国成年人不同，在年幼时就表现出对《约束性原则》的了解，这将表明这些原则确实是我们先天语言天赋的一部分，随着儿童的成熟，他们会在成人输入的基础上“忘记”这些原则。然而，如果泰国儿童在发展的任何阶段都没有表现出《约束性原则》的迹象，这将表明这些原则不是天生的。如果是这种情况，儿童学习其他语言（例如，英语（英语）无法获得这些固有的原则，必须简单地根据经验和其他（非语言）机制来学习它们。该项目将对80名3至7岁的泰国儿童和20名讲泰语的成年人进行六次试验，每次试验针对《约束性原则》的不同方面。该项目不仅将解决认知科学中最大的争论之一（先天与后天），还将从一种未被充分研究的语言中收集数据，并建立和促进泰国和美国学术机构之间的关系。此外，这项工作将为制定可用于语言病理学或教育评估目的的泰语习得标准奠定基础。

The Binding Principles, perhaps the most well studied principles in human language, state where in a sentence nominals (e.g., pronouns, common and proper nouns, etc.) may occur, and what they may/may not refer to. Many prominent researchers argue that these principles are part of our innate linguistic endowment because (i) they occur in the vast majority of languages for which we have data, and (ii) children in every language studied to date exhibit them at the very earliest testable ages. This argument for innateness is threatened somewhat by the existence of a handful of languages, e.g., Thai, in which the Binding Principles appear not to hold. If these principles are innate, exceptional languages like Thai should not exist.So why don't Thai speakers obey the Binding Principles? Thai children hold the answer to this puzzle: if Thai children, unlike Thai adults, exhibit knowledge of the Binding Principles at young ages, this will show that the principles are indeed part of our innate linguistic endowment, and that as children mature, they 'unlearn' these principles on the basis of adult input. However, if Thai children show no evidence of the Binding Principles at any stage in development, this will suggest that the principles are not innate. If this is the case, children acquiring other languages (e.g., English) do not have access to these innate principles, and must simply learn them on the basis of experience and other (non-linguistic) mechanisms. This project will test 80 Thai children aged 3yrs-7yrs and 20 adult Thai speakers on six experiments, each targeting a different aspect of the Binding Principles. The project will not only address one of the biggest debates in cognitive science (nature versus nurture), but it will also gather data from an understudied language, as well as establish and foster relations between academic institutions in Thailand and the United States. Moreover, this work will lay the foundation for the development of standards for the acquisition of Thai that may be used for Speech Pathology or educational assessment purposes.