International Research Fellowship Program: Evolution of Language Systems: A Comparative Study of Grammatical Change in English and Icelandic

0853114瓦伦堡该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。国际研究奖学金计划使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行9到24个月的研究。 该计划的奖项提供了联合研究的机会，以及使用独特或互补的设施，专业知识和国外的实验条件。Wallenberg与冰岛大学的Hoskuldur Thrainsson博士合作。这项合作继续深入研究现代冰岛语中一些复杂的语法结构，以及冰岛语和英语在其书面历史中的语法的详细比较。 这个为期18个月的项目有以下三个主要目标：对冰岛语使用者进行一系列实验，重点是选择科学上重要的语法结构，收集和语法注释数据库（？语料库？）现代和历史的冰岛文本，以及实验和书面数据的详细定性和定量分析。 该项目通过对现代和历史英语和冰岛语的研究，探讨自然语言句法和语言演变的核心问题。 这两种语言足够相似，可以进行详细的比较，但在重要和有趣的方面有所不同。 虽然该项目包括历史冰岛语和英语的广泛比较，它主要集中在现代冰岛语的现象，已经被证明存在于历史英语以及，特别是？物体移位？还是？乱爬（Wallenberg 2007，2008）和？量词运动？（Light Wallenberg 2008）。 这两种现象都显示了两种语言的使用者都有一定程度的选择性，以及由于一般语法约束而对这种选择性的限制。 这两种现象在所研究的两种语言中也遵循不同的历史轨迹。冰岛语历时语料库的建设为语言变异和随时间变化的定量和可复制研究创造了永久的公共资源。 对语言稳定性和语言变化的内部和外部因素的研究揭示了儿童如何获得语言，人类语言能力如何处理来自说话者群体的统计输入，并带来了更多的数据来研究语言进化动力学和生物进化动力学之间的关系。例如Nowak 2006：Chapt. 13）。 此外，对注释这样的语料库所需的计算方法进行实验可以进一步推进自然语言处理的一般研究（参见。在Dredze Wallenberg 2008 a，2008 b中标注冰岛语的词性）。 最后，除了潜在的科学收益，英语与中世纪时期英格兰、爱尔兰和苏格兰的斯堪的纳维亚语言之间的深刻语言接触表明，美国英语和现代冰岛语之间有着共同的文化历史，在对早期英语和冰岛语的语法系统进行彻底比较之后，我们将更好地理解其中的细节。

0853114WallenbergThis award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will support an eighteen-month research fellowship by Dr. Joel C. Wallenberg to work with Dr. Hoskuldur Thrainsson at the University of Iceland.This collaboration continues an in-depth study of a number of intricate grammatical constructions in modern Icelandic, as well as a detailed comparison of the grammar of Icelandic and English throughout their written histories. The 18 month project has the following three primary goals: to conduct a series of experiments with speakers of Icelandic focusing on a selection of scientifically important grammatical constructions, the collection and syntactic annotation of a database (?corpus?) of modern and historical Icelandic texts, and a detailed qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experimental and written data. The project investigates central questions of natural language syntax and language evolution through a study of modern and historical English and Icelandic. These two languages are similar enough to allow for a detailed comparison, but yet differ in important and interesting ways. While the project includes a broad comparison of historical Icelandic and English, it focuses primarily on phenomena of modern Icelandic that have already been shown to exist in historical English as well, particularly ?object shift? or ?scrambling? (Wallenberg 2007, 2008) and ?quantifier movement? (Light & Wallenberg 2008). Both of these phenomena show a degree of optionality for speakers in both languages, as well as limits on this optionality due to general grammatical constraints. Both phenomena have also followed different historical trajectories in the two languages under investigation. The construction of a diachronic corpus of Icelandic creates a permanent, public resource for quantitative and replicable studies of language variation and change over time. The investigation of internal and external factors in language stability and language change sheds light on how children acquire language, how the human language faculty processes statistical inputs from the population of speakers, and brings more data to bear on the relationship between the dynamics of language evolution and the dynamics of biological evolution (cf. e.g. Nowak 2006: Chapt. 13). Furthermore, experimentation in the computational methods necessary to annotate such a corpus could further advance general research in natural language processing (cf. part-of-speech-tagging Icelandic in Dredze & Wallenberg 2008a, 2008b). Finally, in addition to potential scientific gains, the profound language contact between English and the Scandinavian languages in England, Ireland, and Scotland during the medieval period points to a shared cultural history between American English and modern Icelandic, the details of which will be much better understood after a thorough comparison of the early English and Icelandic grammatical systems.