Subject preference and ergativity

语言学家知道，我们句子中的语序不一定与我们大脑中的语序相符。例如，在“What do you see?”这句话中，疑问词“What”与答案中的宾语是平行的：我们说“I see a car”，所以“What”对应的是我们看到的东西。“what”这个词出现在动词之后，但却出现在句子的前面。本研究将考察语言中这种移位的语法限制，在这些语言中，语法主语可以以两种不同的形式出现，这取决于动词是不及物的（例如，“run”）还是及物的（例如，“eat”）：否定语言。在大多数否定性语言中，及物动词的主语根本不能移位。语言学家不知道为什么；也许这与处理这种位移的困难有关。为了验证这一点，研究人员将使用眼动追踪来调查在少数可以移动两种主题的否定语言中这种转移是否特别困难（这类语言约占所有否定语言的10%）。阿瓦尔语，高加索地区的一种少数民族语言，已经被调查过了。在这个项目中，他们提议研究主要在新西兰使用的濒临灭绝的波利尼西亚语纽埃语。选择Niuean是至关重要的，因为它的结构是Avar结构的镜像，这将使研究人员填补对ergergative理解的重要空白。反过来，这将导致在自然语言中复杂句子和远距离关系的结构建模的新方法。如果这些对否定语言的研究表明，说话者会注意语法主语的概念，而不管它的形式如何，这将构成对抽象概念“主语”的新证实。在心理上是真实的。使用实验方法研究少数民族语言的研究很少，因此本研究将为实验方法与现场语言学的结合开创一个重要的先例。研究小组将与国家毛利人语言研究所、奥克兰理工大学毛利人发展学院以及奥克兰大学的同事合作。研究生和本科生助理将有机会参与该项目，并与奥克兰的纽埃社区互动，因此将接触到波利尼西亚世界的语言和文化多样性。

Linguists know that the word order in our sentences does not necessarily match the order in our brains. For example, in the sentence "What do you see?" the question word "what" parallels the object in the answer: we say "I see a car", so "what" corresponds to the thing that we see. The word "what" appears to start after the verb, but moves to the front of the sentence. This study will examine grammatical constraints on this displacement in languages where the grammatical subject can appear in two different forms depending on whether the verb is intransitive (e.g., "run") or transitive (e.g., "eat"): ergative languages. In most ergative languages, the subject of a transitive cannot displace at all. Linguists do not know why; perhaps it has to do with the difficulty in processing such displacement. To test this, the researchers will use eye-tracking to investigate whether this displacement is particularly difficult in the few ergative languages that can move both kinds of subjects (such languages are about 10% of all ergative languages). Avar, a minority language of the Caucasus, has already been investigated. In this project, they propose to study Niuean, an endangered Polynesian language spoken mainly in New Zealand. The choice of Niuean is critical because its structure is the mirror image of Avar structure and will allow researchers to fill in an important gap in the understanding of ergativity. That in turn will lead to novel ways of modeling the structure of complex sentences and long-distance relations in natural language. If these studies of ergative languages show that speakers pay attention to the notion of grammatical subject, regardless of its form, this would constitute novel confirmation that the abstract notion ?subject? is psychologically real. Few minority languages have been studied using experimental methods, so this study will set an important precedent for combining experimental methods with field linguistics. The research team will be working with the National Maori Language Institute, with the Faculty of Maori Development (Te Ara Poutama) at Auckland University of Technology, and with colleagues at the University of Auckland. Graduate and undergraduate assistants will be given the opportunity to work on the project and interact with the Niuean community in Auckland and will therefore be exposed to the linguistic and cultural diversity of the Polynesian world.