Experimental and Descriptive Investigation of Gaidhlig Consonant Mutations

多达2000万美国人认为自己是苏格兰人或苏格兰/爱尔兰血统。苏格兰盖尔语是该社区的主要遗产语言之一，是丰富的文学、歌曲、诗歌、历史和土著知识体系文化的媒介。它也为了解苏格兰裔美国人社区祖先的世界观和文化提供了一个重要的窗口。母语人士对这种濒危语言的了解即将消失。科学语言学家对苏格兰盖尔语特别感兴趣。盖尔语在表示单词之间语法关系的方式上与英语非常不同。特别是，它有一种机制，通过改变关系中一个单词的第一个辅音来指示语法概念，如时态、性别、方面和占有。例如，单词cù ‘dog’的首个辅音（k音）在出现在物主词mo 'my'（写为mo chù）之后时，发音就像德语巴赫的硬ch音。这些变化被称为“初始辅音突变”，是语言语法系统的重要组成部分。这种表示语法变化的机制在世界语言中极为罕见，人们对它的理解也很差。为了让语言学家正确地理解一种语言的声音系统，他们必须使用仪器测量说话者如何发音，并使用心理语言学实验来测量说话者如何理解和使用声音模式。运用现代语言工具和心理语言技术。Andrew Carnie教授、Diana Archangeli教授、Michael Hammond教授、Natasha Warner教授和Adam Ussishkin教授，以及以苏格兰盖尔语为母语的Muriel Fisher教授，将研究发音、模式和对初始辅音突变的感知。例如，这项研究将通过要求说话者在听模糊（或“蒙面”）的语音时识别单词，来确定说话者是否在他们的脑海中储存了突变和未突变的单词。在一个相关的实验中，人们听到的声音被巧妙地人为修改（或“门控”），将被用来研究声音流中听者能识别单词是突变还是非突变的确切点。对语言集合（或语料库）中突变和非突变的相对统计频率的研究将显示这一过程是多么富有成效，以及它如何对应于语言的更大语法系统中声音频率的统计。心理语言学技术，包括判断和无意义的单词任务，将被用来研究说话者产生这些突变的心理过程。最后，这些突变的实际发音将使用现代语音仪器测量，如超声和气流量进行调查。这个研究项目的输出将是对盖尔语辅音突变的描述，这将有助于完成对该语言的持续描述。此外，在进行这项研究的过程中，研究生将接受濒危语言语音分析技术的培训。通过这次培训，学生可以对其他濒危语言进行类似的实验研究。这项工作对记录和保存苏格兰和苏格兰裔美国人社区的语言传统具有重要意义。

As many as 20 million Americans identify themselves as Scottish or Scots/Irish in descent. One of the primary heritage languages of this community, Scottish Gaelic is the medium for a rich culture of literature, song, poetry, history and indigenous knowledge-systems. It also provides an important window into the world-view and culture of the ancestors of the Scottish-American community. The loss of native speaker knowledge about this endangered language is imminent. The Scottish Gaelic language is of particular interest to scientific linguists. Gaelic is very different from English in the ways it signals grammatical relationships between words. In particular it has a mechanism for indicating grammatical notions such as tense, gender, aspect, and possession by changing the first consonant of one of the words in the relationship. For example, the initial consonant in the word cù 'dog' (a k sound) is pronounced with a hard ch sound like German Bach when it is appears after possessive words like mo 'my' (written as mo chù). These changes, called "initial consonant mutations," are a productive and critical part of the grammatical system of the language. This mechanism for indicating grammatical inflection is extremely rare in the world's languages and is very poorly understood. In order for linguists to properly understand the sound system of a language, they have to use instrumental measures of how speakers articulate sounds and use psycholinguistic experiments to measure how speakers understand and use the patterns of sounds. Using modern linguistic instrumental and psycholinguistic techniques. Professors Andrew Carnie, Diana Archangeli, Michael Hammond, Natasha Warner and Adam Ussishkin, along with Scottish Gaelic native speaker Muriel Fisher will investigate the articulation, patterning, and perception of initial consonant mutations. For example, this study will determine whether speakers store both the mutated and non-mutated words in their minds by asking them to identify the word while they listen to obscured (or "masked") speech sounds. A related experiment, where the sounds people hear are subtly artificially modified (or "gated"), will be used to study that the exact point in the sound stream at which listeners can identify whether the word is mutated or non-mutated. A study of the relative statistical frequency of sounds in mutated and non-mutated in a collection of language (or corpus) will show how productive the process is and how it corresponds to statistics on the frequency of sounds in the larger grammatical system of the language. Psycholinguistic techniques, including judgments and nonsense word tasks will be used to investigate the mental procedures speakers use to produce these mutations. Finally the actual articulation of these mutations will be investigated using modern phonetic instrumental measures such as ultrasound and airflow volume. The output of this research project will be a description of the Gaelic consonant mutation that will help complete an on-going description of the language. In addition, in doing this research graduate students will be trained in the techniques of sound analysis of an endangered language. This training will allow the students to conduct similar experimental studies on other endangered languages. This work has significant implications for documenting and preserving the linguistic traditions of the Scottish and Scottish-American communities.