Locality, markedness and phonetic factors in speaker knowledge of non-local ejective phonotactics in South Bolivian Quechua

这个项目调查了以英语为母语的人对他们语言中的声音结构的了解。语言使用的发音不同，而语言的结构属性之一是该语言使用的一组声音。在一种语言中，该语言的某些发音组合可能不存在。例如，英语有一个音‘t’和一个音‘L’，但是单词的开头不存在‘tl’的组合；有像‘tad’这样的词和像‘lad’这样的词，但没有像‘tlad’这样的词。说话者通常会注意到没有这种类型的组合，并发现它们听起来很奇怪或陌生。这个项目调查了两个关于说话者对非现有结构的认识的主要问题：(1)一种语言的说话者是否觉得某些未经证实的结构比其他语言的说话者更奇怪，这种不对称性是否与世界上更常见的结构有关？(2)说话者是否只注意到未经证实的声音的非常具体的组合，或者他们是否对可能不组合的声音类型进行了广泛的概括？这些问题通过吉利安·加拉格尔博士在玻利维亚科恰班巴与南玻利维亚克丘亚语的说话者进行的一系列实验来解决，南玻利维亚克丘亚语的发音有许多系统性的组合限制。该项目提供了关于这种土著语言健全结构的知识和文件，这些知识和文件将向公众公布。该项目还培训研究生用土著语言进行实验工作。这项研究有助于理解人类在学习过程中如何进行概括，这不仅是语言学的核心问题，也是更广泛的认知研究的核心问题。可用的学习数据(例如，一种语言的单词)通常与多种概括相兼容；这个项目调查了什么标准有助于人们以一种在不同学习者之间一致的方式在这些可能的概括中进行选择。

This project investigates the knowledge that native speakers have about the sound structures in their language. Languages differ in what sounds they use, and one of the structural properties of a language is the set of sounds that that language uses. Within a language, some combinations of the sounds of that language may not exist. For example, English has a sound 't' and a sound 'l', but the combination 'tl' does not exist at the beginning of a word; there are words like 'tad' and words like 'lad', but no words like 'tlad'. Speakers are generally aware of absent combinations of this type and find that they sound odd or foreign. This project investigates two main questions about speaker knowledge of non-existing structures: (1) Do speakers of a language find certain unattested structures more strange than others, and do these asymmetries correlate with which structures are more commonly found in the world's languages? (2) Do speakers notice only very specific combinations of sounds that are unattested, or do they make broad generalizations about the types of sounds that may not combine?These questions are addressed by a series of experiments conducted by Dr. Gillian Gallagher in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with speakers of South Bolivian Quechua, a language with many systematic combinatorial restrictions on its sounds. The project contributes knowledge and documentation of the sound structures of this indigenous language, which will be made publicly available. The project also trains graduate students to carry out experimental work with indigenous languages.This research contributes to understanding how humans make generalizations in the course of learning, a question central not only to linguistics but to the study of cognition more generally. The available learning data (e.g., the words of a language) are often compatible with multiple generalizations; this project investigates what criteria help humans choose between these possible generalizations in a manner that is consistent across learners.