Doctoral Dissertation Research: Building and Interpreting Possession Sentences

在Gillian Gallagher博士的指导下，Neil Myler先生将对两种克丘亚语进行语言学田野调查，以加深我们对跨语言拥有句的理解。占有句是语言学理论中一个长期存在的难题。特别是，它们的句法结构在不同语言中差异很大。少数语言使用及物动词表示拥有（英语也是如此--“I have a sister”;“I have a car”），但大多数语言使用与“be”对应的不及物动词，沿着在其中一个论元上使用介词或格标记。这类语言有类似于“at me is a sister”、“I am with a sister”或“there is my sister”的结构，对应于“I have a sister”。这些事实为比较句法提出了两个重要的问题，这也是本文研究的重点：（1）一种语言的其他句法性质决定了它是否有一个及物动词“have”;以及（ii）不同语言间的be结构在句法和语义上究竟有什么不同？ Myler先生将通过从两种密切相关的盖丘亚方言的母语使用者那里引出对拥有句的语法性和意义的判断来调查这些问题：科恰班巴的玻利维亚方言和圣地亚哥德尔埃斯特罗的阿根廷方言。科恰班巴克丘亚语有三个句法上可区分的“是”的所有格结构，使其成为研究问题（ii）的理想工具。此外，圣地亚哥德尔埃斯特罗克丘亚语是一种“有”的语言，而科恰班巴克丘亚语是一种“是”的语言。 由于这两种方言在其他方面非常相似，直接比较两者应该可以深入了解问题（i）。除了解决这些重要的理论问题外，该项目还将通过网站提供数据的注释转录，从而有助于描述盖丘亚语并为未来的研究提供资源。最后，这个奖项将加强研究生的培训。

Under the direction of Dr. Gillian Gallagher, Mr. Neil Myler will conduct linguistic fieldwork on two varieties of Quechua in order to deepen our understanding of possession sentences across languages. Possession sentences pose some long-standing puzzles for linguistic theory. In particular, their syntactic structure varies widely across languages. A minority of languages uses a transitive verb for possession (as does English- 'I have a sister'; 'I have a car'), but most use an intransitive verb corresponding to 'be', along with a preposition or a case-marker on one of the arguments. Such languages have constructions like 'at me is a sister', 'I am with a sister' or 'there is my sister', corresponding to 'I have a sister'. These facts raise two important questions for comparative syntax, which are the focus of this investigation: (i) what other syntactic properties of a language determine whether it has a transitive verb 'have' or not?; and (ii) how exactly do the many types of 'be' construction found cross-linguistically differ in their syntax and semantics? Mr. Myler will investigate these questions by eliciting judgments on the grammaticality and meaning of possession sentences from native speakers of two closely related Quechua dialects: the Bolivian dialect of Cochabamba and the Argentine dialect of Santiago del Estero. Cochabamba Quechua has three syntactically-distinguishable 'be'-based possession constructions, making it ideal for investigating question (ii). In addition, Santiago del Estero Quechua is a 'have' language, while Cochabamba Quechua is a 'be' language. Since the two dialects are otherwise very similar to each other, a direct comparison of the two should yield insight into question (i). As well as addressing these important theoretical questions, the project will make glossed transcriptions of the data available via a website, thus contributing to the description of Quechua languages and providing resources for future research on them. Finally, this award will enhance the training of a graduate student.