Doctoral Dissertation Research: A cross-linguistic study of the cognitive representation of part-whole structures in Mesoamerican languages

语言影响思维吗？语言范畴影响认知范畴吗？这些问题仍然是争议的主题。本论文项目包括一组心理语言学实验，旨在通过研究物理对象的部分如何在语言和思想中表现来解决这一基础问题。在墨西哥中部和南部的语言中，身体部位术语通常作为任何任意物体部分的通用术语。有人提出，在这些语言中，单词如何分配给部分存在基本差异。在Juchitán Zapotec中，许多术语是根据零件在整个物体中的位置来分配的，而在Tseltal Maya中，分配过程考虑了局部形状。另一方面，英语部分术语被认为更受部分功能的影响。为了测试说不同语言的人在对部分和整体的认知处理上是否表现出可测量的差异，研究人员将向说Juchitán萨波特克语、Tseltal语和英语的人展示不熟悉的3d刺激，并要求他们对这些部分进行比较。研究人员将测量参与者的反应时间，以确定某些刺激是否比其他刺激更难比较。在其他任务中，参与者将接受采访，以更全面地了解他们如何使用部分术语。这项研究还将有助于记录美洲两种土著语言使用者的文化习俗和词汇知识。该项目将加强墨西哥和美国研究人员之间的国际合作，以及语言学、人类学和心理学等学科的合作。最后，这项研究将是研究生作为学者训练的一个重要部分，提供另外两种土著语言的实地工作经验。

Does language influence thought? Do linguistic categories influence cognitive categories? Such questions remain the subject of controversy. This dissertation project includes a set of psycholinguistic experiments designed to address this foundational issue by studying how the parts of physical objects are represented in language and thought. In the languages of central and southern Mexico, body part terms commonly serve as general-purpose terms for the parts of any arbitrary object. It has been proposed that there are basic differences in how words are assigned to parts in these languages. In Juchitán Zapotec, many terms are assigned based on the part's position in the entire object, whereas in Tseltal Maya, the assignment process takes local shape into account. English part terms, on the other hand, are thought to be more influenced by the function of the part. In order to test whether speakers of different languages show measurable differences in their cognitive processing of parts and wholes, speakers of Juchitán Zapotec, Tseltal, and English will be presented with unfamiliar 3-D stimuli and asked to compare the parts. The participants' reaction times will be measured in order to determine whether some stimuli are more difficult to compare than others. In other tasks, the participants will be interviewed to get a fuller picture of how they use part terms.This research will also contribute to the documentation of cultural practices and lexical knowledge of the speakers of two indigenous languages of the Americas. The project will enhance international collaboration between researchers in Mexico and the U.S., and collaboration across the disciplines of linguistics, anthropology, and psychology. Finally, this research will be an important part of a graduate student's training as a scholar, providing field work experience with two additional indigenous languages.