Acquiring the language of possibility: consequences for language variation and change

人类有一种特殊的能力，可以思考和谈论此时此地之外的可能性，使他们能够谈论不可能或假设的情况，例如如果恐龙幸存下来，世界会是什么样子，或者明年夏天是否会比今年更温暖。当我们无法直接观察到与苹果或小睡不同的纯粹的可能性时，习得第一语言的儿童是如何理解我们正在讨论的问题的？他们是如何使用诸如情态动词“可能”和“必须”这样的词来表达可能或可能的事情的？这个项目通过探索儿童使用情态词的方式与他们的照顾者匹配或不同来追求这些发展难题。研究结果将为两个更广泛的问题提供见解。人类语言中表达可能性的自然和非自然方式是什么？孩子们犯的错误有时会导致情态语言随着时间的推移发生变化吗？该项目将是迄今为止最全面的模态发展的语言学研究，将包括一系列的行为实验，以及儿童和他们的照顾者之间的自然语言的语料库研究。这些实验建立在对情态动词在语言历史上如何随着时间的推移而改变其含义以及它们在不同语言中如何变化的研究的概括之上。通过利用语言意义和儿童发展理论与语言变化和变异理论的整合，该项目将为很少接触的研究人员社区搭建桥梁。该项目支持的外联活动将使高中生能够参与关于可能性语言的语言研究。语言和方言在谈论可能性方面各不相同，但也表现出共同的基础。通过了解语言如何变化以及它们之间的共同点，参加计划外展活动的学生将深入了解我们作为人类对语言以及抽象思维背后的过程和表现的能力。

Humans have a special capacity to think and talk about possibilities beyond the here and now, enabling them to talk about impossible or hypothetical situations, such as what the world might be like if dinosaurs had survived, or whether next summer may be warmer than this one. How do children acquiring their first language figure what we are then discussing, when mere possibilities, unlike apples or naps, cannot be directly observed? And how do they come to use words, such as the modals "may" and "must", that are dedicated to saying what is possible or likely? This project pursues these developmental puzzles by probing how the use of modal words by children either matches or differs from that of their caregivers. The results will provide insights into two broader issues. What are the natural and unnatural ways of expressing possibility in human languages? And do the errors that children make sometimes lead to changes in modal language over time?The project will be the most comprehensive linguistic study of modal development to date and will include both a series of behavioral experiments, and a corpus study of naturalistic speech between children and their caregivers. The experiments build on generalizations from studies of how modals change their meanings over time in the history of a language, and how they vary across languages. By exploiting this integration of theories of linguistic meaning and child development with theories of language change and variation, the project will bridge communities of researchers that are too seldom in contact. Outreach events supported by this project will enable high school students to participate in linguistic research on the language of possibility. Languages and dialects vary in how they talk about possibility, but also exhibit a common foundation. By understanding both how languages may vary and what is common among them, students who participate in the planned outreach activities will gain insight into the capacity that we share as humans for language and for the processes and representations that underlie abstract thought.