Doctoral Dissertation Grant: Documentation and Analysis of a Typologically Uncommon Maimai Language

新几内亚是澳大利亚北部的一个大岛，约占世界陆地总面积的2%。尽管它的规模很大，但它也包含了大约20%(超过1000种)的世界语言。对于这些语言中的绝大多数，都没有文档。此外，新几内亚的许多语言濒临灭绝，这在很大程度上是由于Tok Pisin的入侵，Tok Pisin是一种以英语为基础的克里奥尔语，用作通用语。鉴于幼儿不再学习传统语言，而不是学习Tok Pisin，新几内亚的许多语言很可能在本世纪末灭绝。这些语言的记录和描述对语言的科学研究都有很大的影响。从科学角度来看，新几内亚的语言表现出世界语言中罕见的特点，例如在类型上不寻常的功能中使用动词；以前未经证实的构词形式；以及复杂的辅音字符串。了解这些语言系统是如何工作的，可以了解语言如何随着时间的推移而变化，以及人口如何在世界各地流动。对于说这些语言的社区来说，文档可能代表了他们语言的唯一记录和他们所包含的知识。由于这些语言中的许多处于濒危状态，必须现在就进行文档和描述，否则它们将永远消失。即将完成的工作的更广泛的影响是研究人员将获得的论文和随之而来的博士学位。所有收集的数据都将存档在PARADISEC中，这是一个专门研究太平洋语言的档案馆。提供给这个档案馆的数据以及语言词典将向研究人员、讲赫尤语的社区和感兴趣的公众开放访问。布法罗纽约州立大学的博士生托马斯·迪亚兹在马修·德赖尔博士的指导下，将记录和描述一种这样的语言，命名为赫尤。赫尤是托里切利语系的一员，属于麦麦语分支，讲于巴布亚新几内亚西北部。虽然Torricelli语系的七个分支中的每一个都收到了某种程度的描述和文件，但迈迈语分支没有得到这样的待遇，仍然完全没有文件记录。该项目将包括三个主要步骤。首先，研究人员将从巴布亚新几内亚的发言者那里收集和记录原始数据。这些数据包括传统的叙事、自然主义的对话和文化表演。在收集了原始数据后，研究者将对这些数据进行分析和注释，以发现语言的语言结构。在项目的最后阶段，作为博士论文的一项要求，研究人员将制作一份关于呵呵的语法描述。这些文件将包括对罕见论元和性别标记的类型描述；复杂的语篇分类系统；以及主要是关于名词和动词的词类之间形态句法区别的模糊。此外，该项目将通过谱系不同但地理上相近的语言提供联系和借阅模式的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

New Guinea, a large island north of Australia, makes up approximately 2% of the total land area of the world. Despite its size, it also contains roughly 20% (over 1,000) of the world's languages. For a vast majority of these languages, there exists no documentation. In addition, many of the languages of New Guinea are critically endangered, due in large part to the incursion of Tok Pisin, which is an English-based creole that serves as a lingua franca. Given the fact that young children are ceasing to learn heritage languages in lieu of Tok Pisin, many of the languages of New Guinea are likely to be extinct by the end of the century. The documentation and description of these languages can have a large impact for both the scientific study of language. From a scientific standpoint, the languages of New Guinea exhibit features that are rare among the languages of the world, such as the use of verbs in functions which are typologically unusual; forms of word-formation that were previously unattested; and complex strings of consonants. Understanding how these linguistic systems work can inform how languages change over time, and how populations have moved around the world. For the communities which speak these languages, the documentation can potentially represent the only record of their language and the knowledge that they contain. Due to many of these languages' endangered status, documentation and description must be undertaken now, or they will be lost forever. A broader impact of the work that will be completed is the dissertation and concomitant PhD that the researcher will obtain. All data collected will be archived in PARADISEC, an archive that specializes in languages of the Pacific. The data provided to this archive, as well as a dictionary of the language, will be openly accessible to researchers, the Heyo-speaking community, and interested members of the public.Doctoral student Thomas Diaz of SUNY at Buffalo, under the advisement of Dr. Matthew Dryer, will document and describe one such language, named Heyo. Heyo is a member of the Torricelli family of languages, belonging to the Maimai branch and spoken in the northwest of Papua New Guinea. While every other of the Torricelli language family's seven branches have received some level of description and documentation, the Maimai branch has received no such treatment and remains completely undocumented. The project will consist of three major steps. First, the researcher will collect and record raw data from speakers in Papua New Guinea. This data consists of traditional narratives, naturalistic conversation, and cultural performances. After the collection of raw data, the researcher will analyze and annotate this data for linguistic phenomena, and uncover the linguistic structure of the language. In the final stages of the project, the researcher will, as a requirement for his doctoral dissertation, produce a grammatical description of Heyo. The documentation will include descriptions of typologically rare argument and gender marking; the complex system of discourse clitics; and the blurring of morphosyntactic distinctions between word classes, primarily in regards to nouns and verb. Furthermore, this project will inform knowledge of contact and borrowing patterns across genealogically disparate, but geographically close languages.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.