Doctoral Dissertation Research: The realization of nasality across the typological spectrum

本论文项目将通过研究具有罕见鼻音系统的语言中的鼻音来促进我们对人类语言中语音的理解。鼻音是在空气流过鼻腔时发出的，如英语中的[m]和[n]，几乎存在于世界上所有的语言中。然而，关于人类语言中可能的鼻音系统的范围，以及是什么导致了不同类型的鼻音系统的出现，我们仍然知之甚少，这意味着我们对人类语言的这一基本方面的理解存在着巨大的差距。这项研究将有助于填补这一空白：1)调查语言中的鼻音系统，根据说话者控制鼻音持续时间和强度的领域的大小，来代表类型谱的两端；以及2)调查对鼻音持续时间和强度非常敏感的鼻音系统与鼻音在意义区分中起重要作用的语言有关的假说。关于鼻音的类型学频谱，这个项目的一个极端是研究一种语言，它区分不同发音段内鼻音持续时间的不同，这在前鼻化[NT]和后鼻化[NT]之间的对比中得到了明显的证明。在另一个极端，它将调查一种语言，这种语言的鼻音在整个单词中表现出缓慢、逐渐的增长，因此鼻音与单个音段的联系不那么明显，但更大的领域包括许多音段。这些罕见的现象表明，说人类语言的人对鼻音的细微差别很敏感，无论是在鼻音的时间范围上，还是在鼻气流量上。说人类语言的人对鼻音的细微差别很敏感，这就提出了一个问题，为什么这些现象在一些语言中被观察到，而在另一些语言中却没有。这项研究调查了一种假设，即部分答案存在于不同人类语言中鼻音的功能负荷(衡量任何特定对比在语言中所做的“功”的量)。在类型谱的这些极端的语言中，鼻音的功能负荷可能比其他通常被研究鼻音的语言，如英语或法语要高得多，这使得这些语言对于理解人类语言中发现的鼻音系统的范围可能是如何产生的至关重要。该项目基于对表现不同鼻音系统的语言使用者的密集实地考察，并依赖于两种关键方法。首先，面试式启发式技巧将允许详细描述在这些语言中实现鼻音的规则。第二，该项目将开发这些语言的口头叙述语料库，并将其转录、翻译和存档，以保存和传播这些数据。对语料库的分析将使我们有可能测量这些语言中鼻音的功能负载，并阐明功能负载与人类语言中发现的语音类型的关系。这一奖项反映了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。

This dissertation project will advance our understanding of speech sounds in human languages by investigating nasality in languages with rare nasal speech sound systems. Nasal sounds are produced with air flowing through the nasal cavity, such as [m] and [n] in English, and are present in nearly all of the world’s languages. However, much remains unknown about the range of possible nasal speech sounds systems in human languages, and what is responsible for the emergence of different types of nasal systems, meaning that there is a significant gap in our understanding of this fundamental aspect of human language. This study will help fill this gap by: 1) investigating nasality systems in languages that represent two distinct ends of the typological spectrum in terms of the size of the domains over which duration and intensity of nasality are controlled by speakers; and 2) investigating the hypothesis that nasality systems which are very sensitive to the duration and intensity of nasality are associated with languages where nasality plays an important role in making distinctions in meaning. With respect to the typological spectrum of nasality, at one extreme this project will investigate a language that distinguishes speech sounds that differ in the duration of nasality within individual sound segments, as evidenced in contrasts between prenasalized [nt] and postoralized [nt]. At the other extreme, it will investigate a language that exhibits a slow, gradual increase in nasality over entire words, and where nasality is thus less clearly tied to individual sound segments, but rather larger domains encompassing many sound segments. These rare phenomena indicate that speakers of human languages are sensitive to minute distinctions in nasality, both in its temporal extent as well as in the amount of nasal airflow. That speakers of human languages are sensitive to such fine-grained differences in nasality raises the question of why these phenomena are observed in some languages, but not others. This study investigates the hypothesis that part of the answer lies in the functional load of nasality (a measure of the amount of "work" that any particular contrast does in a language) in different human languages. The functional load of nasality is likely much higher in languages at these extremes of the typological spectrum than it is in other languages for which nasality has commonly been investigated, e.g. English or French, making such languages critical for understanding how the range of nasality systems found in human languages may arise. This project is based on intensive fieldwork with speakers of languages exhibiting different kinds of nasality systems, and relies on two key methodologies. First, interview-style elicitation techniques will allow for a detailed description of the rules that govern the realization of nasality in these languages. Second, the project will develop a corpus of oral narratives in these languages, which will be transcribed, translated, and archived for the preservation and dissemination of these data. An analysis of the corpora will make it possible to measure the functional load of nasality in these languages and shed light on how functional load is related to the types of speech sounds found in human 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.