Collaborative Research: Variation in Exceptive Structures

所有的语言都能够表达普遍的陈述，即使我们意识到它们很少是字面上正确的。因此，语言也有表达例外的手段，通过例外结构。英语的例子包括“Everybody but桑迪笑了”和“Everybody laughed except桑迪笑了”。表达排斥的语言手段受到语言哲学家和语义学家的适度关注，他们的重点主要是英语。除了这一小部分工作之外，人们对世界上各种语言中的例外结构知之甚少：它们是如何构建的，它们在各个语言中和不同语言中的分布情况，以及它们与其他表达比较或对比的结构的比较情况。本研究填补了这一空白，作为第一个跨语言的词汇，形态和句法结构的属性调查。理解例外结构使语言学家能够创建更好的语言结构理论，并预测自然语言的变化范围;它有助于计算机科学家建立更好的解析模型;它为语言教育工作者提供了语言教学中应强调的新维度，并为文化人类学家提供了额外的工具来研究社会（差异）相似性。本研究项目采用语言类型学、理论句法学和形式语义学的方法，对世界上各种语言中的例外结构进行深入研究。该项目旨在通过使用现代语言类型学的抽样技术，最大限度地扩大语言覆盖面。从理论上讲，该项目解决了一系列的问题，从实证研究结果。特别是，它分析了自由和连接的例外，短语和小句的例外，协调和从属的例外之间的对比。该项目开发的诊断方法可以可靠地识别不同类型的例外，并识别与语言中这些不同类型的例外相关的独立语言属性。因此，它允许研究人员预测在个别语言中的例外结构的类型。除了发展跨语言的例外结构的图片，该项目有显着的影响，目前的省略理论。该项目提供了关于低资源和濒危语言的数据，并强调了语言多样性对全面了解人类语言系统的重要性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

All languages are able to express universal statements, even though we realize that they are seldom literally true. Consequently, languages also have means of expressing exceptions to such generalizations, via exceptive constructions. English examples include "Everybody but Sandy laughed" and "Everybody laughed except Sandy". Linguistic means of expressing exclusion have received modest attention from philosophers of language and semanticists, whose focus has been primarily on English. Beyond that small body of work, little is known about exceptive constructions across the world's languages: how they are built, what their distribution is within individual languages and across languages, and how they compare to other constructions expressing comparison or contrast. This research project fills this gap as the first cross-linguistic investigation of lexical, morphological, and syntactic properties of the construction. Understanding exceptive constructions allows linguists to create better theories of language structure and to predict the range of variation in natural languages; it helps computer scientists build better parsing models; it gives language educators new dimensions that should be emphasized in language teaching, and it provides cultural anthropologists with additional tools to study societal (dis)similarities in the concept of exclusion. This research project employs methodologies from linguistic typology, theoretical syntax, and formal semantics to carry out in-depth investigations of exceptive constructions in a wide range of the world's languages. The project aims for maximum linguistic coverage by using sampling techniques of modern linguistic typology. Theoretically, the project addresses a range of questions that arise from the empirical findings. In particular, it analyzes the contrast between free and connected exceptives, phrasal and clausal exceptives, and coordinated and subordinated exceptives. The project develops diagnostics that reliably identify the different types of exceptives and identifies independent linguistic properties that correlate with these different types of exceptives in a language. Therefore, it allows researchers to predict the type of exceptive constructions in an individual language. Beyond developing a picture of exceptive structure cross-linguistically, the project has notable implications for current theories of ellipsis. The project provides data on low-resource and endangered languages and highlights the importance of linguistic diversity for a complete understanding of the human language system.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.