Collaborative Research: How Events are Conceptualized by Users of Homesign and by Users of an Established Sign Language

人类语言以系统的方式描述事件。例如，有人会说“Layla吃了苹果”，而不是“the Apple at Layla”，因为在主动句中，英语和其他语言把行为的实施者(施事)放在动词之前，而把受影响的实体(病人)放在后面。像代理人和病人这样的概念是从哪里来的？它们是随着一种语言的历史发展而逐渐创造出来的，然后在他们学习这种语言的时候传给孩子们吗？或者它们是人类思维的基本特征，塑造了我们可以创造和学习的语言？为了回答这些问题，这项研究探索了无法接触现有语言的聋人是如何思考事件的，以及随着一种新语言的演变，事件概念是如何变化的。这项工作有助于我们对人类思维和语言起源的科学理解，并为手语的创造和语言孤立的人的经历提供了具体的见解。该项目将帮助培训一名聋人科学家、毕业后的研究助理和本科生实习生。该项目考察了两组人：1)家庭签名者：没有学习手语且无法接触到他们所在社区的口语的聋人。这些成年人中的每一个都创建了自己的签名系统来进行交流。2)聋童在学校聚集在一起时出现的一种新手语(NSL)的用户。每一组进入社区的儿童都会带来语言的复杂性，而他们向成年人学习似乎无法获得这些复杂的语言。因此，NSL的年长签名者代表了语言的早期阶段，而年轻的签名者代表了语言的后期阶段。这个项目将考察前三个年龄段的签名者的表现，跨越了这种语言近30年的发展。使用的任务评估事件角色的概念化(如代理人、患者、来源和目标)和事件维度的概念化(如运动的方式和路径)。如果事件概念对所有人都是可用的，而不考虑语言经验，那么家庭签名者和NSL签名者都应该系统地区分这些概念，并适当地概括它们。如果这些概念产生于逐渐塑造语言的历史过程，那么这些概念在所有这些群体中都应该缺失。一种中间模式的出现也是可能的，由此这些概念可能在房屋签名者和/或年长的NSL签名者中缺失，但在年轻签名者中存在。这表明这样的陈述是通过有机会反复学习的用户社区产生的。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。

Human languages describe events in systematic ways. For example, one would say "Layla ate the apple" and not "The apple ate Layla" to describe an everyday eating event because, in active sentences, English and other languages place the doer of the action (the agent) before the verb and the affected entity (the patient) after. Where do concepts like agent and patient come from? Are they created gradually as a language develops over historical time and then passed down to children when they learn that language? Or are they basic features of human thought that shape the kind of languages that we can create and learn? To answer these questions, this research explores how deaf individuals with no access to an existing language think about events and how event concepts change as a new language evolves. This work contributes to our scientific understanding of the human mind and the origins of languages and provides specific insights into the creation of sign languages and the experiences of linguistically isolated people. This project will contribute to the training of a Deaf scientist, postbaccalaureate research assistants, and undergraduate interns.The project examines two groups: 1) Homesigners: Deaf people who have not learned a sign language and cannot access the spoken language of their community. Each of these adults has created their own signed system to communicate. 2) Users of a new sign language (NSL) which emerged when Deaf children came together at school. Each group of children to enter the community introduces linguistic complexity that the adults they learn from seem unable to acquire. Accordingly, the NSL older signers represent earlier stages of the language, and younger signers represent later stages. This project will examine the performance of signers from the first three age cohorts, spanning almost 30 years of the language’s development. The tasks that are used assess the conceptualization of event roles (like agent, patient, source and goal) and the conceptualization of event dimensions (like manner and path of motion). If event concepts are available to all humans regardless of linguistic experience, then both homesigners and NSL signers should systematically differentiate these concepts and generalize them appropriately. If these concepts arise from historical processes that gradually shape languages, then these concepts should be absent in all of these groups. An intermediate pattern of emergence is also possible, whereby these concepts might be absent in homesigners and/or older NSL signers, but present in younger signers. This would suggest that such representations arise via a community of users who have the opportunity for iterated learning.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.