Documentation of morphophonological interactions in phrasal domains: Grammatical tone, vowel harmony, and phonological agreement

语言学家估计，世界上7000种语言中有一半以上是声调的，其中许多语言濒临灭绝，由于城市化和对正规教育的重视，儿童无法掌握这些语言。这个项目将通过关注一种显示丰富的声调库存的语言，以及一种在类型上出人意料的辅音模式和元音和声系统来回答关于声调的许多剩余问题中的一些。这些特征在短语和句子中以复杂且鲜为人知的方式相互作用。本项目将详细描述和分析这些现象，特别强调构词法(词法)和发音模式(音系学)。该项目将为该语言中关于声调及其标量性质的许多剩余问题提供新的见解，并对复杂的声调和元音和谐系统在词法和句法上的行为提供新的见解。结果将通过关于描述性和理论发现的期刊文章、参考语法和存档的、带注释的语言数据来传播。除了其纪录片目标外，该项目还将在国际实地考察和语言文献培训中支持代表性不足的学生。它将通过促进作为学生学习场所的协作国际关系来提高STEM劳动力的全球竞争力。作为乔治城大学语言学家、科特迪瓦阿比让费利克斯·乌夫埃-布瓦尼大学语言学家和盖比社区合作努力的一部分，该项目将对科特迪瓦西南部使用的一种未得到充分研究的濒危克鲁(尼日尔-刚果)语言GuéBie进行调查。尽管现有的研究表明，克鲁语系内的语言在类型学上表现出罕见的语言属性，但总体来说，克鲁语言的文献记载很少。这些包括：1)具有四个声调高度的复杂声调系统，其中声调区分词汇和语法对比；2)内爆辅音与液体辅音的意外模式，如而不是停顿；3)大量元音库存，具有多种元音和声类型，通常受形态句法环境的制约；以及4)名词短语中语音决定的名词类别一致。研究这四个性质和其他性质将增加对这些语言特征至关重要的科学知识，而这些语言特征在英语、西班牙语或它们的印欧亲属语言中是找不到的。这些模式包括作为格和体区别的唯一标记的标度调变等类型罕见的现象。由于GuéBie的音系表和形态特征的非典型性，对语言形态系统的全面了解有助于我们集体理解自然语言可能的语言特征，以及最适合模拟形态语音现象的理论工具。随着语言变得更加濒危，歌比社区正在发生的情况是，韵律和音素特征，如盖比所展示的特征，非常容易受到攻击。该项目还在专注于全球的学术机构促进了伊沃里亚人和美国人之间的紧密联系，通过帮助加强非洲的民主和治理，服务于国家利益。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。

Linguists estimate that over half the world's 7,000 languages are tonal, with many of these endangered and not being acquired by children due to urbanization and an emphasis on formal education. This project will answer some of the many questions remaining about tone by focusing on a language displaying a rich tonal inventory, and a typologically unexpected system of consonant patterns and vowel harmony. These features interact in complex and poorly understood ways in phrases and sentences. This project will describe and analyze these phenomena in detail with a specific emphasis on word building (morphology) and sound patterns (phonology). The project will provide new insights into many questions remaining about tone and its scalar properties in this language, and on the behavior of complex tonal and vowel harmony systems in morphology and syntax. The results will be disseminated via journal articles on the descriptive and theoretical findings, a reference grammar and archived, annotated language data. In addition to its documentary goals, this project will support underrepresented students in international fieldwork and language documentation training. It will enhance the global competitiveness of the STEM workforce by fostering collaborative international relationships as sites of student learning. This project will investigate Guébie, an understudied endangered Kru (Niger-Congo) language spoken in southwestern Côte d'Ivoire, as part of a collaborative effort by by linguists at Georgetown University, linguists at Félix Houphouët-Boigny University in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Guébie community. Kru languages in general are underdocumented, though extant work shows that languages within the Kru family show typologically rare linguistic properties. These include: 1) complex tonal systems with four tone heights, where tone distinguishes both lexical and grammatical contrasts; 2) unexpected patterning of implosive consonants with liquid consonants like rather than stops; 3) large vowel inventories with multiple types of vowel harmony, often conditioned by morphosyntactic environment; and 4) phonologically determined noun class agreement within noun phrases. Investigating these four properties and others will increase the scientific knowledge that depends critically on these linguistic features that are not found in languages like English, Spanish or their Indo-European relatives. These patterns include such typologically rare phenomena as scalar tone alternations as the sole markers of case and aspect distinctions. Due to the atypical nature of the phonological inventory and morphological properties of Guébie, a complete understanding of the morphophonological system of the language has much to contribute to our collective understanding of the possible linguistic features of a natural language, and the theoretical tools most appropriate for modeling morphophonological phenomena. Prosodic and phonological features, like those exhibited by Guébie, are highly vulnerable as languages become more endangered, which is happening in the Guébie community. This project also fosters strong connections between Ivoirians and Americans at globally focused academic institutions, which serves the national interest by helping to strengthen democracy and governance in Africa.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.