The typology of subordinate clauses: A case study

这个项目调查了从句中可以得出的推论，比如‘我忘记锁门了’或‘我忘记锁门了’。已经观察到，语言使用特定的动词形式来编码特定的推论。例如，上面的形式‘to lock’暗示门没有锁，而使用形式‘lock’则暗示相反的意思。在英语和其他一些密切相关的语言中，已经对形式和意义/推理之间的这种映射进行了研究，这些研究导致了关于人类语言如何总体上将形式与意义联系起来的有趣的假设。然而，目前的情况是不完整的，因为不清楚这些假设是否涵盖了这些假设所依据的限定集合之外的语言。该项目旨在通过用一种研究不足和资源不足的语言研究这一主题来弥补这一差距，该语言的从属从句在重要方面与文献记载良好的语言中的从句不同。该项目有两个主要组成部分：大规模数据收集组成部分和计算建模组成部分。数据收集部分使用了一种新的阶段性启发式方法，该方法将标准启发式方法与基于语料库的方法和基于网络的实验相结合。计算建模组件开发用于跨多个不相关语言寻找基本的谓词语义类的计算模型。这项研究不仅有助于更全面地揭示人类语言是如何将形式与意义联系在一起的，而且还有助于开发对开发自然语言理解应用技术至关重要的资源。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。

This project investigates inferences that can be drawn from sentences with subordinate clauses, such as 'I forgot to lock the door' or 'I forgot locking the door'. It has been observed that languages use specific verb forms to encode specific inferences. For instance, the form 'to lock' above implies that the door wasn’t locked, while using the form 'locking' implies the opposite. Such mappings between form and meaning/inference have been investigated in English as well as a small number of other closely related languages, and these investigations have led to interesting hypotheses about how human language connects form with meaning in general. The current picture is incomplete, however, since it is not clear whether these hypotheses cover languages outside the circumscribed collection on which they were developed. This project aims to address this gap by investigating the topic in an understudied and under-resourced language whose subordinate clauses differ in important ways from those found in well-documented languages.The project has two main components: a large-scale data collection component and a computational modeling component. The data collection component uses a novel staged elicitation methodology that interleaves standard elicitation methodologies with both corpus-based methods and web-based experiments. The computational modeling component develops a computational model for finding underlying semantic classes of predicates across multiple unrelated languages. This research not only helps to reveal a fuller picture of how human language connects form with meaning in general; it also serves to develop resources crucial for developing applied technologies for natural language understanding.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.