Conference: Prosodic and psycholinguistic connections in verb-initial languages

世界各地的一些语言有一种特殊的语言特性，即在词序上是动词的首字母，例如“Read Maria the book”而不是“Maria Read the book”。事实上，属于不同语系的语言都是动词首字母。更好地理解类型学上相似但又不相关的语言之间的共性和差异可以促进语言学理论的发展。为了促进这种理解，在南岛正式语言学协会的年度会议期间，举行了关于动词开头语言中的韵律和心理语言学的特别会议。这次特别会议汇集了研究南岛语系和其他语系动词首字母语言的研究人员，为那些通常不合作的学者创造了一个分享想法和观点、发展新合作的空间。它还向致力于研究未被充分研究的动词初始语言的研究人员介绍了目前韵律和心理语言学的方法和理论，目的是鼓励未来在更大的语言库中开展工作。此外，会议和特别会议以初级学者和来自代表不足的社区的学者的工作为特色。本项目支持将在南岛正式语言学协会年会上举行的特别会议“动词初始语言中的韵律和心理语言联系”。大会定期有来自世界各地的约40-60名与会者(教职员工、博士后、研究生和本科生)参加。特别会议旨在引入在动词开头的语言中研究韵律和心理语言学的研究人员，通过为通常不合作分享想法和观点的学者创造一个空间，帮助推进理论工作。特别会议促进了对动词开头语言理解和产生的共性以及动词开头语言的韵律的讨论。这些讨论导致的研究反过来又为现有的句子处理和韵律理论提供了信息，这些理论主要是基于动词中间语言和动词末尾语言发展起来的。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。

Some languages around the world have the special linguistic property of being verb initial in word order, e.g., “Read Maria the book” rather than “Maria read the book". In fact, languages belonging to a diverse variety of language families are verb initial. Better understanding the commonalities and differences between languages that are typologically similar yet unrelated can advance linguistic theory. To foster this understanding, this special session on prosody and psycholinguistics in verb-initial languages is held during the annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association. The special session brings together researchers who work on verb-initial languages in Austronesian and other language families, creating a space for scholars who do not normally collaborate to share ideas and perspectives, and to develop new collaborations. It also introduces researchers working on understudied verb-initial languages to current methods and theories in prosody and psycholinguistics, with the aim of encouraging future work on a larger pool of languages. In addition, the conference and special session feature work by junior scholars and scholars from underrepresented communities.This project supports the special session “Prosodic and psycholinguistic connections in verb initial languages” to be held at the annual meeting of the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association. The conference regularly sees approximately 40–60 attendees (faculty, postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students) from around the world. The special session is designed to bring in researchers who work on prosody and psycholinguistics in verb-initial languages to help advance theoretical work by creating a space for scholars who do not normally collaborate to share ideas and perspectives. The special session fosters discussion of the commonalities in the comprehension and production of verb-initial languages and the prosody of verb-initial languages. These discussions lead to studies that, in turn, inform existing theories of sentence processing and prosody, which have been developed primarily based on verb-medial and verb-final 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.