
NSF Org: |
BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences |
Recipient: |
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Initial Amendment Date: | July 22, 2020 |
Latest Amendment Date: | July 22, 2020 |
Award Number: | 2019804 |
Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
Program Manager: |
Wilson De Lima Silva
widelima@nsf.gov (703)292-7096 BCS Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences |
Start Date: | August 1, 2020 |
End Date: | June 30, 2025 (Estimated) |
Total Intended Award Amount: | $411,058.00 |
Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $411,058.00 |
Funds Obligated to Date: |
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History of Investigator: |
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Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1156 HIGH ST SANTA CRUZ CA US 95064-1077 (831)459-5278 |
Sponsor Congressional District: |
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Primary Place of Performance: |
1156 High St. Santa Cruz CA US 95064-1077 |
Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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Parent UEI: |
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NSF Program(s): | Linguistics |
Primary Program Source: |
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Program Reference Code(s): |
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Program Element Code(s): |
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Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.075 |
ABSTRACT
Human language is uniquely structured in that it often requires us to link together two expressions at a distance. This is a source of cognitive pressure for language users, because one expression can appear far apart from where it must be interpreted and usually there is no audible or visible cue to the site of interpretation other than absence (a gap). For example, in the question ?Who do you think the bill will help??, ?who? should be interpreted as the object of ?help? even though it is pronounced many words, and several seconds, earlier. In some languages, a resumptive pronoun can optionally be used (as in pseudo-English, ?Who do you think the bill will help them??). The goal of this project is to better understand the source of the optionality, and why some languages have this expressive device, while others do not. Does the use of a pronoun reflect a language user?s dynamic reaction to limited cognitive resources? Or does it reflect conventionalized grammatical processes of particular languages? The project will provide research opportunities and training in experimental methods, fieldwork, and data analysis to undergraduate and graduate students. It will also feed synergistically into a range of public-facing activities that aim to share knowledge about indigenous languages.
This project tests a new hypothesis: namely, that animacy, the property of whether or not an individual is alive, is a key factor in the use of resumptive pronouns. It will compare two genetically unrelated languages that show similarities in the use of these pronouns. The project will test the hypothesis that an optional resumptive pronoun in object position is more acceptable the more animate its referent is. A series of paired experiments combining eye-tracking and judgment studies will be conducted to specifically contrast the particular grammatical resources of a language that encodes a four-way animacy system throughout its grammar and a language with no grammatical animacy distinctions. Through this comparison, animacy as a conceptual category will be distinguished from animacy as a morphosyntactic category. The project will involve acceptability and comprehension studies across languages. For the language that encodes animacy grammatically, two comprehension studies will be used to trace the incremental comprehension of relative clauses involving co-arguments of differing animacies. The result will bring novel evidence to bear on three related issues: the problem of optionality in grammar, the relationship between resumptive pronouns and gaps, and how language users comprehend resumptive pronouns in real time.
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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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