H2020Индивидуална стипендия2021–2023

LACONN · Language contact and negation in indigenous South America

„Хоризонт 2020“ — Действия „Мария Склодовска-Кюри“

Период: 2021-03-01 → 2023-04-07
Финансиране от ЕС: 175 572 €
Участници: 1
Схема: MSCA-IF

Линиите свързват координатора с партньорите.

Накратко на български

Езиците на коренното население в Южна Америка се отличават с това, че поставят отрицанието след глагола, вместо преди него. Анализът на над 220 езика помага да се разбере как този необичаен модел се е разпространил чрез езиков контакт още преди откриването на Америка.

Този кратък обзор е генериран от изкуствен интелект

Кратко обяснение, генерирано от езиков модел по текста на CORDIS. Оригиналът е по-долу.

Резултати накратко

Language contact and negation in indigenous South America

The project was concerned with explaining the dominance of the postverbal negation pattern in indigenous languages of South America (SA), specifically investigating the role of language contact. The need for this research arises from the fact that the languages of the world strongly prefer preverbal negation (i.e. placing a negative marker before the verb), while indigenous SA languages go against the world tendency and prefer postverbal negation (i.e. placing the negative element after the verb, and often in the form of a morphologically bound marker - a suffix). During the project I have compiled a large database of negation strategies for more than 220 SA languages, analyzed the data, plotted the languages and their negation strategy on the geographical map. The results of the project is that it became evident that each negation strategy has its own area of concentration within the SA continent. The dominant postverbal negation is present throughout the continent, but it is particularly concentrated in the northwestern part of SA. Crucially, the dominant strategy (which is functionally dispreferred) is found in 58% of language families in SA, which suggests that has been likely spread by language contact. I put forward a conjecture that the dominant postverbal pattern has first developed in languages in major extensions (e.g. Cariban, Macro-Je) and then spread through earlier language contact, i.e. pre-Colombian times. The motivation for the latter is that the dominant negation strategy in SA is morphologically bound, which requires time to develop from the syntactic strategy. The results of the project are published in a linguistic journal 'Linguistic Typology', which is a high-ranked journal in the field. The results of the project show that functionally dispreferred linguistic patterns can arize through language contact, and get maintained. There is a need for an experimental approach to explanation as to why and how such patterns can be maintained through longer periods of time.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз

Цел на проекта

Negation is a universal feature of a human language. Each language has the linguistic means to express the denial (negation) of a proposition. While specific realizations differ to a certain extent, languages show a very clear cross-linguistic tendency in the position (and nature) of a negative marker: it tends to be a free-standing element and occur before the verbal predicate. Different from most languages, indigenous languages of the South American continent show a typologically unusual – as yet unexplained – behaviour, in that a negative marker tends to occur after the verbal predicate and often as a suffixal element. The scientific aim of this project is to provide an informed answer on the role of language contact behind the continent-wide presence of the postverbal pattern, which distinguishes South American (SA) languages from most others. With reaching this aim, the action will make an impact in two ways: (i) it will bring in a piece of linguistic evidence contributing to a better understanding of SA prehistory, which still has many open questions, and (ii) it will enrich theoretical models of language evolution by providing an account as to how a functionally dispreferred pattern gets maintained in a language. I plan to carry out this project under supervision and in collaboration with Rik van Gijn, whose ERC Consolidator project on ‘South American Population History Revisited: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the Upper Amazon’ (SAPHIRE), hosted at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), is of key relevance to the proposed action. Thus, I will enrich my research profile, which combines typology and diachrony of morpho-syntax with a solid expertise in contact linguistics and experience in interdisciplinary approach to linguistic data. From the professional career perspective, the Fellowship will help me gain academic independence and will ultimately serve as a springboard for a tenured research position.

Оригинален текст от CORDIS (на английски).

Участници

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN · LeidenКоординаторНидерландия