Non-Canonical Relative Clauses: Universals and Variation in Compositionality

Régions: North Slave Region

étiquettes: social sciences, language, Tlîchô

chercheur principal: Shimoyama, Junko (3)
Nᵒ de permis: 16048
Organisation: McGill University
Année(s) de permis: 2018 2017 2016
Délivré: févr. 08, 2017

Objectif(s): To understand how the meanings of sentences are related to the meanings of individual words and the way words are combined in different languages.

Description du projet: The purpose of this research project is to understand how the meanings of sentences are related to the meanings of individual words and the way words are combined in different languages. ‘Compositionality’, a word in the title of this project, means how words are combined. Participation in this project will include a meeting with the researcher(s) doing this study and being interviewed up to about 5 times for about 1 hour each time. Interview length and time may vary. The meetings will take place at interviewees' homes, in community offices, or another place that is convenient and not too noisy, such as a library or a coffee shop. The interviews will involve: 1) giving translations into the Tli?cho? language of English words, phrases, or sentences; 2) listening to sentences in the Tli?cho? language and saying if they make sense and/or what they mean and/or how they might be used; and,3) telling short stories in Tli?cho? based on a series of pictures that will be provided. The idea here is that telling a story gives more natural expressions of what is happening than one sentence at a time. The researcher(s) would like to take notes during the interview and record it for transcription later. As there are a number of linguistic researchers in the Tli?cho? region, opportunities will be created for sharing research with them and getting advice from them. The linguistic information from this project can contribute to language teaching efforts through consultation with teachers in the Tli?cho? schools. There will be published articles and possibly theses/dissertations from this project that will be shared with interviewees and community members. Leslie Saxon will present information about project results with Tli?cho? language specialists and teachers, and suggest ways that the results could be used in teaching and learning the language. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from February 9, 2017 to December 31, 2017.