Doctoral Dissertation Research: Categorical Gradience in Syntax

Linguists often attempt to delineate grammatical categories in sharp ways, using strict criteria for classifying particular forms. Such efforts, while understandably driven by a desire for consistency and precision, can create problems when applied to individual languages. This is because each language has its own unique categories, which are often messier than linguists' definitions. Indeed, categories often blur into each other. This doctoral dissertation project investigates categories within the context of a language’s particular grammar to give a richer, more accurate description of the language. In terms of broader impacts, this project trains speakers of the language to assist in the documentation themselves, such as by transcribing existing texts and recording new texts. In addition, all data for which consent is provided is archived and made publicly accessible. This project produces a grammatical description of an endangered language, and the description analyzes grammatical categories as fluid and gradient. The focus is on the grammatical domain of complex predication, a phenomenon in which multiple words conspire to make a single predicate. The investigated language has several kinds of complex predication, including light verb constructions, serial verb constructions, and clause chains. Each of these constructions exhibits a great degree of gradience, to the extent that often the lines between the different constructions are themselves not clear. In terms of intellectual merit, this project analyzes these constructions using standard methods of elicitation and text collection in the field. This project also attempts innovation in these methods based on the theoretical viewpoint of categorical gradience. The synchronic states of these syntactic entities are described using both qualitative description in prose and quantitative means of data visualization. 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.