Meir Irit, Aronoff Mark, Börstell Carl, Hwang So-One, Ilkbasaran Deniz, Kastner Itamar, Lepic Ryan, Lifshitz Ben-Basat Adi, Padden Carol, Sandler Wendy
University of Haifa, 31905 Haifa, Israel.
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4376, USA.
Cognition. 2017 Jan;158:189-207. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.10.011. Epub 2016 Nov 9.
This study identifies a central factor that gives rise to the different word orders found in the world's languages. In the last decade, a new window on this long-standing question has been provided by data from young sign languages and invented gesture systems. Previous work has assumed that word order in both invented gesture systems and young sign languages is driven by the need to encode the semantic/syntactic roles of the verb's arguments. Based on the responses of six groups of participants, three groups of hearing participants who invented a gestural system on the spot, and three groups of signers of relatively young sign languages, we identify a major factor in determining word order in the production of utterances in novel and young communication systems, not suggested by previous accounts, namely the salience of the arguments in terms of their human/animacy properties: human arguments are introduced before inanimate arguments ('human first'). This conclusion is based on the difference in word order patterns found between responses to depicted simple events that vary as to whether both subject and object are human or whether the subject is human and the object inanimate. We argue that these differential patterns can be accounted for uniformly by the 'human first' principle. Our analysis accounts for the prevalence of SOV order in clauses with an inanimate object in all groups (replicating results of previous separate studies of deaf signers and hearing gesturers) and the prevalence of both SOV and OSV in clauses with a human object elicited from the three groups of participants who have the least interference from another linguistic system (nonliterate deaf signers who have had little or no exposure to another language). It also provides an explanation for the basic status of SOV order suggested by other studies, as well as the scarcity of the OSV order in languages of the world, despite its appearance in novel communication systems. The broadest implication of this study is that the basic cognitive distinction between humans and inanimate entities is a crucial factor in setting the wheels of word ordering in motion.
本研究确定了一个导致世界语言中出现不同词序的核心因素。在过去十年中，来自年轻手语和发明的手势系统的数据为这个长期存在的问题提供了一个新视角。先前的研究认为，发明的手势系统和年轻手语中的词序是由对动词论元的语义/句法角色进行编码的需求驱动的。基于六组参与者的反应，即三组现场发明手势系统的听力参与者和三组使用相对年轻手语的手语使用者，我们确定了一个在新颖和年轻的交流系统中话语生成时决定词序的主要因素，这是先前研究未提及的，即论元在人类/有生命属性方面的显著程度：人类论元在无生命论元之前被引入（“人类优先”）。这一结论基于对所描绘的简单事件的反应中发现的词序模式差异，这些事件在主语和宾语是否都是人类，或者主语是人类而宾语是无生命物体方面有所不同。我们认为，这些差异模式可以由“人类优先”原则统一解释。我们的分析解释了所有组中无生命宾语从句中SOV语序的普遍性（重复了先前对聋人手语使用者和听力手势使用者的单独研究结果），以及三组受另一种语言系统干扰最小的参与者（几乎没有接触过另一种语言的文盲聋人手语使用者）所产生的有人类宾语从句中SOV和OSV语序的普遍性。它还为其他研究提出的SOV语序的基本地位以及世界语言中OSV语序的稀缺性提供了解释，尽管OSV语序出现在新颖的交流系统中。这项研究最广泛的意义在于，人类与无生命实体之间的基本认知区别是启动词序安排的关键因素。
