Marian Viorica
Northwestern University.
Writ Lang Lit. 2017;20(1):7-27.
The increased globalization of science and technology and the growing number of bilinguals and multilinguals in the world have made research with multiple languages a mainstay for scholars who study human function and especially those who focus on language, cognition, and the brain. Such research can benefit from large-scale databases and online resources that describe and measure lexical, phonological, orthographic, and semantic information. The present paper discusses currently-available resources and underscores the need for tools that enable measurements both within and across multiple languages. A general review of language databases is followed by a targeted introduction to databases of orthographic and phonological neighborhoods. A specific focus on CLEARPOND illustrates how databases can be used to assess and compare neighborhood information across languages, to develop research materials, and to provide insight into broad questions about language. As an example of how using large-scale databases can answer questions about language, a closer look at neighborhood effects on lexical access reveals that not only orthographic, but also phonological neighborhoods can influence visual lexical access both within and across languages. We conclude that capitalizing upon large-scale linguistic databases can advance, refine, and accelerate scientific discoveries about the human linguistic capacity.
科学技术全球化的加剧以及世界上双语和多语使用者数量的不断增加，使得多语言研究成为研究人类功能的学者，尤其是专注于语言、认知和大脑的学者的主要研究方向。这类研究可受益于描述和测量词汇、音系、正字法和语义信息的大规模数据库及在线资源。本文讨论了当前可用的资源，并强调了对能够在多种语言内部和之间进行测量的工具的需求。在对语言数据库进行总体回顾之后，有针对性地介绍了正字法和音系邻域数据库。对CLEARPOND的具体关注说明了数据库如何用于评估和比较不同语言之间的邻域信息、开发研究材料以及深入了解有关语言的广泛问题。作为使用大规模数据库如何回答有关语言问题的一个例子，仔细研究邻域对词汇通达的影响会发现，不仅正字法邻域，而且音系邻域都可以在语言内部和之间影响视觉词汇通达。我们得出结论，利用大规模语言数据库可以推进、完善并加速关于人类语言能力的科学发现。
