The crosslinguistic components of clausal complementation

All languages have clausal embedding, which is the ability to embed one sentence inside of another (e.g. 'Katie thinks that Kayla said that Alex is smart'). Languages differ with respect to the precise mechanics involved in accomplishing clausal embedding and the inventories of embedding strategies. Furthermore, recent research has shown that the particular linguistic elements involved (e.g. the word 'that') have important effects on the functioning and interpretations of clausal embeddings.

This project approaches this crucial aspect of natural language through careful investigation of the variation observed across languages and in-depth examination of clausal embedding within several related languages. The project implements these investigative aims through naturalistic data collection. This leads to the second goal of this project, which is to train students to work with language speakers to elicit language data, and work on data processing, thereby increasing the number of specialists focusing on field linguistics.

This project investigates clausal embedding through traditional linguistic fieldwork through the documentation and description of the clausal embedding strategies present in a variety of languages. The team accomplishes this by collecting texts and stories and eliciting linguistic data from native speakers. These data help reveal the grammatical properties associated with clausal embedding, from which a deeper understanding of human language is gleaned.

An archived collection of data from the project serves as a large corpus of natural speech, which helps investigators pinpoint the relevant grammatical properties of human languages and serves as a permanent record of the languages and history. The results from this project have broad applicability across fields and serve as the basis for future crosslinguistic work on human language in general.

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.