Investigating Minimalist phonological representations and the system of phonological acquisition

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 22320090
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Tohoku Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: NASUKAWA Kuniya 東北学院大学, 文学部, 教授 (80254811)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): BACKLEY Phillip 東北学院大学, 文学部, 教授 (20335988) ; YUSA Noriaki 宮城学院女子大学, 文芸学部, 教授 (40182670)
• Research Collaborator: ABE Jun ; HARRIS John ; ONUMA Hitomi
• Project Period (FY): 2010-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 極小論 / 音韻部門 / 裸句構造 / 再帰性 / 依存関係 / 音韻構造 / エレメント理論 / 言語獲得

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This project attempted to investigate (i) the types of categories that are employed when human beings produce and perceive speech sounds, and (ii) how the interaction of these categories is represented in the brain. The latter is conceived within the Minimalist Program of the generative grammar framework, which regards language as a property of the mind/brain (Chomsky 2005). The results of the project clarified that humans employ phonological categories and phonological-structure-building processes in lexicalization, which are similar in nature to syntactic categories (which are employed for building sentences) and sentence-building processes (which result from the merging of categories). This conclusion takes a stand against the hypothesis that syntax is intrinsically different from phonology (Bromberger & Halle 1989).

Free Research Field

音声・音韻