The Polinsky Language Sciences Lab Dataverse

The Polinsky Language Sciences Lab at Harvard University is a linguistics lab that examines questions of language structure and its effect on the ways in which people use and process language in real time. We engage in linguistic and interdisciplinary research projects ourselves; offer linguistic research capabilities for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and visitors; and build relationships with the linguistic communities in which we do our research. We are interested in a broad range of issues pertaining to syntax, interfaces, and cross-linguistic variation. We place a particular emphasis on novel experimental evidence that facilitates the construction of linguistic theory. We have a strong cross-linguistic focus, drawing upon English, Russian, Chinese, Korean, Mayan languages, Basque, Austronesian languages, languages of the Caucasus, and others. We believe that challenging existing theories with data from as broad a range of languages as possible is a crucial component of the successful development of linguistic theory. We investigate both fluent speakers and heritage speakers—those who grew up hearing or speaking a particular language but who are now more fluent in a different, societally dominant language. Heritage languages, a novel field of linguistic inquiry, are important because they provide new insights into processes of linguistic development and attrition in general, thus increasing our understanding of the human capacity to maintain and acquire language. Understanding language use and processing in real time and how children acquire language helps us improve language study and pedagogy, which in turn improves communication across the globe. Although our lab does not specialize in language acquisition, we have conducted some studies of acquisition of lesser-studied languages and heritage languages, with the purpose of comparing heritage speakers to adults.

哈佛大学波利斯基语言科学实验室是一个专注于探究语言结构及其对人们实时使用和处理语言方式影响的语言学实验室。实验室不仅自主进行语言与跨学科的研究项目，还为本科生、研究生、教师及访问学者提供语言研究能力，并与我们研究所在的语言学社群建立联系。我们关注与句法、接口和跨语言变异相关的一系列广泛问题。我们特别强调新颖的实验证据，以促进语言学理论的构建。实验室具有强烈的跨语言研究视角，汲取英语、俄语、汉语、韩语、玛雅语、巴斯克语、马来一波利尼西亚语、高加索语言以及其他语言的养分。我们认为，以尽可能广泛的语言数据挑战现有理论，是成功发展语言学理论的关键组成部分。我们研究既包括熟练使用者，也包括遗产使用者——那些在成长过程中接触或使用特定语言，但如今更流利地使用一种不同、在社会上占主导地位的语言的人。遗产语言，作为语言学探究的一个新兴领域，具有重要意义，因为它为语言发展的普遍过程和语言消亡提供了新的见解，从而加深了我们对人类维持和习得语言能力的理解。理解实时语言使用和处理，以及儿童语言习得的过程，有助于我们改进语言研究和教学法，进而提升全球范围内的沟通效率。尽管我们的实验室并非专注于语言习得，但我们已对一些较少研究的语言和遗产语言的习得进行了研究，目的是比较遗产使用者和成年人的语言习得情况。