University of New Mexico linguistics professor Naomi Shin, second from left, and several student researchers pose for a photo. Shin and two colleagues, Rosa Vallejos-Yopán of UNM and Amalia Skilton of University of Edinburgh, Scotland, recently received a National Science Foundation grant to study linguistic patterns.
University of New Mexico linguistics professor Naomi Shin, second from left, and several student researchers pose for a photo. Shin and two colleagues, Rosa Vallejos-Yopán of UNM and Amalia Skilton of University of Edinburgh, Scotland, recently received a National Science Foundation grant to study linguistic patterns.
If you’ve ever wondered what insights nearly a half-million dollars can get you in the world of linguistics, a pair of University of New Mexico researchers might tell you: this and that.
Literally.
Naomi Shin and Rosa Vallejos-Yopán, both professors at UNM’s Department of Linguistics, and a third researcher, Amalia Skilton from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, recently scored a $494,659 National Science Foundation grant to finance a three-year project called “Addresses effects in demonstrative systems across bilingual communities.”
For the non-linguist: Demonstratives are words like “this” and “that,” and language and culture shape the way we decide how to use those words, Shin said.
For example, in English, Shin said, if she were talking about a cell phone, she might say “this phone” if she were holding the phone in question, or “that phone” she weren’t.
“ ‘This’ versus ‘that’ is encoding how close I perceive the phone to be to me,” Shin said. “... We call that an egocentric conceptualization.”
Spanish speakers, though, for instance, consider both how far an object is from themselves and how far it is from the person they’re talking to. That, Shin said, is the “sociocentric conceptualization of space.”
Shin said the plan for her and her fellow researchers is figuring out how bilingual children and adults use those types of words in three different communities: two remote parts of the Peruvian Amazon — and little old New Mexico.
The grouping might seem unintuitive, but Shin said the sheer number of truly bilingual Spanish-English speakers in New Mexico makes it a perfect place to drill down.
“I can find Spanish-dominant speakers; I can find English-dominant speakers,” said Shin, who of the trio will be focusing on New Mexico. “I can find a wide range of types of bilinguals because bilingualism is so widespread.”
Shin’s study will largely focus on bilingual residents of the Albuquerque metro area, including a number of UNM students — not necessarily speakers of Northern New Mexico’s unique Spanish dialect.
To do that in earnest, “I’d have to go up north and work with aging people,” said Shin, who is also the co-director of the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab.
Shin’s colleagues, meanwhile, will do their fieldwork on the ground in Peru. Vallejos-Yopánt will focus on speakers of Spanish and Secoya, where she’s done extensive work since 2006, including creating resources like books for children, according to a UNM news release.
And Skilton will work with speakers of Spanish and Ticuna, a language unrelated to Secoya, building on fieldwork she, too, has been doing for years.
“So Spanish is the common language for all three,” Shin said. “It’s great that there’s one commonality, but we want to compare across three very different situations.”
English has two demonstratives, “this” and that.” (Or “these” and “those” in the plural.) Spanish and Secoya both have three, Shin said, while Ticuna has four.
“You have this kind of complexity in the structure that we’re studying which allows us to test hypotheses related to: When two languages come into contact ... how does the complexity of the linguistic structure come into play?” Shin said.
Shin said the award is a major tool to help the three further their research, especially since their field typically counts its grant dollars in the hundreds, not in the hundreds of thousands.
“This is a huge grant in the world of linguistics,” Shin said.
The money will help pay for fieldwork and travel as well as providing a way to pay undergraduate and graduate students helping with research.
As far as the results, Shin said all three hope to gain not just linguistic data, but also more tangible cultural insights. For example, she said, in Albuquerque she regularly uses cardinal directions in day-to-day life since the mountains to the east are an easy way to orient herself.
“Natural space around us influences what we pay attention to in order to locate objects in space,” Shin said. “That’s absolutely tied to culture.”
