Week of October 7, 2013
Linguistics Circle Workshop
Philippe Schlenker (Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; NYU)
Insights from Sign Language (ASL and LSF)
Friday, October 11 | 4-5:30pm | Boylston 103
We argue that sign language data (here: ASL and LSF) can bring crucial insights into mechanisms of reference in language. First, non-indexical pronouns are traditionally taken to come with unpronounced indices that provide them with a referential value. Sign languages have the advantage that these indices are arguably overt (Lillo-Martin and Klima 1990): coreference is typically established by assigning a position (or 'locus') to the antecedent, and by pointing back towards that position to realize the pronoun. Upon closer inspection, however, sign language loci have a dual face: while they display the syntactic and semantic behavior of variables, they can also function as simplified pictures of their denotations (Liddell 2003). We argue that in the end the formal and iconic aspects must be integrated within a 'formal semantics with iconicity', one that is expressively richer than what is standardly posited for spoken language. Second, indexical expressions usually get their denotation from the context of speech. But in spoken language, it has been argued that the context of evaluation can be 'shifted' by some indirect discourse constructions (Schlenker 2003, Anand 2006). In sign language, this operation is arguably overt, and is realized by a shift of the signer's body and/or eye gaze. The typology of context-shifting operations is significantly enriched by sign language data. First, context shift does not just occur in indirect discourse, but also in action reports; and there are fine-grained grammatical differences between the two constructions. Second, both variants turn out to have an iconic component: under context shift, properties of signs must be interpreted 'maximally iconically', in the sense that properties of signs that can be taken to correspond to properties of the denoted situations must be so interpreted. As a result, in indirect discourse, context shift gives rise to near-quotational readings, by way of a mechanism that vindicates the view – expressed for instance in Recanati 2001 – that expressions can be simultaneously used and mentioned.
Universals Reading Group/Polinsky Lab Meeting:
Wednesday, October 9 | 5:15-7pm | Boylston 303
The Role of Frequency in the Comprehension of Passives
Presented by Jean Crawford
The frequency study is a work in progress and I would very much appreciate feedback (a small writeup of it is in my dissertation and if anyone wants to look at it, they can find it there). In addition to discussing this, I will present some new work/arguments from Sesotho that children have knowledge of verbal passives.
See the full schedule on the Universals Workshop webpage.
Harvard at Japanese/Korean Linguistics 23
The 23rd Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference will be held at MIT on October 11-13, 2013.
On Saturday, Tyler Lau will be presenting his research "Phonological Reduction and the (Re-)Emergence of Attributive Forms in Ryukyuan" (Christopher Davis, Tyler Lau).