ENS15-Sign Language Semantics

Sign Language Semantics

Philippe Schlenker

(LINGUAE, Institut Jean-Nicod, CNRS; New York University)

March-April 2015 - ENS

Instructor: Philippe Schlenker

Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris

Global Distinguished Professor, New York University

E-mail: philippe.schlenker@gmail.com

Topic

Most of formal semantics was initially developed on the basis of English data, and more recently of cross-linguistic data from other spoken languages. While sign language phonology, morphology and syntax were studied in some detail in the last decades (e.g. Sandler and Lillo-Martin 2006), it is only recently that sign language semantics underwent a comparable development. This emerging field has yielded two kinds of typological insights. First, sometimes some elements that are covert in spoken languages are overtly realized in sign languages. A case in point concerns the formal indices that are often postulated in semantics; while these are not pronounced in spoken languages, they arguably are in sign languages: in cases of binding, an antecedent sets up a position or 'locus', which is then retrieved by way of pointing by the bound pronoun. But a more radical insight has been gained from semantic studies of sign languages: these have iconic possibilities which only exist in very limited form in spoken languages. In fact, loci themselves have this property: they can simultaneously play the role of formal indices and of simplified pictures of what they denote. While one might initially try to neatly distinguish between a logical/grammatical component on the one hand, and an iconic/gestural component on the other, these are so intertwined that it might prove more fruitful to devise from the start a 'formal semantics with iconicity'; in other words, in order to be genuinely universal, semantics might well have to include a pictorial component.

These findings point towards two tantalizing possibilities. One is that in a variety of domains, sign languages are more expressive than spoken languages, and that due to the limitations of the vocal medium spoken language semantics is in some respects a 'degenerate' version of sign language semantics, one from which most of the iconic component was lost. If so, the full richness of Universal Semantics could only be seen by studying sign languages. An alternative possibility is that the difference in expressive power between sign and spoken languages is due to the fact that linguists have separated the latter from their gestural component, for no good theoretical reason. On this view, sign languages should be compared to spoken languages with co-speech gestures, with the possibility that when the latter are taken into account a number of rich expressive possibilities found in sign languages can in fact be replicated within spoken languages. If so, one may gain rich insights into the full power of Universal Semantics by studying spoken languages; but the way we study these should be modified: we should take their gestural component to be part and parcel of their expressive resources. Either way, we will argue that sign languages have the potential to change our view of the scope and methods of formal semantics.

Schedule

5 weeks in March-April 2015 - see below for sessions and readings

Sessions and Readings (still tentative; to be adapted as we go)

Note: the slides and the readings which are not found below are made available via a Dropbox folder

(main readings appear in bold)

Thursday, March 5, 2015: Introduction - Anaphora I

On sign language semantics

Zucchi 2012

Schlenker 2013, 'Anaphora: Insights from Sign Language (Summary)', available here.

On pronouns

Büring 2007

Further reading:

Kuhn 2014

Schlenker 2014: Featural Variables

Schlenker and Mathur 2013

Further reading:

Zucchi, S. 2009. Along the time line: tense and time adverbs in Italian Sign Language, Natural Language Semantics 17. 99–139.

Thursday, March 12, 2015: Anaphora II

On temporal and modal anaphora

Partee 1973

Schlenker 2013 (Temporal and Modal Anaphora in Sign Language, NLLT)

Schlenker 2013 Restrictor set readings across ontological domains in ASL

Further reading:

Schlenker 2006: Ontological Symmetry in Language

Thursday, March 19, 2015: Anaphora III

On donkey anaphora

Schlenker 2011 (Donkey Anaphora: the View from Sign Language, L&P) or the shorter, less technical version available here.

Further reading:

More on dynamic semantics

Barbara Partee's Lectures on Semantics and Anaphora, Moscow, 2008 (3 lectures on dynamic semantics)

Advanced:

Heim, Irene: 1982, File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definiteness [pdf]

Elbourne, Paul: 2005, Situations and Individuals [pdf]

Dekker, Paul: 2004 Cases, Adverbs, Situations and Events, pages 1-5 [pdf]

Heim, Irene: 1990, E-type Pronouns and Donkey Anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy 13: 137-177

Thursday, March 26, 2015: Anaphora IV - Context Shift I

On iconic variables

Schlenker et al. 2013 (Iconic Variables, L&P)

Schlenker 2014 (Iconic Features, to appear in NALS) LingBuzz

Further reading:

Heim's Lectures on feature semantics

On co-speech gestures

Ebert and Ebert on gestural inferences: available here

Schlenker 2014: Gestural Presuppositions

On context shift

Anand and Nevins 2004

Quer 2013

Further reading:

Schlenker, Philippe: 2011, Indexicality and De Se Reports. In Semantics, edited by von Heusinger, Maienborn and Portner, Volume 2, Article 61, Mouton de Gruyter.

[survey of indexicality]

Thursday, April 2, 2015: Context Shift II

Schlenker 2014:

Super Monsters I, available here

Super Monsters II, available here

Davidson 2014

Additional links

• Classics

Klima, Edward and Bellugi, Ursula: 1979, The Signs of Language

• Background

Padden, C.: 2011, Sign Language Geography

List of Sign Languages [Wikipedia]

• Pronouns in sign language

Lillo-Martin, Diane and Meier, Richard: to appear. On the linguistic status of 'agreement' in sign language. To appear as a target article in Theoretical Linguistics.

Kuhn, Jeremy: 2015, Discourse Anaphora: Theoretical Perspectives [pdf]

Sandler, Wendy and Lillo-Martin, Diane: 2006, Pronouns. From Sign Language and Linguistic Universals. [pdf]

• Temporal and Modal Anaphora

Schlenker, Philippe: to appear, Temporal and Modal Anaphora in Sign Language (ASL). To appear in Natural Language & Linguistic Theory [pdf]

Zucchi, Sandro: 2009, Along the time line Tense and time adverbs in Italian Sign Language, NALS. [pdf]

A Classic

Partee, Barbara: 1973, Some Structural Analogies Between Tense and Pronouns in English. Journal of Philosophy 70: 601-609

[pdf]

Some Lecture Notes

1. Intensional approach to time and world dependency [pdf]

2. Extensional approach to time and world dependency [pdf]

3. A fragment with time and world variables [pdf]

More on intensional semantics

Kai von Fintel and Irene Heim's Notes on Intensional Semantics [pdf]

• Donkey Anaphora

–Donkey anaphora in sign language

Schlenker, Philippe: "Quantifiers and Variables: Insights from Sign Language (ASL and LSF)". Accepted for publication in Partee, B.H., Glanzberg, M., & Skilters, J. (eds), Formal Semantics and Pragmatics: Discourse, Context, and Models. The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Vol. 6, 2011. [non-technical discussion of 'donkey' anaphora and sign language]

Schlenker, Philippe: 2012, "Donkey Anaphora: the View from Sign Language (ASL and LSF)". To appear in Linguistics & Philosophy [technical discussion of 'donkey' anaphora and sign language](non-final version; last modified: February 2011)

–Dynamic semantics vs. E-type approaches

More on dynamic semantics

Barbara Partee's Lectures on Semantics and Anaphora, Moscow, 2008 (3 lectures on dynamic semantics)

Advanced:

Heim, Irene: 1982, File Change Semantics and the Familiarity Theory of Definitiness [pdf]

Elbourne, Paul: 2005, Situations and Individuals [pdf]

Dekker, Paul: 2004 Cases, Adverbs, Situations and Events, pages 1-5 [pdf]

Heim, Irene: 1990, E-type Pronouns and Donkey Anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy 13: 137-177 [pdf]

Very Advanced:

Nouwen, Rick (2003) Plural Pronominal Anaphora in Context: Dynamic Aspects of Quantification, PhD-thesis, UiL-OTS, Utrecht University, No. 84 of the LOT dissertation-series. [pdf]

• Iconic Variables

Schlenker, Philippe: 2011, Iconic Agreement. To appear in Theoretical Linguistics. [pdf]

Schlenker, Lamberton and Santoro: 2012, Iconic Variables [pdf]

Emmorey and Herzig: Gradient properties of ASL classifiers [pdf]

• Role Shift

Emmorey and Reilly: 1998, The Development of Quotation and Reported Action: Conveying Perspective in ASL [pdf]

Quer, J. and Frigola, S. The workings of indexicals in role shift structures in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) [pdf]

Pyers and Senghas: 2007, Reported action in Nicaraguan and American Sign Languages: Emerging versus established systems [pdf]

Schlenker, P.: to appear. Indexicality and De Se Reports" [Survey Article]. To appear in the Handbook of Semantics edited by von Heusinger, Maienborn and Portner, Mouton de Gruyter [pdf]

• Ronnie Wilbur on Verbal Classes

[1. is introductory; 2. builds on 1.]

1. Wilbur, R. B. (2003). Representations of telicity in ASL. CLS 39, 354-368. [pdf]

2. Wilbur, R. B. (2008). Complex predicates involving events, time and aspect: Is this why sign languages look so similar? In J. Quer (ed.), Signs of the time: Selected papers from TISLR 2004, pp. 217-250. Hamburg: Signum Press. [pdf]

3. Wilbur, R. B., Malaia, E., Shay, R. A. (In press). Degree modification and intensification in ASL adjectives. 18th Amsterdam Colloquium. Springer FoLLI Publications on Logic, Language and Information. [pdf]

4. Wilbur, R. B. (2009). Productive reduplication in ASL, a fundamentally monosyllabic language. In M. Kenstowicz (ed.), Data and Theory: Papers in Phonology in Celebration of Charles W. Kisseberth, a special issue of Language Sciences 31: 325-342. [pdf]

• Semantics of pictures

Greenberg, Gabriel: Pictorial Semantics. Ms., UCLA. [pdf]

• Semantics of gestures

G. Giorgolo, A Formal Semantics for Iconic Spatial Gestures, in M. Aloni, B. Harald, T. de Jager and K. Schulz 'Logic, Language and Meaning, Springer', p. 305-314, 2010. [pdf]

Lascarides, A. and M. Stone [2009] Discourse Coherence and Gesture Interpretation, Gesture, 9(2), pp147--180, John Benjamins Publishing Company.

• Emergence of New Sign Languages

Ann Senghas's Homepage

Nicaraguan Sign Language

Coppola and Senghas: to appear, The emergence of deixis in Nicaraguan signing [pdf]

Senghas and Coppola: 2001, How Nicaraguan Sign Language Acquired a Spatial Grammar [pdf]

Historical Links

Note: for some of the links ['subscription'], you'll need to connect from NYU or use a proxy server so as to have access to institutional subscriptions.

• The French Deaf community before Abbé de l'Epée

A text by Deaf historian Yann Cantin [in French]

Pierre Desloges, Observations of a Deaf-Mute on an elementary course of instruction of the Deaf-Mute (1779) [in French]

• Abbé de l'Epée

Berthier, Ferdinand: L'Abbé de l'Epée [in French]

Abbé de l'Epée, The Art of Teaching the Deaf-Mute from Birth to Speak (1820) [in French]

• Abbé Sicard

Berthier, Ferdinand: L'Abbé Sicard [in French]

• Laurent Clerc

Short biography (handspeak.com)

Short biography (Encyclopedia of American Disability History)

Laurent Clerc's Address 'Before the Governor and Both Houses of the Legislature', Connecticut, 1818