GLOW14

Anaphora: Insights from Sign Language

Philippe Schlenker

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

GLOW School, April 7-11, 2014

Instructor: Philippe Schlenker

Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris

Global Distinguished Professor, New York University

Advanced Grant Leader, ERC

E-mail: philippe.schlenker@gmail.com

Goals

Sign language anaphora is realized rather differently from its spoken language counterpart, and it sometimes provides overt evidence for operations that must be inferred indirectly in spoken language. In simple cases, an antecedent is associated with a locus [= position] in signing space, and an anaphoric link is obtained by pointing towards that locus to recover its semantic value. This mechanism has been argued to be an overt realization of coindexation; if so, it can then be used to bring new light to traditional debates pertaining to donkey anaphora (is there binding without c-command?) and temporal and modal anaphora (are there time- and world-denoting pronominals?). The analysis of context dependency also has much to gain from sign language data, as the operation of context shift postulated for some spoken languages appears to have an overt sign language counterpart, realized by a shift of the signer's body ('role shift'). Finally, there are cases in which sign language data raise entirely new theoretical questions: while sign language loci behave in many respects like formal variables, they also have a life as simplified pictorial representations of their denotations – and a 'formal semantics with iconicity' must be developed in order to handle them.

Topics to be discussed include: (i) temporal and modal anaphora; (ii) donkey anaphora; (iii) logical and iconic variables; (iv) phi-features and iconic features. (v) role shift and context shift.

A summary of some early results can be found here.

Requirements

Active class participation, and reading the main assigned papers.

Topics and Readings (to be updated)

Note: the readings that are not available through a link below will be put in a shared Dropbox folder. Please email the instructor to obtain the link.

1. Introduction On Sign Language Semantics:

Zucchi 2012

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

On pronouns:

Büring 2007

Further reading:

Kuhn 2013

Schlenker and Mathur 2013

2. Temporal and Modal Anaphora

Partee 1973

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

Further reading:

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

3. 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

4. Logical and 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

5. Role Shift and Context Shift

Anand and Nevins 2004

Quer 2013

Further reading:

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

[survey of indexicality]

Further topics related to sign language

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