nyi16

Visible Meaning: Signs vs. Gestures

Philippe Schlenker

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

July 11-16, NYI Institute, St Petersburg, Russia

Instructor: Philippe Schlenker

Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris

Global Distinguished Professor, New York University

E-mail: philippe.schlenker@gmail.com

Topic

Semantic studies of sign language have led to two general claims. First, in some cases sign languages make visible some crucial aspects of the Logical Form of sentences, ones that are only inferred indirectly in spoken language. Second, along one dimension sign languages are strictly more expressive than spoken languages because iconic phenomena can be found at their logical core. This might imply that the full extent of Universal Semantics can only be studied in sign languages. Alternatively, spoken languages might have comparable expressive mechanisms, but only when co-speech gestures are taken into account (Goldin-Meadow and Brentari 2015). The course will introduce to this debate, with a precise analysis of sign and of gesture semantics.

Readings

• Schlenker, Visible Meaning: Sign Language and the Foundations of Semantics

or alternatively the shorter paper:

Schlenker, Logical Visibility and Iconicity in Sign Language Semantics

• Optional:

Goldin-Meadow and Brentari, Gesture, sign and language: the coming of age of sign language and gesture studies

• See below for many other links.

Course Plan

I. Logical visibility in sign language

II. Iconicity in sign language

III. Iconic enrichments: signs vs. gestures

Slides can be found in this folder.

Homework: it can be found in this folder (in pdf and in doc format). It should be emailed to philippe.schlenker@gmail.com by Monday, July 18, 6pm.

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.

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