Announcement (September 25, 2023): The Monday discussion henceforth moves from 4pm to 3:30pm. This is to allow participants to attend the 5pm Philosophy of Language workshop. 

SYLLABUS

See below.

Honor Code 

To foster learning and discussion, students are discouraged from using phones, tablets or laptops during class, unless this is solely to take notes and/or follow the pdf slides as they are presented (with all other applications closed).

[Summary of some data on this topic]

[Effects of laptop multitasking on users and nearby students]

Important 

(i) Please sign up here if you plan to attend some or all of the seminar (irrespective of whether you plan to enroll or not; this is just so that the instructor has your email address, can assess how many people will attend, and which topics will be of particular interest to the audience).

(ii) The discussion sessions (open to all graduate students, whether registered or not) will be scheduled over the summer by way of an online poll of interested participants.  Please fill out the poll if you are interested! The information will also be useful to schedule guest talks, hence multiple slots will be provided. Thanks a lot for your patience in filling this out!

APPOINTMENTS

The instructor will be available for appointments both in person and on Zoom (depending on the student's preference).

PRE-REQUISITES

At least one graduate-level course in formal semantics. 

REQUIREMENTS

Besides active class participation:

(i) 1 class presentation + 1 squib/mini-literature review  (in some cases, the squib may be replaced with an additional class presentation);

(ii) 1 mini-term paper (to be emailed 10 days after the seminar end; ideally the mini-term paper will have been prepared by the two squibs/presentations in (i))

The squib and mini-term paper should be connected to the broad questions that will be addressed in the seminar (this includes topics in spoken language semantics that may be tangentially related to the Super Semantics topics we'll discuss).

You are encouraged to take the opportunity of this seminar to explore new datasets and propose new generalizations.

Please contact the instructor soon after the beginning of the term to discuss (i) and (ii).

READINGS AND SLIDES

If they are not linked below, they will be made available in this Dropbox folder.

SCHEDULE AND TOPICS [to be adapted as we go]

8 weeks in September-October - see below for sessions and readings.

–General sessions (2 hours 40 per week) will be held on Tuesdays, 3:30pm-6:10pm

–Discussion sessions (1 hour 45 per week) are open to all graduate students (whether registered or not for the course).

Potential topics [list to be finalized later]

1. Overt variables? Loci in sign language vs. gestures
   a. Standard loci  as variables?
   b. Overt dynamic variables?
   c. Temporal and modal variables?
   d. Degree-denoting variables?

2. Context shift and Role Shift in speech and sign and in gestures

3. Plurals and pluractionals in signs vs. gestures

4. Telicity in signs vs. gestures

5. Classifier predicates vs. pro-speech gestures

6. Gestures and visual animations: co-speech, post-speech, pro-speech

7. The inferential typology of language after the multimodal revolution: iconic signs, pro-speech gestures, visual animations, and word learning experiments

8. Gestural grammar?

REFERENCES

See below for details.

Additional references

Colasanti on a functional gesture in Neapolitan (Glossa 2023)

General surveys

• Sign language

Schlenker,  Visible Meaning

Some chapters of What it All Means will be made available as optional, non-technical background readings.

Additional reading: 

Kathryn Davidson. Formal semantics and pragmatics in sign languages. [draft of book manuscript] (from the author's research page)

• Gestures

Abner et al., Gesture for Linguists: a Handy Primer

SCHEDULE AND READINGS

(to be adapted as we go)

Main sessions are in black; normal schedule: Tuesdays 3:30pm-6:10pm (unless otherwise noted), WP 103

Discussion sessions are in blue; normal schedule: Mondays 4-5:45pm, WP 408

Monday, September 4: No class (Labor Day) 

• Tuesday, September 5: General session: Introduction. Sign Language Semantics I

Readings: Schlenker, Lamberton and Kuhn, Sign Language Semantics

Optional [and long]:

Davidson 2022

Schlenker, Visible Meaning 

Monday, September 11: Discussion session 

References alluded to:  Kuhn 2016, Schlenker 'Gestural Grammar', Schlenker and Chemla 'Gestural Agreement'

• Tuesday, September 12: General session: Sign Language Semantics II

Monday, September 18: Discussion session: JD Storment (SUNY) on the grammar of emojis

• Tuesday, September 19: General session: Iconological Semantics and Iconic Syntax I

Readings: Schlenker and Lamberton, Iconological Semantics

Squib #1  due (by email, 9pm EST)
 

Monday, September 25: Discussion session: Anastasia Tsilia (MIT), Effects of iconicity and monotonicity on licensing complement anaphora

Abstract: I will present joint work with Kathryn Davidson (Harvard) on the effect iconic co-speech gestures have on anaphora licensing. Complement Anaphora (CA) is generally only licensed by downward monotone quantifiers, like `few’ (Nouwen, 2003). Yet, sign language data suggest that the use of iconic “loci” can license CA with upward monotone quantifiers like `most’ (Schlenker, 2012; Schlenker et al., 2013). We tested the hypothesis that the iconic nature of “non-default” loci would extend to iconic uses of space in co-speech gestures in English. We hypothesised that, when accompanied by iconic co-speech gestures, complement anaphora will be licensed with upward monotone quantifiers, and will be degraded with downward monotone ones. We designed an experiment testing downward and upward monotone quantifiers with and without gesture, and found a significant effect of both gesture and quantifier type, as well as an interaction between the two. Our results show that iconicity affects complement anaphora licensing, and has the inverse effect of monotonicity. We suggest that the ASL facts are not sign language specific, but are instead modality independent, having to do with how humans interpret iconicity in language. We further argue that iconic co-speech gestures have an iconic inference of existence, along the lines of what has been suggested for iconic loci in ASL (Kuhn, 2020). Time permitting, we will discuss iconic properties of loci found in gesture more in general, suggesting the effects of iconicity are related to some common modality-independent cognitive mechanisms (a.o. Schlenker & Chemla (2017), Schlenker (2021)).

• Tuesday, September 26: General session: Iconological Semantics and Iconic Syntax II

Readings: Schlenker et al., Iconic Syntax 

Monday, October 2, 3:30pm: Discussion session: Zhuoye Zhao, Time in Gestures

Abstract: It has been observed that temporal information can be indicated through pronominal forms in sign languages. Schlenker (2013) showed that in American sign language (ASL), pointing signs towards specific points in the signing space can be used to establish and retrieve both individual and temporal anaphora. Lin et al. (2021) further supported the argument with data from Chinese sign language (CSL), where not only the pointing signs are used for temporal anaphora, but also they occur in dedicated signing spaces (timelines) with a conventional preference for temporal orientation — a sagittal timeline preferred for past expressions where past is backwards and a vertical timeline preferred for future expressions where future is down. 

In this talk, I report a survey that attempts to replicate these findings with pro-speech and co-speech gestures in Mandarin. It shows that temporal anaphora can still be represented through a range of pointing gestures corresponding to different number features, but the conventional aspects in CSL are no longer significant — Temporal anaphora may occur in all three possible timelines (default horizontal space, the sagittal and vertical timelines), and there is no preferred direction for temporal orientations. Instead, I show that uses of temporal gestures are constrained by two more general principles — a homomorphic mapping between time and the loci that realize them, and non-present time prefers to be gestured in non-neutral position.

• Tuesday, October 3: General session: The Inferential Typology of Language in Speech, Gestures and Visual Animations

Readings: 

Tieu et al. 2019 PNAS (experimental)

OR Schlenker 2019, Gestural Semantics (theoretical)

OR Schlenker, What it All Means Chapter 14 (general audience)

Relevant as well: Migotti and Guerrini, to appear.

[Monday, October 9 – No class -  Fall break]

Tuesday, October 10, 3:30pm: Discussion session: co-speech and co-sign gestures.
(NYU classes meet on a Monday schedule) 

Relevant reading: Schlenker, Iconic Pragmatics

Squib #2  due (by email, 9pm EST)

Monday, October 16, 4pm: Discussion session: Kaustubh Ghoshal on reduplication [closed session, students and postdocs only] 

• Tuesday, October 17: General session: The Inferential Typology of Language: Gestures and visual animations (continued);  ASL (new data)

Readings (optional):

Schlenker et al. 2023 The Inferential Typology of Language: Insights from Sign Language (ASL) 

Davidson 2014

Monday, October 23, 3:30pm-4:50pm: Discussion session: Lyn Tieu on the typology of emojis (on Zoom; if you haven't already received it, please contact the instructor to have the meeting link)

Optional reading: Tieu et al. 2023

• Tuesday, October 24: General session:   The Inferential Typology of Language in ASL (end) (last general session)

Mini-term paper due: Friday, November 3, 9pm EST (by email)

Instructions for the mini-squib(s)

Choose between A, B, and C.  In all cases, please consult with the instructor ASAP. Registered students should write one squib and give a class presentation (or write an additional squib). In some cases, the squib may be replaced with an additional class presentation.

Note: Your squib can be very short. Ideally, it should present one very clear argument or empirical problem.

A. Write a brief review of an article that concerns one of the topics that will be discussed in the seminar.

Consult with the instructor on the choice of the paper. Your squib should be empirically and formally precise. Be sure to specify in your review:

(i) the empirical problem that is addressed, and the generalizations that are discussed [state them precisely];

(ii) what the main formal proposal is;

(iii) how the formal analysis is applied to several selected examples;

(iv) what some strengths and weaknesses of the proposal are.

B. Write a squib related to one of the topics that will be discussed in the seminar. Your squib should be empirically and formally precise. The squib should be very focused, and it should:

(i) define a clear problem, which could be:

(a) an empirical problem, for instance:

a set of data for which an analysis we have discussed makes incorrect predictions,
a potential application of an analysis to significantly new examples or even data types [e.g. applying to emojis what has been developed for gestures]
a new set of data that our analyses have no account for [if so, you should eventually try to state a clear generalization]

(b) a formal problem that arises in some of the theories we have discussed;

(ii) give a precise analysis of the relevant data and formalisms;

(iii) discuss one or several possible solutions.

C. Give a class presentation, to be discussed with the instructor.

Instructions for the mini-term paper

The mini-term paper should be a more elaborate version of B. above. The key is to find some crisp empirical and/or formal result, not to write something long. Approximate length: 6-10 pages.