NAMED 2022

Meeting Descriptions

The linguistic descriptions of motion events have fascinated many researchers because of their complexity, universality, and variation (e.g., Talmy 1985, 2000; Slobin 2004). In spite of many dedicated studies, however, there are many phenomena that have not been explored. The NAMED conference (Neglected Aspects of Motion-Event Description) is a forum for discussing such aspects of motion-event description. This year, we will have a session on deixis, one of the areas in which there has been an increasing interest among researchers. Questions that have attracted recent attention include:

a) What kinds of distinctions are made in the forms expressing dynamic deixis? Cf. Wilkins & Hill 1995; Wälchli 2006

b) How does deixis fit in the currently available typologies of motion event descriptions? Is it a part of path? Cf. Morita 2011, in press; Matsumoto 2021; Lamarre et al. in press.

c) How frequently is deixis expressed in different languages?

d) How are deictic verbs and directionals used in speech context? Are they purely spatial in nature or do they involve any interactional properties of speech situations? Cf. Matsumoto, Akita and Takahashi 2017.

e) Is deixis in motion event descriptions different from that which is found in demonstratives and other deictic categories (as described in Diessel 1999; Levinson 2018, etc.)?

f) How are deictic categories grammaticalized?

g) How do the expressions of associated motion involve deixis, and how should they be conceptualized in terms of motion event typology? Cf. Guillaume and Koch 2021; Lamarre et al. in press.

h) How are gestures (e.g. Talmy 2017) used to convey deictic information in motion events.

Submissions of abstracts that relate to any of the questions listed above are especially encouraged, though other broadly related topics in motion event descriptions are certainly included.

NAMED 2022 will be held in Kyoto, Japan, and it is the first NAMED conference to be held outside Paris. The conference is planned as a hybrid format. We will be asking prospective participants if they are willing to attend on site or online after notification of acceptance is sent out.

Invited Speakers

Holger Diessel (University of Jena, online talk)

Christine Lamarre (INALCO)

Bernhard Wälchli (Stockholm University, online talk)

Organizers

Yo Matsumoto (NINJAL) and Takahiro Morita (Kyoto University)

Funded by NINJAL and KAKENHI (Kyoto University)