Calendrier

• Mark Ellison (University of Cologne)

dans le cadre DILIS

This talk comes in three parts. In the first part, I will talk about modelling language at different levels. On the one hand, language arises when two speakers come together and interact. The properties of those speakers determine the language behaviours that happen between them. On the other hand, we can think of individual speakers as part of a network of linguistic connectivity. We can deduce properties of the system as a whole on the basis of properties of the network.

The second part of the talk introduces the notion of linguistic prominence, as it is being explored at the Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Cologne. Prominence picks out one linguistic item from a set of similar items. In many languages, stress identifies a most prominent syllable within a word. Syntactic constructions such as clefting can make one phrase more prominent than others. Discourse contexts make some potential referents more prominent, and so more likely to be referred to. The role of prominence in language understanding is explored.

The final third of the talk brings together the first two parts to develop an account of linguistic prominence. If listeners in conversations make predictions about what is coming up, it is useful for speakers equiped with a theory of mind to manipulate listener reliance on predictions. I argue that added prominence acts to encourage listeners to rely more on the input they receive, than on their predictions, during interpretation. I conclude with considering the implications of this model in language contact situations, and for language change.

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• Robin Vallery (Université de Lille, Savoirs, Textes & Langage)

dans le cadre DILIS

Swear words of English and French, both real and fictional ones, significantly tend to contain the least sonorous consonants (i.e. plosives, voiceless fricatives, and affricates), compared to the rest of the lexicon. What can explain the overrepresentation of such sounds among swear words? This might be a case of sound symbolism or systematicity, when sounds are unconsciously associated with a meaning. I will examine the pragmatic vs. semantic nature of the meaning involved, as well as two explanations in terms of iconicity, based on insights from existing literature: plosives may be associated with “violation of hearer’s space”, or unsonorous consonants may be associated with “aggression”. I will also describe the methodology and give the first results of an experimental study where native speakers of English and French spontaneously invent fictional swear words. Swear words have an emotional, contextual meaning, like interjections or insults, so this unusual sound-meaning pairing would involve an emotional-contextual, non-truth-conditional meaning, and be powerful enough that it influences a strong sociolinguistic convention – which words are swear words and which ones are not – suggesting that sounds convey meaning in yet unsuspected ways.

Participer à la réunion Zoom
https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/93045922367?pwd=YS9BbU04enBjNDA2TGJ4QVlTUS9FZz09
ID de réunion : 930 4592 2367
Code : X2zEG6

• Guillaume Jacques (CRLAO)
• Antoine Guillaume (DDL)

dans le cadre DILIS : Atelier Typologie sémantique

Introductory course (four lectures) on the topic of associated motion. Lectures 1 (April 12th) and 2 (April 19th) will be given by Antoine Guillaume and lectures 3 (May 17th) and 4 (May 31th) by Guillaume Jacques.



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• Nino Amiridze (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University)

dans le cadre DILIS : Atelier Morphosyntaxe

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• Link to the material
  
  
  This talk deals with the use of placeholder verbs in Georgian (Kartvelian). In many cases, those verbs are used when speakers have a problem recalling the exact verb in their turn in the conversation. However, those placeholders can also be used when the speakers deliberately avoid uttering the exact verb form for some reason. I will look at how morphological markers of placeholder verbs are used by language users to hide or, on the contrary, hint at certain pieces of information about the implied verb. I will also look at the data from different periods of modern Georgian to clarify what led to having multiple exponence of agreement markers in Georgian placeholder verbs, a synchronic explanation of which was given in Harris (2017).
  
  

• Guillaume Jacques (CRLAO)
• Antoine Guillaume (DDL)

dans le cadre DILIS : Atelier Typologie sémantique

Introductory course (four lectures) on the topic of associated motion. Lectures 1 (April 12th) and 2 (April 19th) will be given by Antoine Guillaume and lectures 3 (May 17th) and 4 (May 31th) by Guillaume Jacques.



Link to the videoconference room