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Politeness in Japanese Sign Language (JSL): Polite JSL expression as evidence for intermodal language contact influence
Get PDFThis dissertation shows how signers mark polite register in JSL and uncovers a number of features salient to the linguistic encoding of politeness. My investigation of JSL politeness considers the relationship between Japanese sign and speech and how users of these languages adapt their communicative style based on the social context. This work examines: the Deaf Japanese community as minority language users and the concomitant effects on the development of JSL; politeness in JSL independently and in relation to spoken Japanese, along with the subsequent implications for characterizing polite Japanese communicative interaction; and the results of two studies that provide descriptions of the ways in which JSL users linguistically encode polite register. The studies show that JSL displays social indexical features with potential typological salience across sign languages.The elaborate system of overt encoding of polite expression in Japanese speech is commonly conceived of as indicating and reinforcing the special significance of polite behavior or practice in Japanese society. Nevertheless, sign language users as members of an overlapping society use a different language, which either marks politeness contrastively or fails to signify certain aspects of politeness signaled by spoken Japanese. The structural contrasts between JSL and spoken Japanese show that a language must receive consideration in light of actual communicative practice in order to determine its relation to social norms. Additionally, the reliance of JSL on dependent segments, or nonmanuals, to mark polite expression indicates that any linguistic analysis of politeness is impoverished as long as such kinds of dependent segments, analogous to features such as prosody in spoken languages, do not receive consideration.Since JSL and spoken Japanese represent, in a sense, two languages sharing one society, they represent a novel language contact context in which two languages segregate primarily via language modality rather than physical geography, as in the case of spoken contact languages. Using contact signed and spoken language pairs, researchers can uniquely tease apart the relation between language use and social context as a sign language is cultivated in a closely related society or ground of material relations of a preexisting spoken language.Chapter Two, "JSL as a Minority Language" illustrates the social context of Deaf Japanese people and JSL, and shows how Deaf Japanese inhabit a society dominated by a hearing culture. The resultant saturation in the language-context relations of the hearing culture produces a sign language with a number of influences from the socially dominant spoken and written language culture, along with concomitant effects on the JSL lexicon and morphology. A shared visual-kinesic communicative culture additionally results in a JSL that has assimilated features bearing resemblance to gestures from the inventory of speakers and signers. Chapter Three, "Japanese Signer and Speaker Polite Expression" demonstrates that although the structures of JSL and spoken Japanese differ, they have the capacity to index the same social interaction contexts. The presence of two differing languages, with a mixture of shared and unique indices, derived from a shared social milieu demonstrates that the examination of language structures in relation to their actual application is prerequisite to framing any cross-cultural analysis grounded in linguistic form. Chapter Four, "JSL Politeness Studies" unearths a number of JSL politeness marking features, including nonmanual, lexical and discourse features. The first study reproduces for JSL the Hill et al. Pen Study (1986) and elicits responses to a request for a pen signed with various levels of politeness. The second study replicates the Hoza ASL study (2007) and uses a Discourse Completion Test (Blum-Kulka et al. 1989) to collect responses from JSL signers to request scenarios. The close examination of polite expression via the two JSL studies shows that a subset of JSL politeness marking features appear to emerge from the visual-kinesthetic modality shared with Japanese speakers, as some features maintain enough transparency for non-signers to interpret them similarly to signers. Additionally, besides confirming some of the results of an earlier JSL politeness study by Okabe et al. (2005), the studies identify a number of politeness indices in JSL similar to register marking cues described in the ASL literature (Berkowitz 2008; Cokely and Baker-Shenk 1980; Hoza, 2007; Liddell and Johnson 1989[1985]; Roush 2007 [1999]; Zimmer 1989). JSL exhibits particular politeness indexing features shared with ASL, such as the polite grimace, manipulation of signing space size and variation of signing rate, which may have typological salience across sign languages
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Connective Polysemy and Clause Linkage Typology in Korean
Get PDFClause connectives are linguistic forms that convey relations between clauses in a sentence. They are typically compared, whether within a language or across languages, on the basis of a shared syntactic category, such as coordination and subordination, or a semantic one, such as sequence, cause, or addition. While the inadequacy of the coordination/subordination distinction for the purposes of clause linkage typology has received much attention, the nature of the semantic distinctions has received comparatively little. In this dissertation, I investigate polysemous connectives--connectives that express a range of related semantic and pragmatic uses. I argue that adequate comparisons require categories such as cause and sequence to be defined relative to a finely articulated semantic-pragmatic framework able to capture both event-structural as well as discourse-structural distinctions. The argument is based on a detailed analysis of four polysemous connectives in Korean, -ese, -unikka, -taka, and -myense, which cover a wide range of meanings, from temporal relations such as sequence and simultaneity, to causal, conditional, and concessive relations.The proposed semantic-pragmatic framework is developed through the analysis and comparison of Korean -ese and -unikka, which have been considered similar in both having sequential and causal meanings, but are nonetheless used very differently. For instance, causal -unikka is generally more flexible than causal -ese in the kinds of causal relations it can express, which include epistemic or speech act causal relations. However, -ese rather than -unikka is preferred for expressing causal links between successive real-world events. Independent analyses of each connective's entire polysemy network show that while -ese's different meanings arise from multiple ways of conceptualizing two events as a single complex event, -unikka's meanings stem from different aspects of the relationship between a subjective viewpoint and the content that is observed. Facilities for modeling both of these areas of meaning are combined into an integrated framework. The resulting analyses, in addition to expanding empirical coverage, explain why these connectives, with apparently similar meanings, are used in very different ways.This framework is then applied to the comparative analysis of Korean -taka and -myense, which are typically used to express interruptive and simultaneous relations between events, respectively. The connective -taka also has successive, cotemporal, and causal uses, as well as a predictive conditional use, while -myense also has cotemporal, additive, and concessive uses. Differences in volitionality are observed to be crucial to the semantic characterization of the two connectives. The full range of facilities integrated into the framework is shown to be needed to account for the factors that condition both connectives' various senses and behaviors. For example, both connectives allow past tense to be marked in their dependent clauses. However, -taka with past tense marking expresses succession rather than interruption, while -myense with past tense marking expresses concession rather than simultaneity. Other issues include the greater flexibility of interpretation afforded by both connectives' nonvolitional uses, conditional -taka's ability to make only undesirable predictions, and the connectives' violable subject identity constraints.The final chapter examines the syntax of these Korean connective constructions from the perspective of a multivariate approach to clause linkage typology. The connectives -ese, -unikka, -taka, and -myense, differentiated by their various meanings, are assessed according to 13 independent variables. A number of variables examine the ways in which the constructions limit the scope of markers in the main clause that indicate illocutionary force, tense and status, or negation. There are also variables that capture properties of the dependent clause, such as whether it allows for the marking of illocutionary force, or whether the dependent clause allows question words or for a constituent to be extracted. The investigation reveals a number of trends with respect to the syntactic correlates of sense distinctions. Certain sense distinctions, such as differences in aspectual alignment and volitionality, do not yield differences in syntax. However, there are other distinctions, such as the difference between content relations and grounding relations, that seem to correlate with significant differences. The dissertation concludes with discussion on the methodological implications of the study for a cross-linguistic typology
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The interaction of syntax and metaphor in gesture: A corpus-experimental approach
Get PDFThis dissertation is a study of metaphor in usage: metaphor in language, metaphor in gesture, and how they interact. Gesture provides a route to study both the cognition associated with language and the domain-generality of cognitive processes. While English speakers may be producing metaphoric manner verbs due to the lexicalization patterns of their language, are they necessarily thinking in terms of metaphoric manner? This is difficult to judge when looking at language alone. To answer this question, we turn to metaphoric gesture.Metaphoric gestures, in which the gesture represents the source domain of a conceptual metaphor, are well-known but under-studied (Cienki and Müller, 2008b). Iconic gestures conveying information about a motion event are known to interact with the syntactic and semantic structure of speech; speakers of languages that express manner of motion in the verb gesture differently than speakers of languages that primarily express path of motion in the verb. Metaphoric usages of motion in language – prices falling, hopes rising, time flying – also interact with the grammatical patterns of language. However, we know little about how metaphoric motion in gesture interacts with grammar. In Part One of the dissertation, I focus on metaphor in language. In Chapter 2 I propose to represent metaphors as a complex network of frames, mappings, and bindings as implemented in the MetaNet Metaphor Repository (Dodge et al., 2015). This advances the representation of conceptual metaphors to a level that interfaces more accurately with representations of frames and constructions in FrameNet (Ruppenhofer et al., 2006) and Embodied Construction Grammar (Bergen and Chang, 2005). In turn, this enables the detailed analysis of metaphors and metaphor systems, as exemplified by the Location Event Structure Metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson, 1999) case study in Chapter 3. This corpus-based study is one of the first to make use of the MetaNet method for large-scale automatic metaphor identification and annotation. This approach reveals not only how the metaphor system is evoked in language, but further illustrates the conceptual structure of the metaphor. I demonstrate that although English, as a satellite-framed language, privileges manner in its lexicalization of motion events, metaphoric English motion backgrounds manner and foregrounds path. The foregrounding of path information in linguistic realization of metaphoric motion runs counter to the privileging of manner in English lexicalization patterns. This finding lays the groundwork for the investigation of the same metaphor system in gesture.In Part Two, I focus on metaphor in co-speech gesture. I investigate metaphoric motion-evoking metaphoric gestures using two complementary approaches. Chapter 4 uses a corpus approach; I analyze a parallel corpus of video gesture data in which speakers use a motion verb either literally or metaphorically in their speech while producing a co-expressive representational gesture. To analyze the corpora, I develop a set of annotation guidelines and then demonstrate the benefits of taking an image-schematic approach to gesture analysis. I argue that the image schema is the most appropriate level of structure in analyzing the form and meaning of metaphoric gestures. Results of this image schema analysis suggest that, reflecting the English language data in Chapter 3, these metaphoric gestures emphasize path and do not represent the manner of motion.Chapter 5 is the first study to take an experimental approach to metaphoric gesture that uses non-metaphoric stimuli. Participants were given short stories about state change, such as prices decreasing or grades improving, to read and re-tell to a friend; half of the stimuli contained metaphoric language and half did not. Results from this study demonstrated the viability of this methodology in eliciting both metaphoric speech and gesture, and supported those of Chapter 4. I find that speakers are more likely produce metaphoric gestures if they are also producing metaphoric language – even if the gesture evokes a different metaphor than the speech does.I unify my analyses of metaphoric motion in speech and gesture in a multi-modal Embodied Construction Grammar analysis of both co-expressive and complementary metaphoric co-speech gestures. I represent both the meaning and form of the gesture and the meaning and form of the speech including frame structure, argument structure, and metaphoric structure. This analysis provides the first formal representation of a multi-modal utterance in a construction grammar and an innovative approach to the unification of the construction of multi-modal meaning
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The Representation of Morphemes in the Russian Lexicon
Get PDFDifferent morphological theories assign different status to parts of words, roots and affixes. Models range from accepting both bound roots and affixes to only assigning unit status to standalone words. Some questions that interest researchers are 1) What are the smallest morphological units, words or word parts? 2) How does frequency affect morphological processing? 3) How do experimental results affect existing morphological theories? In this dissertation I attempt to investigate these questions in more detail using results from psycholinguistic experiments and integrating them into the Network theory of morphology.I first consider what kinds of information a morphological model should take into account. It should reflect the intuition of speakers that words consist of different parts, while avoiding the difficulties of theories that propose that roots and affixes are separate units. In addition, it should incorporate the notion of paradigms and frequency information. I look at how various morphological theories account for Russian data, in particular verbal prefixes and words where they occur.The status of roots is intensely debated in morphology, and views of the nature of roots range from being complete separate units on their own, to being considered epiphenomena over words, which are the only existing units. Additionally, it is frequently debated whether free and bound roots have the same status, or are different. In the dissertation I describe the results of a prefix separation experiment in Russian, where more than two types of roots can be identified. The results demonstrate that a productive prefix is separated with greatest easy from words with free roots and with greatest difficulty from words with completely bound roots. The remaining two root types are in between those extremes, according to the characteristics of the root types. I interpret these results as meaning that roots form a continuum based on the strength of connections between words. The stronger the form and meaning connections, the more easily identifiable a root. This interpretation fits well within the Network theory of morphology, where only words are units and there are connections of differing strength between them.Continuing with the investigation of different units of morphological processing, I report the results of a complexity rating experiment in Russian where words with different prefixes were used. The results demonstrate that ratings of word complexity show a direct correlation with the level of transparency of prefixes in those words. Results of both of these experiments fit into the Network theory of morphology; however, two interpretations are possible with respect to prefixes. While I suggest that roots are not units, it is possible that prefixes, and affixes in general, can be represented as generalizations over many words. It is also possible that they are not units, and that strong connections are formed between words containing those prefixes and new words naturally fall into the pattern to form new words containing the prefixes.In addition to investigating the unit or non-unit status of roots and prefixes, I study the influence of relative frequency in Russian morphological processing. Studying the data from the prefix separation experiment only with free roots, I compare the processing of words that are more frequent than their bases to processing of words that are less frequent than their bases. The difference between processing of those two sets of words demonstrates that relative frequency is an important factor in Russian morphological processing. These results are in accordance with previous studies in English, Italian and Tagalog, and are thus suggestive of a universal principle of morphological organization.Finally, I incorporate these results into the Network theory of morphology, where units of morphological processing are words and connections between words. The stronger the connections between words, the more apparent are the different constituent parts. However, the roots and affixes within affixed words are not units of processing, but are epiphenomena over the words and connections. The status of prefixes is not completely clear: clearly, generalizations are formed over prefixes in prefixed words, however, it is not certain whether those generalizations are temporary or permanent. Overall, the Network theory of morphology is revised and updated according to the reported experimental results
Wait till you got started:How to submerge another’s discourse in your own
No full textIntroduction Research from various angles has amply demonstrated the fact that viewpoints of others are routinely embedded as the speech, thoughts, or emotion states of those others in various text types. In conversation, for instance, direct speech is often used to highlight dramatic peaks (e.g. Mayes 1990; Shuman 1993; Holt and Clift 2007); news reporting uses both explicit and implicit speech reporting modes to incorporate the viewpoints of different sources (e.g. Short 1988; Semino and Short 2004; Sanders 2010); and fiction makes extensive use of a range of direct and (free) indirect modes of discourse presentation, not just to move the action forward, but also to conjure up characters’ inner lives (e.g. Banfield 1982; Fludernik 1993; Vandelanotte 2009). This chapter takes as its focus only cases where reported material is explicitly presented, typically in the form of a reported clause, though sometimes the reported material particularly in direct speech or thought consists of just a minor clause or one-word utterance (She said, “Yes”, I was like “Wow!”). This excludes from consideration so-called “narrative reports” of speech or thought acts as described by Leech and Short (1981: chapter 10) and Semino and Short (2004), as in he thought about his childhood or she talked on. Discussion of forms that present the reported material usually centers on three main forms, direct, indirect, and free indirect speech or thought, which have been analyzed in cognitive linguistics as involving different forms of mental space embedding (Sanders and Redeker 1996), with the embedded space being accessed either directly as a new Base Space (in direct speech/thought) or indirectly, via the narrative Base Space, with different degrees of narrator’s influence (in [free] indirect speech/thought).</p
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An Updated Typology of Causative Constructions: Form-Function Mappings in Hupa (California Athabaskan), Chungli Ao (Tibeto-Burman) and Beyond
Get PDFTaking up analytical issues raised primarily in Dixon (2000) and Dixon & Aikhenvald (2000), this dissertation combines descriptive work with a medium-sized (50-language) typological study. Chapter 1 situates the dissertation against a concise survey of typological-functional work on causative constructions from the last few decades, and outlines the major research questions. Chapter 2 presents a case study of causative encoding in Hupa (California Athabaskan). I describe the morphosyntax and semantics of the Hupa syntactic causative construction, and analyze its distribution with respect to Dixon's (2000) proposals for a typology of causative constructions. I demonstrate that causee control (Dixon's parameter 3) over the caused microevent is a significant semantic factor in licensing this construction. I show that Næss' (2007) model of transitivity as a set of semantic prototypes, as applied to causative event participants, nicely accounts for other aspects of the distribution--particularly, why some events can be encoded in a causative construction, while other, quite similar, events must be encoded in a result clause or purpose clause. I end with an examination of how Hupa encodes causal chains within single lexical items, bringing together a small corpus study and a case study of Hupa encoding of cutting and breaking events. Chapter 3 presents a case study of causative encoding in Chungli Ao (Tibeto-Burman). I offer a description of Chungli Ao's morphological and periphrastic causative constructions, and analyze their distribution with respect to Dixon's (2000) model, showing that directness of causer action (Dixon's parameter 6) can determine the choice between a lexical causative (where one is available), and a non-lexical causative construction. I present an in-depth case study of Chungli Ao encoding of cutting and breaking events, including a discussion of the semantics and distribution of several lexical suffixes and the elements of the causal chain they encode. Also discussed are syntactic alternations systematically available to CUT-class verbs and BREAK-class verbs, respectively. Chapter 4 moves away from language-specific case studies, and turns to crosslinguistic research in order to address some broader research questions about universal tendencies in the encoding of causative relationships. I bring a new, larger body of empirical evidence to bear specifically on 2 Dixon's (2000) account of the formal and semantic factors influencing (or forcing) a speaker's choice of one causative construction over another. Dixon's (2000) claims about prototypical patternings of compact vs. less compact constructions are not well-supported: in order for the claims to be well-supported, the values of Dixon's nine parameters would have to be correlated in individual languages at a statistically significant frequency. Parameter 5 (partially versus completely affected causee) was not found to be crucially encoded at all in a sample of 114 constructions from 50 languages. Parameters 7 (causer intentionality), 8 (naturalness of causer action) and 9 (causer accompanying or not accompanying causee) nearly always occur in isolation. The one instance of a solid correlation among parameter values (with a sample of more than 10 relevant pairing events) was that between parameters 3 (causee control) and 4 (causee willingness). These two parameters were correlated: they were encoded together at particular values (both low or both high), or were both systematically absent, at a statistically significant frequency. Since, in general, Dixon's proposed semantic parameters tend not to co-occur, the study shows that it is not feasible to model the distribution of causative constructions around notions of semantic prototypicality. A much larger sample may show Dixon to be correct in his proposal regarding correlations between values of semantic parameters, but the current findings suggest that his nine parameters are not likely to pattern together in subgroups. I conclude the chapter by presenting a series of constructions, encountered in the course of compiling the typological sample, that obligatorily encode other semantic information along with causativity. I note potential patterns and propose questions for research to build on my typological study. Chapter 5 summarizes the contributions of the dissertation, and recapitulates various proposals for further study
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Context in Constructions
Get PDFTraditional associations between syntax and grammar include the notions of anaphora, deixis, ellipsis, speech acts, and information structure. However, there exist numerous other layers of communicative organization, including the structure of conversation and turn-taking, quasi-ritualized interactions, and genre and register. Long recognized as analytically important categories in the fields of Conversation Analysis, contrastive pragmatics, Interactional Sociolinguistics, and others, they have been largely ignored in linguistic and especially syntactic theory. This study aims to begin an integration of formal and social/interactional approaches to linguistics from the perspective of a flexible and precise grammatical framework: Sign-based Construction Grammar. Through a series of close studies of grammatical constructions in English and Japanese, it is shown that grammatical structure and the interactional contexts in which language is used have a far closer and more integrated relationship than is usually assumed. I introduce the script as a way to capture the fact that not only can language reflect context, but context can exert a significance force on speakers' linguistic choices. The case studies proceed from relatively low-level contextual features to higher levels of organization, showing at each point the necessity to recognize grammatical constructions sensitive to that level of interaction. Chapter 1 introduces the question of the syntax-context interface. Chapters 2 and 3 present a syntactic representation for lexically- and constructionally-licensed argument omission (null instantiation). Aside from contextual features normally associated with ellipsis, it is seen that to fully account for argument omission it is necessary to incorporate into grammatical constructions references to a fine-grained categorization of speech acts and attitudinal and epistemic stances. Chapters 4 and 5 show that broader regions of conversational context are crucial to licensing constructions. Chapter 4 examines means of providing identification in situations where there is no visual contact (on the phone, at the front door). Chapter 5 illustrates the existence of Japanese and English constructions which function to project future linguistic actions. Chapter 6 extends the framework to consideration of persistent contextual features, namely kinship relations, and how these determine or influence linguistic choices in referring to other family members. Chapter 7 concludes and discusses directions for future work
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