28.1507, Confs: Cog Sci, Gen Ling, Typology/France

Mon Mar 27 13:58:30 UTC 2017

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-1507. Mon Mar 27 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.1507, Confs: Cog Sci, Gen Ling, Typology/France

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Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2017 09:58:12
From: Laure Sarda [laure.sarda at ens.fr]
Subject: A Week with Len Talmy: Conference Cycle

A Week with Len Talmy: Conference Cycle 

Date: 15-May-2017 - 20-May-2017 
Location: Paris, France 
Contact: Laure Sarda 
Contact Email: laure.sarda at ens.fr 
Meeting URL: http://transfers.ens.fr/how-language-represents-motion 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; General Linguistics; Typology 

Meeting Description: 

We are happy to announce this special week at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de
Paris, around the invitation of prof. Leonard Talmy, who will give a series of
four conferences from Monday, May 15 to Friday, May 19 2017.

- Monday, May 15, 2:30 pm – Primitives of Motion in Space – Salle Cavaillès
(45 rue d’Ulm)
- Tuesday, May 16, 2:00 pm – Extending Fictive Motion – Salle Cavaillès (45
rue d’Ulm)
- Thursday, May 18, 2:00 pm – The Targeting System of Language – Salle
Cavaillès (45 rue d’Ulm)
- Friday, May 19, 2:00 pm – Neglected Aspects of the Motion System 

The fourth conference will be part of the NAMED Workshop, salle Conf IV – E244
(ENS, 24 rue Lhomond, Paris).

All four conferences are free of charge. However, for security reasons,
registration is mandatory: if you wish to attend one or more conference(s),
please fill in and send us the registration form available at
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScAbHvg4mKe7phOtDfniNgtNd2YvkMi7axDap
-Q6fgYGBv39g/viewform?c=0&w=1 

Program: 

Talmy's series of conferences : How language represents motion?

Monday, May 15, 2:30 pm:

Primitives of Motion in Space
Spoken and signed language use different systems to represent the Motion
(i.e., the motion or locatedness) of objects in space. Each system can be
separately resolved into primitives. In spoken language, at the “componential
level”, there is a relatively closed universally available inventory of
primitive spatial elements. These elements can be grouped into a relatively
closed inventory of primitive spatial categories. Each such category in fact
includes only a relatively closed small number of particular elements : the
spatial distinctions that each category can ever mark. At a “compositional
level”, elements of the inventory combine in particular arrangements to form
whole spatial schemas. Each language has a relatively closed set of
“pre-packaged” schemas of this sort. Finally, at an “augmentive level”, the
system includes a set of processes that can extend or deform pre-packaged
schemas and thus enable a language’s particular set of schemas to be applied
to a wider range of spatial structures.
The so-called “classifier” system of signed language also has inventories of
primitive spatial elements and categories, but these differ from those in
spoken language. And there are further differences. The system has more
elements, more categories, and more elements per category. It can represent
many more of these distinctions in any particular expression. It represents
these distinctions independently in the expression, not bundled together into
pre-packaged schemas. And its spatial representations are largely iconic with
visible spatial characteristics. In fact, its structural properties seem
closer to those of scene parsing in visual perception.
The findings suggest that instead of some discrete whole-language module, as
proposed by Fodor and Chomsky, spoken language and signed language are both
based on some more limited core linguistic system that then connects with
different further subsystems for the full functioning of the two different
language modalities. These findings have implications for the evolution of
language.

Related reading:

Chapter 2 in : Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Volume I :
Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

Thursday, May 18, 2 pm:

The Targeting System of Language
This talk is based on a book by the same title – due out in 2017 with MIT
Press – and is included in the present series because much of it addresses
motion and location. The book proposes that a single cognitive system
underlies the two domains of linguistic reference traditionally termed
anaphora and deixis. In anaphora, the referent is an element of the current
discourse itself, whereas in deixis, the referent is outside the discourse in
its spatiotemporal surroundings. This difference between the lexical and the
physical has traditionally led to distinct theoretical treatments of such
referents. Our proposal, on the contrary, is that language engages a single
linguistic/cognitive system – “targeting” – to single out a referent whether
it is speech-internal or speech-external. This system can be outlined as
follows.
As a speaker communicates with a hearer, her attention can come to be on
something in the environment – her “target” – that she wants to refer to at a
certain point in her discourse. This target can be located near or far in
either the speech-external(deictic) or the speech-internal (anaphoric)
environment. She thus needs the hearer to know what her intended target is and
to have his attention on it jointly with her own at the relevant point in her
discourse. The problem, though, is how to bring this about. She cannot somehow
directly reach into the hearer’s cognition, take hold of his attention, and
place it on her selected target at the intended moment.
Language solves this problem through targeting. First, at the intended point
in her discourse, the speaker places a “trigger” – one out of a specialized
set of mostly closed-class lexical forms. English triggers include :
this/these, that/those, here, there, yonder, now, then, therefore, thus, so,
such, yay, the, personal pronouns, relative pronouns, and tense markers.
Next, on hearing the trigger, the hearer undertakes a particular 3-stage
procedure. In the first stage, he seeks all available “cues” to the target.
Such cues belong to ten distinct categories, representing ten different
sources of information. In the second stage, he combines these cues so as to
narrow down to the one intended target. And in the third stage, he maps the
concept of the target he has found back onto the original trigger for
integration with the sentence’s overall reference.

Related readings:
Talmy, Leonard. 2013. Deixis and Anaphora Unified as “Targeting”.
International Journal of Cognitive Linguistics 4(2).
—. Forthcoming. The targeting system of language. Cambridge, MA : MIT Press.

Friday, May 19, 2 pm - part of the NAMED Workshop:

Neglected Aspects of the Motion System
In their linguistic representation, factive and fictive motion are organized
systems whose components interrelate in specific patterns. These systems were
characterized in Talmy (2000a, 2000b, 2005), but most research has since
focused on only certain selected aspects of them. The result has been a
certain neglect of the remaining aspects and the system-like nature of Motion
representation. The aim here is to recall the fuller systems and encourage
research to address them.
In particular, the linguistic representation of the factive Motion system
includes a number of parameters. One is the range of relations that a co-event
can bear to a Motion event – only Manner is usually considered. A second is
the range of forms with which a co-event can conflate – only MOVE and GO are
usually considered. A third is the range of semantic components expressed in
the verb – only Path and Manner are usually considered. A fourth is the range
of macro-event categories – only Motion is usually considered. A fifth is the
range of multiple macro-event nesting – only unnested cases are usually
considered. And a sixth is the set of typologies – only the framing typology
is usually considered.
Comparably, the linguistic representation of the fictive Motion system
includes a number of types, but the only type usually considered is that of
coextension paths.
This talk will reintroduce the neglected aspects of Motion and their systemic
interrelations.

Related readings:
Ibarretxe-Antuqano, Iraide. 2005. Interview : Leonard Talmy. A windowing onto
conceptual structure and language. Part 1 : Lexicalization and typology.
Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics, vol. 3, 325-347. John Benjamins.
Chapter 2 in : Talmy, Leonard. 2000a. Toward a Cognitive Semantics, volume I :
Concept structuring systems. i-viii, 1-565. Cambridge : MIT Press.
Chapters 1, 2, 3 in : Talmy, Leonard. 2000b. Toward a Cognitive Semantics,
volume II : Typology and process in concept structuring. i-viii, 1-495.
Cambridge : MIT Press.

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