Abstract
‘Visible Meaning’ (Schlenker 2018b) claims (i) that sign language makes visible some aspects of the Logical Form of sentences that are covert in spoken language, and (ii) that, along some dimensions, sign languages are more expressive than spoken languages because iconic conditions can be found at their logical core. Following nine peer commentaries, we clarify both claims and discuss three main issues: what is the nature of the interaction between logic and iconicity in sign language and beyond? does iconicity in sign language play the same role as gestures in spoken language? and is sign language Role Shift best analyzed in terms of visible context shift, or by way of demonstrations referring to gestures?
Acknowledgments
I am extraordinarily grateful to the ten colleagues who commented on ‘Visible Meaning’; I learned a lot from their very detailed and remarkably interesting commentaries. Commentators were: Valentina Aristodemo and Mirko Santoro; Diane Brentari; Kathryn Davidson; Cornelia Ebert; Regine Eckardt; Karen Emmorey; Emar Maier; Josep Quer; Sandro Zucchi. Many thanks as well to Brian Buccola, Emmanuel Chemla, Rob Pasternak and Lyn Tieu for regular and patient help pertaining to my work on gestures; helpful remarks were also made by Masha Esipova. In addition to their great contribution as commentators, Diane Brentari and Kathryn Davidson also sent me very helpful comments on a preliminary version of the present piece. (The sections on Role Shift indirectly benefited from discussions about shifted indexicals with Amy Rose Deal.)
ASL consultant for data cited in this article: Jonathan Lamberton. Special thanks to Jonathan Lamberton, who provided exceptionally fine-grained data throughout this research; his contribution as a consultant was considerable. I am also very grateful to him for authorizing me to make public use of the video sketch in (13), and for correcting the transcriptions and translations of examples (21), (22) and (47).
Grant acknowledgments: The research leading to these results received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement N°324115–FRONTSEM (PI: Schlenker). Research was conducted at Institut d’Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure - PSL Research University. Institut d’Etudes Cognitives is supported by grants ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog and ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL.
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