Picturing words: The semantics of speech balloons

Semantics traditionally focuses on linguistic meaning. In recent years, the Super Linguistics movement has tried to broaden the scope of inquiry in various directions, including an extension of semantics to talk about the meaning of pictures. There are close similarities between the interpretation of language and of pictures. Most fundamentally, pictures, like utterances, can be either true or false of a given state of affairs, and hence both express propositions (Zimmermann, 2016; Greenberg, 2013; Abusch, 2015). Moreover, sequences of pictures, like sequences of utterances, can be used to tell stories. Wordless picture books, comics, and film are cases in point. In this paper I pick up the project of providing a dynamic semantic account of pictorial story-telling, started by Abusch (2012) and continued by Abusch & Rooth (2017); Maier & Bimpikou (2019); Fernando (2020). More specifically, I propose here a semantics of speech and thought bubbles by adding event reference to PicDRT. To get there I first review the projection-based semantics for pictures (section 1), noting the fundamental distinction between symbolic and iconic meaning that makes speech bubbles especially interesting (section 2). I then review the dynamic PicDRT framework for pictorial narratives (section 3), add events (section 4), and propose an account of speech bubbles as quotational event modification (section 5). I end with a brief look at other conventional, symbolic enrichments in comics (section 6)

Lying and Fiction

Lying and fiction both involve the deliberate production of statements that fail to obey Grice’s first Maxim of Quality (“do not say what you believe to be false”). The question thus arises if we can provide a uniform analysis for fiction and lies. In this chapter I discuss the similarities, but also some fundamental differences between lying and fiction. I argue that there’s little hope for a satisfying account within a traditional truth conditional semantic framework. Rather than immediately moving to a fully pragmatic analysis involving distinct speech acts of fiction-making and lying, I will first explore how far we get with the assumption that both are simply assertions, analyzed in a Stalnakerian framework, i.e. as proposals to update the common ground

Shifting perspectives in pictorial narratives

We propose an extension of Discourse Respresentation Theory (DRT) for analyzing pictorial narratives. We test drive our PicDRT framework by analyzing the way authors represent characters’ mental states and perception in comics. Our investigation goes beyond Abusch and Rooth (2017) in handling not just free perception sequences, but also a form of apparent perspective blending somewhat reminiscent of free indirect discourse

Death on the Freeway: Imaginative resistance as narrator accommodation

We propose to analyze well-known cases of "imaginative resistance" from the philosophical literature (Gendler, Walton, Weatherson) as involving the inference that particular content should be attributed to either: (i) a character rather than the narrator or, (ii) an unreliable, irrational, opinionated, and/or morally deviant "first person" narrator who was originally perceived to be a typical impersonal, omniscient, "effaced" narrator. We model the latter type of attribution in terms of two independently motivated linguistic mechanisms: accommodation of a discourse referent (Lewis, Stalnaker, Kamp) and 'cautious' updating as a model of non-cooperative information exchange (Eckardt)

Attribution and the discourse structure of reports

I propose a discourse-level analysis of report constructions. Indirect discourse, mixed and direct quotation, free indirect discourse, and attitude ascriptions are all analyzed in terms of a discourse relation of ATTRIBUTION, connecting two propositional discourse units corresponding to (i) a frame segment (he said, she dreamed) and a (possibly complex, multi-sentence) report (“I’m an idiot”, (that) she was president). I provide a unified semantics for the discourse relation of ATTRIBUTION that invokes a flexible notion of ‘characterization’. A discourse unit may characterize a speech event by reproducing its linguistic surface form (as in quotation) or its propositional content (as in indirect speech and attitude reports), or some mixture of both (as in mixed quotation or free indirect discourse). I formalize this unified discourse-level ATTRIBUTION approach to reporting within the general framework of SDRT, and apply it to direct, indirect, and free indirect reports that extend beyond the single embedded or quoted clause. The resulting account is the first to do justice to the complex internal dependencies within stretches of reported discourse

Quotation and Unquotation in Free Indirect Discourse

I argue that free indirect discourse should be analyzed as a species of direct discourse rather than indirect discourse. More specifically, I argue against the emerging consensus among semanticists, who analyze it in terms of context shifting. Instead, I apply the semantic mechanisms of mixed quotation and unquotation to offer an alternative analysis where free indirect discourse is essentially a quotation of an utterance or thought, but with unquoted tenses and pronouns

On the exceptionality of reported speech

Spronck and Nikitina (S&N) have taken on the task of defining a linguistic phenomenon that has managed to elude definition, despite playing a key role in many subfields of linguistics. In formal semantics in particular, speech reports have been at the center of attention from the very beginning (Frege, 1892). S&N’s endeavor presupposes that there is something worth defining, i.e. that reported speech is indeed a linguistic category of its own, not an arbitrary intersection of various other, larger linguistic categories such as clausal embedding and evidentiality. In this response I want to provide additional, semantic evidence for S&N’s claim that reported speech should be treated as a linguistic category.Spronck and Nikitina (S&N) have taken on the task of defining a linguistic phenomenon that has managed to elude definition, despite playing a key role in many subfields of linguistics. In formal semantics in particular, speech reports have been at the center of attention from the very beginning (Frege, 1892). S&N’s endeavor presupposes that there is something worth defining, i.e. that reported speech is indeed a linguistic category of its own, not an arbitrary intersection of various other, larger linguistic categories such as clausal embedding and evidentiality. In this response I want to provide additional, semantic evidence for S&N’s claim that reported speech should be treated as a linguistic category

The pragmatics of attraction: Explaining unquotation in direct and free indirect discourse

The quotational theory of free indirect discourse postulates that pronouns and tenses are systematically unquoted. But where does this unquotation come from? Based on cases of apparent unquotation in direct discourse constructions (including data from Kwaza speakers, Catalan signers, and Dutch children), I suggest a general pragmatic answer: unquotation is essentially a way to resolve a conflict that arises between two opposing constraints. On the one hand, the reporter wants to use indexicals that refer directly to the most salient speech act participants and their surroundings (Attraction). On the other hand, the semantics of direct discourse (formalized here in terms of event modification) entails the reproduction of referring expressions from the original utterance being reported (Verbatim). Unquotation (formalized here also in terms of event modification), allows the reporter to avoid potential conflicts between these constraints. Unquotation in free indirect discourse then comes out as a special case, where the salient source of attraction is the story protagonist and her actions, rather than the reporting narrator and his here and now