Focus Constructions in ASL: Evidence from Pseudoclefting and Doubling

This study investigates two types of clausal structures in American Sign Language (ASL), “rhetorical” wh-questions and doubling constructions. Following work by Petronio (1993), I assume the stance that rhetorical wh-questions are pseudoclefts (wh-clefts). Unlike languages that use focus particles or relative clause-like structures, here ASL achieves the semantic properties of a cleft by moving the counterweight “answer” of the rhetorical question structure to [Spec,FP], and topicalizing the “question” wh-XP. This is similar to Abnerꞌs analysis of the it-clefting semantics of the rightward wh-R construction in ASL (2011). Both pseudoclefts and doubles have been identified as potential sites for focus; doubles are commonly assumed to have emphatic/prosodic focus (Wilbur 1994, Nunes and Quadros 2006) and it has been previously argued that pseudoclefts have information focus (Lillo-Martin and Quadros 2004). However, as it stands current work under-specifies the exact nature of the differences in information structure, particularly in terms of the nature of the predicational pseudocleft (Sandler and Lillo-Martin 2006), which has been variously referred to as emphatic, prosodic, and information focus; or simply just “focus.” From this viewpoint I analyze the differences in information structure between the two clausal types as based on the diagnostics of Kiss (1998). I argue that based on Kiss’s analysis of the distinguishing syntactic and pragmatic features between identificational and information focus, the pseudoclefting construction constitutes identificational focus, and the doubling construction constitutes emphatic information focus

Navigating the Global Economy: A Comprehensive Analysis of the Massachusetts Maritime Economy

The Massachusetts Maritime Economy is comprised of 5,555 establishments that employ 90,482 workers, pay $3.4 billion in total wages, and account for$6.4 billion in gross state product. These businesses are a significant economic driver in Massachusetts, representing 2.6 percent of the Commonwealth’s direct employment and 1.3 percent of its direct gross state product. 5,555 establishments 90,482 employees $3.4 billion total wages$6.4 billion gross state product Employment in the industry compares favorably with other major sectors of the state’s economy, including the Information and Manufacturing sectors. Growth in the Massachusetts Maritime Economy Was More Robust Than the Statewide Industry Total Growth in Massachusetts’ Maritime Economy was generally more robust than the state as a whole from 2005 to 2015; employment grew by 18.2 percent from 2005 to 2015, compared to 8.4 percent for the statewide industry total. Gross State Product (48.0% vs. 32.1%) and Real Gross State Product (36.7% vs. 11.4%) also increased significantly more than the state total, although the number of establishments grew at a slower pace. The Maritime Economy Grew Through the Great Recession The Massachusetts Maritime Economy exhibited fairly consistent employment and real GSP growth throughout the economic cycle. While the Maritime Economy experienced a slight downturn in employment and real GSP in 2009, both indicators returned to an upward trajectory just a year later and this trend continued through 2014 and 2015. The Massachusetts Maritime Economy Is a Significant Economic Driver The Massachusetts Maritime Economy generated a total statewide economic impact of $17.336 billion in output (sales), 135,924 jobs, and$6.839 billion in labor income in 2015. Or put another way, with $9.828 billion in output, 90,482 workers, and$3.924 billion in labor income (direct impacts), maritime related businesses supported an additional $7.508 billion in output, 45,442 jobs, and$2.915 billion in labor income in the Massachusetts economy (indirect and induced impacts). Tourism & Recreation is the Largest Maritime Economy Sector There are six major sectors in the Massachusetts Maritime Economy: Living Resources Marine Construction Offshore Minerals Ship & Boat Building & Repair Tourism & Recreation (Coastal) Transportation Tourism & Recreation is by far the largest sector in terms of employment, although it accounts for a smaller share of total wages and gross state product. Conversely, the Marine Transportation sector, which includes Marine Technology, accounts for only 13 percent of employment, yet 35 percent of total wages and 35 percent of GSP, is primarily due to the high value of the products and services the sector provides. The Living Resources sector accounts for six percent of Maritime Economy employment. Employment in the sector has been declining since 2009, particularly in the fishing industry. Ship & Boat Building & Repair accounts for only small portions of employment and GSP due to the almost total absence of major ship and boat builders in the Commonwealth. (One portion of executive summary--much more in total summary, see PDF

The interaction of syntax and metaphor in gesture: A corpus-experimental approach

This 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

The interaction of syntax and metaphor in gesture: A corpus-experimental approach

This 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

The open letter:Responses and recommendations

Since its publication in July 2020, the Open Letter to the LSA regarding Steven Pinker has evoked many passionate reactions. The letter argued that Pinker’s public statements are inconsistent with the LSA’s anti-racist values, asking to revoke Pinker’s status as LSA Fellow and to remove him from the LSA’s list of Media Experts. Signed by 600+ linguists, the letter has generated vigorous debate within and outside linguistics. This talk pushes the discussion forward by analyzing the responses to the letter using the tools of our profession – pragmatics and discourse analysis – and further suggesting an approach for examining the power of all individuals in the field

General Session and Parasession on Language, Gender, and Sexuality

Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Societ