workshop 2

Interfaces and Multimodality

The Young Africanists Research Network (YARN) invites submissions for the workshop Interfaces and Multimodality.As linguists, we tend to abstract the grammar of language into different levels of representations or grammatical modules, with many of us specializing in a particular aspect of grammar (such as phonology or semantics, e.g.). However, language is a complex system, such that it is not always clear where the boundary of one module ends and the next begins, and in what way these systems may overlap or interact. Interfaces have been defined by Ramchand & Reiss (2007) as the “informational connections and communication among putative modules within the grammar”. These connections occur between the grammatical modules, between cognition, sociology and psychology, as well as between whole languages. Thus, the study of linguistics interfaces can provide insights into the connection between two modules of language or into the inner-workings of one or both of the modules in question (Steedman 2005). The primary goal of this workshop is to better understand the boundaries and interactions between these varying aspects of language.

From this perspective, multimodality can also be understood as an interface: meaning is not only contributed through the auditory channel (speech) but also through the visual channel (gesture, facial expressions, etc.). Linguistic information is distributed across speech and gesture rather than the vocal-auditory channel alone (McNeil 1992; Kendon 2004). Multimodality therefore extends the idea of interface beyond grammatical modules to the connection of verbal and visual cues of communication.

African languages offer a rich empirical basis for linguistic theory. Features such as tone-morphology, lexical and grammatical tonal systems, noun class systems, code-mixing, ideophony, often require linguists to consider other modules of language during the collection and analysis of their data. While some languages in Africa are spoken by millions of speakers and are well documented, even these larger languages remain underanalyzed, and many languages with fewer speakers are un(der)documented. Current theories will need adjusting as these languages are better documented and analyzed, especially concerning the features inherently belonging to multiple domains that are common to many African languages listed above.

This workshop intends to provide a venue for discussion of how African languages can contribute to the understanding of the interaction and overlap of varying linguistic domains. Multimodality, the interface between speech and gesture, in particular serves to provide insights into how we understand grammar, especially concerning linearization, lexical specifications, as well as the role of signs and gestures in information structure. Empirical research on African languages not only provide descriptive insights into these (understudied) languages, but also to correct and enrich theoretical generalizations (Newman, 2010). A central objective of the workshop is to highlight how new empirical data from African languages can refine our existing understanding of the interfaces of language.

Themes of interest include all work on interfaces and multimodality, including, but not limited to:

Phonology-morphology
Phonology-syntax
Morphology-syntax
Morphology-semantics
Syntax-semantics
Syntax-pragmatics
Semantics-pragmatics
Multimodality
Gesture-speech
Gesture-sign

We especially encourage empirically-based investigations regardless of the chosen methodology (corpus, fieldwork, experiments, etc.). We also welcome other interdisciplinary approaches and work on multilingualism and psycholinguistics, insofar as they shed light on linguistic interfaces or multimodality.This workshop seeks to create a supportive and collaborative environment in which young researchers can share ongoing work, exchange methodological perspectives, and learn from approaches across subfields. As such, we encourage submissions from early-career researchers, including Master students, PhD candidates, and early postdoctoral scholars working on African languages.

References

Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as utterance. Cambridge University Press.

McNeill, D. (1992). Hand and mind: What gestures reveal about thought. University of Chicago Press.

Newman, J. (2010). Balancing acts: Empirical pursuits in cognitive linguistics. Quantitative methods in cognitive semantics: Corpus-driven approaches, 46, 79.

Ramchand, G., & Reiss, C. (2007). The Oxford handbook of linguistic interfaces. Oxford University Press.

Steedman, M. (2005). Interfaces and the grammar. In Proceedings of the 24th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (Vol. 24, p. 19). Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

FAQ

IMPRESSUM

For questions concerning the organization and program:

Organizer Email

wocal2027@univie.ac.at

Address

University of Vienna
Department of African Studies
Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien