16h00
salle 159 et Zoom: https://univ-paris8.zoom.us/j/7705173529
ICONIC SHADOWS
Donna Jo Napoli (Swarthmore)
(in English, with English-LSF interpretation provided)
Iconic shadows in sign languages are mouth articulations that occur simultaneously with manual articulations, repeating depictive spatiotemporal information, and behaving in a predictable, non-polysemous way. They are optional and enhance the information delivered by the manual articulators, rendering that information perceptually more salient.
We are not aware of analogues to iconic shadows in spoken languages, and current evidence suggests that the articulatory and temporal properties of iconic shadows arise from modality-specific affordances of the visual-gestural modality. Our analysis suggests that iconic shadows constitute a previously under-identified phenomenon at the interface of linguistic and gradient signaling. Iconic shadows add support for the theory of embodied cognition of a sort that requires looking at visual information.
