Séminaires

2017-2018

Au premier semestre, le séminaire a lieu le jeudi de 12h45 à 14h, dans le local ERAS 61. Au second semestre, nous nous retrouvons le mardi, toujours de 12h45 à 14h, toujours au local ERAS 61.

Premier semestre

• 5 octobre 2017, Mathieu Avanzi (FNRS/UCL)
  Cartographie de quelques régionalismes de Wallonie et du Nord-Pas-de-Calais
  

  Résumé

  Dans cet exposé, j’exploiterai les résultats d’une enquête en cours (www.francaisdenosregions.com) en vue de porter un regard nouveau sur les particularités linguistiques du français que l’on parle sur la frange nord de la francophonie d’Europe (en Wallonie et dans l’ex-région Nord-Pas-de-Calais). Dans un premier temps, je présenterai la méthode suivie pour récolter, via les réseaux sociaux, les réponses de centaines d’internautes quant à leur usage de certains régionalismes. Je m’arrêterai ensuite sur les méthodes géographiques et statistiques utilisées pour traiter les données, et les cartographier. Je commenterai enfin quelques résultats relatifs au lexique (drache, chicons, savoir de capacité, ducasse, drisse, etc.) et à la prononciation (des consonnes finales, sourciL, ananaS, vingT, aniS, etc. ; timbre et quantité des voyelles : vélo [o/ɔ], piquet [e/ɛ], nue [u/u:], pâte [a/ɑ/a(:)]), et tirerai de ces observations un certain nombre de conclusions quant au rôle des frontières politiques et des frontières dialectales sur le maintien et la disparition des régionalismes du français parlé dans cette partie de la francophonie.

• 7 décembre 2017, Aron Arnold (UCL/Move-IN)
  Discours sur le corps, la cyclicité féminine et l’attractivité dans les études phonétiques

  Résumé

  L’objectif de cette présentation est d’exposer à travers quelques exemples comment les savoirs produits dans les sciences phonétiques sont, malgré leur objectivité et neutralité axiologique postulées, empreintes d’idéologies de genre et contribuent à véhiculer celles-ci. Dans la littérature phonétique, le corps est omniprésent. Quand la production d’un son est décrite, le corps du locuteur est régulièrement représenté par un corps masculin. Par exemple, le conduit vocal humain est régulièrement présenté comme ayant une longueur de 17/17,5 cm. Cette longueur ne correspond cependant pas à une moyenne des conduits vocaux humains, mais à une moyenne de conduits vocaux masculins. Une des conséquences de la confusion entre humain et masculin est que le corps masculin est instauré en norme, et que le corps féminin, présenté comme spécifique, marqué, peut faire l’objet d’un discours pathologisant. Ceci est notamment le cas dans la littérature sur le Syndrome Vocal Prémenstruel, où des phénomènes physiologiques accompagnant la cyclicité féminine sont décrits en tant que « symptômes » d’un « syndrome ». Le troisième volet porte sur les discours biologistes véhiculés par les études sur l'attractivité vocale. Ces études partent régulièrement du postulat que celle-ci a une fonction biologique. Les femmes, motivées par un instinct de reproduction, utiliseraient l’attractivité vocale comme indicateur de fitness (valeur sélective) de partenaires masculins, et les hommes feraient de même pour des partenaires féminins. À travers ce postulat, ces études nient la dimension socialement située de l’attractivité et sous-entendent que sa seule fonction est de trouver un "bon géniteur". En faisant cela, l'hétérosexualité est normalisée et les sexualités non-reproductives sont présentées comme spécifiques, marquées.

Second semestre

• 30 janvier 2018, Sylvain Kahane (Paris 10)
  Trois formats de syntaxe de dépendance pour le français parlé

  Résumé

  Nous présentons trois schémas d’annotation appliqués à un même corpus de français oral : Rhapsodie, Orféo et UD (Universal Dependencies). Les deux premiers sont diffusés et le troisième est en cours de finalisation. Nous discuterons différents choix d’annotation pour :

  - les unités de base (tokenisation)

  - la structure de dépendance (syntaxe de surface vs syntaxe profonde)

  - les relations syntaxiques (étiquetage de la structure)

  Nous mettrons l’accent sur les listes paradigmatiques (coordination et reformulation) et la macrosyntaxe (c’est-à-dire sur les relations au sein d’un énoncé qui ne relèvent pas de la rection).

• 6 février 2018, Giorgos Xydopoulos (University of Patras)
  Offensiveness, detabooing and the English factor in Greek slang (incl. evaluative morphology issues)
  

  Résumé

  In this talk I explore the nature and typology of slang vocabularies in Modern Greek and I consider how we can measure their degree of "offensiveness" either at the lexemic level or at the level of derived forms with evaluative morphemes. I also examine how offensiveness of slang words fluctuates when specific items gradually lose their tabooness (aka. are detabooed) because of social reasons or because of being strongly influenced by English.

• ! lundi ! 19 février 2018, Ted Sanders (Utrecht)
  People’s preference for causal interpretations; The role of connectives, expectations and language users’ preference-for-causality during on-line discourse processing

  Résumé

  Donald entered the room. Hilary left immediately. When people process a discourse like this, they are likely to connect it in a causal way, even though there is no linguistic indication for that: connectives like because and so are missing. Constructing coherence relations between utterances is a crucial part of discourse processing. Readers or listeners who do not understand that two utterances are connected in a Cause-Consequence, Temporal Sequence or Contrastive relation cannot build a coherent representation of the information in the discourse, and therefore they will not understand it. Languages have several devices to help language users in interpreting such relations: Connectives like because, therefore and however, and lexical cue phrases like As a result, The problem is, and On the other hand.

  In this paper, I first provide an overview of recent studies from our lab that have shown how these connectives and cue phrases function as linguistic markers of coherence relations: they inform readers which coherence relation to infer, and thereby they guide processing.

  I will focus on causality. Is it indeed the case that people have this tendency to infer causal relations, as in the Donald and Hilary example? We will discuss the Paradox of Causal Complexity: causal relations are relatively complex, but processed faster and represented well.

   

  Some references

  Canestrelli, A.R., Mak, W.M. & Sanders, T.J.M. (2013). Causal connectives in discourse processing: How differences in subjectivity are reflected in eye-movements. Language and Cognitive processes, 28(9), 1394-1413.

  Koornneef, A.W. & Sanders, T.J.M. (2013). Establishing coherence relations in discourse: the influence of implicit causality and connectives on pronoun resolution. Language and Cognitive processes, 28, 1169-1206.Mak, W.M. & Sanders, T.J.M. (2013). The role of causality in discourse processing: effects on expectation and coherence relations. Language and Cognitive processes, 28(9), 1414-1437.

  Sanders, T.J.M. & W.M Mak (in preparation) Causality in discourse and cognition; the role of connectives, expectations and language users’ preference-for-causality during on-line processing. Manuscript, Universiteit Utrecht.

  Stukker, N., & Sanders, T.J.M. (2012).Subjectivity and prototype structure in causal connectives. A cross-linguistic perspective. Journal of pragmatics,44(2), 169-190.

  van Silfhout, G., Evers-Vermeul, J., & Sanders, T.J.M. (2015). Connectives as processing signals: How students benefit in processing narrative and expository texts. Discourse Processes, 52(1), 47-76.

• 6 mars 2018, Bram Vertommen (U. Antwerpen/KULeuven)
  Coding cognition: A case-study of Dutch-Turkish and Dutch-Moroccan Arabic language users in the Netherlands

  Résumé

  The information we share with other people has many different shapes. Some information describes or recalls experienced events. Other information refers to dreams, imaginations or intentions. Yet other information deals with how we try to make sense of the complex reality around us: e.g. tendencies or generalizations we can induce from recurrent things we experience, and predictions we can make about particular phenomena.

  It is widely acknowledged that experience- or imagination-based reports involve different cognitive operations than generalizations that result from inductive reasoning. Moreover, this difference has been proven to be linguistically relevant, in that it can be signaled by specific linguistic elements.

  During my lecture I will present a heuristic that measures the impact of the conceptual distinction above – between information that contains direct perception (or imagination) based input and information that does not – on language choice in two bilingual varieties spoken by second-generation heritage speakers in the Netherlands (Nortier 1990; Backus 1996; Boumans 1998; Eversteijn 2011). These varieties are characterized by intensive and consistent alternations from a grammatical structure defined by one language (e.g., Dutch) to a grammatical structure defined by the other (e.g., Turkish or Moroccan Arabic), and vice versa. My aim is to demonstrate that, unlike many alternations previously investigated in multilingual studies (Auer 1998), the ones in the data sets under scrutiny do not tend to signal local extralinguistic or interactional aspects (e.g., a change of participant constellation, a change of activity type) Rather, I argue that sentences are in one or the other language because crucially different cognitive operations underlie the information expressed by these sentences.

  Central in the heuristic is the logical distinction between categorical judgments (e.g., Manon is a dancer) and thetic judgments (e.g., (What is happening?) – Manon is dancing on the lawn) (Kuroda 1972). Contrary to the common view that both judgments are difficult to empirically verify (Sasse 1996), I argue that these notions can be operationalized if closely related and syntactically reflected conceptual distinctions are taken into account. First, categorical judgments tend to depict fundamentally different types of states-of-affairs (i.e., general states) than thetic judgments do (i.e., transitory events). Second, I claim that the states-of-affairs contained in categorical and thetic judgments are subject to different subtypes of quantification: categorical judgments depict universally quantified states-of-affairs whereas thetic judgments deal with existentially quantified states-of-affairs. A universally quantified state-of-affairs is construed as being true under well-defined general conditions. In an existentially quantified state-of-affairs one or multiple manifestations of this state-of-affairs are pointed at.  

  The results of the corpus-based quantitative analysis strongly suggest that the formal variation between Dutch and Turkish or Moroccan Arabic in the bilingual data is paired with a conceptual distinction between categorical and thetic judgments (as defined above). This particular pairing of form and meaning also provides evidence for the fact that language choice, and the alternation between two languages, can be considered an integral part of the ‘grammar’ of the bilingual varieties used in the analyzed data sets.

   

  References

  Auer, Peter (ed.). 1998. Code-switching in conversation: language, interaction and identity. London: Routledge.

  Backus, Ad. 1996. Two in one: bilingual speech of Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.

  Boumans, Louis. 1998. The syntax of codeswitching: analysing Moroccan Arabic/Dutch conversations. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.

  Eversteijn, Nadia. 2011. “All at once”: language choice and codeswitching by Turkish-Dutch teenagers. Saarbrücken: Lap Lambert Academic Publishing AG & Co. KG.

  Kuroda, Sige-Yuki. 1972. The categorical and the thetic judgment: evidence from Japanese syntax. Foundations of language 9(2). 153-185.

  Nortier, Jacomine. 1990. Dutch-Moroccan Arabic code switching among Moroccans in the Netherlands. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

  Sasse, Hans-Jürgen. 1996. Theticity. Arbeitspaper Nr. 27 (Neue Folge). Köln: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln.

• 27 mars 2018, Nikos Koutsoukos (FNRS/UCL)
  The how and why of derivational multiple exponence: two cases studies

  Résumé

  While most of the morphological studies focus on “canonical” formations in which form and meaning show a symmetrical (one-to-one) correspondence, cross-linguistically we find numerous examples of multiple exponence (among others, Caballero 2013; Gardani 2015; Harris 2017). Following Harris (2017: 9), “multiple (or extended) exponence is the occurrence of multiple realizations of a single morphosemantic feature, bundle of features, or derivational category within a word”. In English, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary lists the word music-ian-er, with a doubling of the agentive suffix, as an informal/regional variant of the standard form music-ian, and the form geograph-ic-al, with a repetition of the suffix which denotes the relational function, as a respective variant of the form geograph-ic.
  A number of different terms have been coined to describe multiple exponence, among others, “pleonastic morphology”, “redundancy”, “tautology” or “exuberant/extended exponence” (cf. Szymanek 2015). The focus of the present presentation is the description and analysis of two cases of pleonastic derivational morphology, i.e. morphological formations containing derivational elements which contribute information already conveyed by the rest of the structure. For similar cases, the technical term “hypercharacterization” has been proposed by Lehmann (2005: 135).
  Multiple exponence can be further divided into explicit derivational multiple exponence, when pleonastic information is encoded by two distinct (not necessarily the same) affixes, and implicit derivational multiple exponence, when pleonastic information is encoded inherently on the stem and by one affix (cf. Gardani 2015). In this talk, I analyze one case of explicit (see 1a) and one case of implicit derivational multiple exponence (see 1b) from Standard Modern Greek and Modern Greek varieties (cf. also Koutsoukos 2013, 2018):
  (1)
  (a) παρκ-άρ-ιζ(α) [parkariza]V ‘I was parking’ (Standard Modern Greek)
  BASE-VERBALISER-VERBALISER-INFL
  (b) απορ-ίdz(ω) [aporidzo]v ‘to lack’ (Griko, dialect spoken in Southern Italy)
  BASE(V)- VERBALIΖER.INFL
  Pleonastic structures are quite important since they raise questions with respect to morphological variation and change. Hypercharacterization becomes even more challenging since the freedom of selection and combination of the units is - in principle - more limited at the level of derivational and inflectional morphology (Lehmann 2005: 135-136). The aims of this presentation are: (a) to define the phenomenon and to show its differences from similar phenomena (such as reduplication, bipartite morphemes and morphologically conditioned phonological additions), (b) to stress its theoretical importance, and (c) to raise some further questions for future research.

   

  References
  Caballero, G. 2013. Multiple Exponence of Derivational Morphology in Rarámuri (Tarahumara). In T. Crane et al. Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 45-56.
  Gardani, F. 2015. Affix pleonasm. In P. O. Müller, I. Ohnheiser, S. Olsen & F. Rainer (Eds), Word-formation. An international handbook of the languages of Europe, vol. 1. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 537-550.
  Harris, A. 2017. Multiple exponence. USA: Oxford University Press.
  Koutsoukos, N. 2013. A constructionist view of complex interactions between inflection and derivation: the case of SMG and Griko. Ph.D. thesis. University of Patras.
  Koutsoukos, N. 2018. Constructional change on the contentful-procedural gradient. The case of the -idz(o) construction in Griko. In Kristel van Goethem, Muriel Norde, Evie Coussé & Gudrun Vanderbauwhede (Eds.). Category change from a constructional perspective (Constructional approaches to language), 263-287. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
  Lehmann, C. 2005. Pleonasm and hypercharacterisation. Yearbook of morphology 2005: 119-154
  Szymanek. B. 2015. Remarks on tautology in word formation. In Bauer L., Körtvélyessy L. & P. Štekauer (Eds), Semantics of complex words. Dordrecht: Springer, 143-161.

• 17 avril 2018, Jeanne-Marie Debaisieux (Paris 3)
  Faits d'insubordination ou routine discursive: le cas des structures introduites par si et quand en français
  Présentation du séminaire : powerpoint
  Présentation du projet Orfeo : powerpoint

• ! vendredi ! 27 avril 2018, Francis Troyan (Ohio State University)
  Pedagogical Languaging in a French Immersion Classroom: A Functional Linguistic Perspective

  Résumé

  In this ethnographic case study, we traced the ways in which Brahim, the focal teacher, enacted what we refer to as “pedagogical languaging” with students across genre-based literacy events in his first year of teaching. Pedagogical language is conceptualized through the lens of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and the associated theory of genre (Halliday & Mattheissen, 2014; Martin, 2009; Martin & Rose, 2008). Brahim began to develop his pedagogical language knowledge related to SFL and genre during his teacher preparation program and later leveraged it in his teaching. For this reason, his case is of particular interest as it illuminates the features of the language system he developed and appropriated over time and in interaction with students. Data sources included fieldnotes, video observations, interviews, and artifacts from the various literacy events throughout the study. Our initial phase of data analysis consisted of a review of the field notes and video data. We examined the entire corpus to identify the literacy events in which the instructional focus was genre or the register variables of SFL. Results revealed that, in his learning of the language system, Brahim leveraged his existing linguistic resources across a variety of languages to develop his understanding of SFL. His use of the language system to analyze his personal language use became the means through which he assisted students in understanding how to harness the functions of language in written and spoken contexts to communicate effectively and access power. The findings present a comprehensive portrait of how Brahim came to learn SFL and genre through analysis of his personal language use and later appropriated that understanding to teach students to write and speak in a variety of social contexts: personal, academic and professional.

   

  References

  Aalto, E., & Tarnanen, M. (2015). Approaching pedagogical language knowledge through student teachers: Assessment of second language writing. Language and Educaton, 29, 400–415.

  Aquino-Sterling, C. (2016). Responding to the call: Developing and assessing pedagogical Spanish competencies in bilingual teacher education. Bilingual Research Journal, 39, 50–68.

  Bunch, G. C. (2013). Pedagogical language knowledge: Preparing mainstream teachers for English learners in the new standards era. Review of Research in Education, 37, 298–341.

  Derewianka, B., & Jones, P. (2012). Teaching language in context. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

  Halliday, M. A. K. (1993). Towards a language-based theory of learning. Linguistics and Education, 5(2), 93–116.

  Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold.

  Halliday, M. A. K. & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). Milton Park: Routledge.

  Johnson, K. E. (2015). Reclaiming the relevance of L2 teacher education. Modern Language Journal, 99, 515–528.

  Johnson, K. E. (2016). Language teacher education. In G. Hall (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of English language teaching (pp. 121-134). New York: Routledge.

  Martin, J. R. (2009). Genre and language learning: A social semiotic perspective. Linguistics and Education, 20, 10–21.

  Morton, T. (2016). Conceptualizing and investigating teachers’ knowledge for integrating content and language in content-based instruction. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 4, 144–167.

  Shulman, L.S. (1987). Knowledge and Teaching: Foundations of the New Reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1–22.

• 15 mai 2018, Barbara De Cock (UCL) & Ferran Suner Munoz (UCL)
  The influence of linguistic, cognitive and affective factors on metaphor comprehension in the L2

• 5 juin 2018, Annette Gerstenberg (Universität Potsdam)
  Variation et flexibilité des marqueurs discursifs chez les personnes âgées

• 12 juin 2018, Charles Antaki (Loughborough)
  When words fail: finding order in disordered communication

  Résumé

  When the brain is damaged, a speaker may lose command over lexis, grammatical complexity, and pragmatic implication. But the very foundations of language-in-interaction seem to stay intact until near the very end. That is, even the most impaired speaker respects turn-taking, and the onward progress conversation as it sequentially unfolds. In this Conversation Analysis-based talk I shall illustrate this respect for the foundational order in people with various degrees of cognitive impairment. And I shall also show, paradoxically, how their sensitivity to turn-taking may have the unfortunate effect of making their interlocutors over-estimate their other powers, and lead them to take the conversation where it cannot go. My examples come from videos capturing interactions between people with various cognitive impairments and their neuro-typical interlocutors.

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