Perspective Shift Across Modalities

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emar Maier ◽  
Markus Steinbach
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Role Shift ◽  
Direct Quotation

Languages offer various ways to present what someone said, thought, imagined, felt, and so on from their perspective. The prototypical example of a perspective-shifting device is direct quotation. In this review we define perspective shift in terms of indexical shift: A direct quotation like “Selena said, ‘Oh, I don't know.’” involves perspective shift because the first-person indexical ‘I’ refers to Selena, not to the actual speaker. We then discuss a variety of noncanonical modality-specific perspective-shifting devices: role shift in signed language, quotatives in spoken language, free indirect discourse in written language, and point-of-view shift in visual language. We show that these devices permit complex mixed forms of perspective shift which may involve nonlinguistic gestural as well as visual components. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 8 is January 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Point of view in British Sign Language and spoken English narrative discourse: the example of “The Tortoise and the Hare”

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Earis ◽  
Kearsy Cormier
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Indirect Discourse ◽  
British Sign Language ◽  
Signed Language ◽  
Role Shift ◽  
British Sign

AbstractThis paper discusses how point of view (POV) is expressed in British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English narrative discourse. Spoken languages can mark changes in POV using strategies such as direct/indirect discourse, whereas signed languages can mark changes in POV in a unique way using “role shift”. Role shift is where the signer “becomes” a referent by taking on attributes of that referent, e.g. facial expression. In this study, two native BSL users and two native British English speakers were asked to tell the story “The Tortoise and the Hare”. The data were then compared to see how point of view is expressed and maintained in both languages. The results indicated that the spoken English users preferred the narrator's perspective, whereas the BSL users preferred a character's perspective. This suggests that spoken and signed language users may structure stories in different ways. However, some co-speech gestures and facial expressions used in the spoken English stories to denote characters' thoughts and feelings bear resemblance to the hand movements and facial expressions used by the BSL storytellers. This suggests that while approaches to storytelling may differ, both languages share some gestural resources which manifest themselves in different ways across different modalities.

scholarly journals The Respiratory Foundations of Spoken Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Fuchs ◽  
Amélie Rochet-Capellan
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Breathing Control ◽  
Physical Constraints ◽  
Situational Contexts ◽  
Respiratory Behavior ◽  
Popular View ◽  
Future Work

Why is breathing relevant in linguistics? In this review, we approach this question from different perspectives. The most popular view is that breathing adapts to speech because respiratory behavior has astonishing flexibility. We review research that shows that breathing pauses occur mostly at meaningful places, that breathing adapts to cognitive load during speech perception, and that breathing adapts to communicative needs in dialogue. However, speech may also adapt to breathing (e.g., the larynx can compensate for air loss, breathing can partially affect f0 declination). Enhanced breathing control may have played a role in vocalization and language evolution. These views are not mutually exclusive but, rather, reveal that speech production and breathing have an interwoven relationship that depends on communicative and physical constraints. We suggest that breathing should become an important topic for different linguistic areas and that future work should investigate the interaction between breathing and speech in different situational contexts. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

ENGLISH LEARNERS’ LANGUAGE USED FOR CHATTING: A SYNTACTIC AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Nanik Retnowati
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Valuable Contribution ◽  
The Real

Describing language is one of the most important tasks in Linguistics. Language description may give valuable contribution to language teaching practice. This paper is concerning with describing learners’ language used for chatting. Chatting is a spoken language which is written. As a natural language it may have its own structure which can be described. From the point of view of syntax, spoken language usually has its own set of grammar patterns which sometimes may be quite different from that in written language. Language used for chatting would likely provide important information moreover if it is done by language learners who are in the process of trying to make sense of the series of knowledge both on language elements and their usage in the real communication. Chatting task with foreigners was applied to the early semester of English learners. Using Syntactical and Conversation Analysis, this study found the characteristics of the natural language used for chatting and some strategies used by the participants to survive the communication. The description gives an important clue to the benefits of chatting activities for the English learners.

Birdsong Learning and Culture: Analogies with Human Spoken Language

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Hyland Bruno ◽  
Erich D. Jarvis ◽  
Mark Liberman ◽  
Ofer Tchernichovski
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Transmission ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Vocal Learning ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Genetic Constraints ◽  
As Species ◽  
Species Specific

Unlike many species, song learning birds and humans have independently evolved the ability to communicate via learned vocalizations. Both birdsong and spoken language are culturally transmitted across generations, within species-specific constraints that leave room for considerable variation. We review the commonalities and differences between vocal learning bird species and humans, across behavioral, developmental, neuroanatomical, physiological, and genetic levels. We propose that cultural transmission of vocal repertoires is a natural consequence of the evolution of vocal learning and that at least some species-specific universals, as well as species differences in cultural transmission, are due to differences in vocal learning phenotypes, which are shaped by genetic constraints. We suggest that it is the balance between these constraints and features of the social environment that allows cultural learning to propagate and describe new opportunities for exploring meaningful comparisons of birdsong and human vocal culture that focus on the ontogeny of vocal interactivity. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Linguistics, Volume 7 is January 14, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

scholarly journals A Picture is Worth More Words Over Time: Multimodality and Narrative Structure Across Eight Decades of American Superhero Comics

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Cohn ◽  
Ryan Taylor ◽  
Kaitlin Pederson
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Multimodal Interactions ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThe visual narratives of comics involve complex multimodal interactions between written language and the visual language of images, where one or the other may guide the meaning and/or narrative structure. We investigated this interaction in a corpus analysis across eight decades of American superhero comics (1940–2010s). No change across publication date was found for multimodal interactions that weighted meaning towards text or across both text and images, where narrative structures were present across images. However, we found an increase over time of narrative sequences with meaning weighted to the visuals, and an increase of sequences without text at all. These changes coincided with an overall reduction in the number of words per panel, a shift towards panel framing with single characters and close-ups rather than whole scenes, and an increase in shifts between temporal states between panels. These findings suggest that storytelling has shifted towards investing more information in the images, along with an increasing complexity and maturity of the visual narrative structures. This has shifted American comics from being textual stories with illustrations to being visual narratives that use text.

scholarly journals USING SYNTACTIC UNITS IN THE LANGUAGE OF FILM ACTORS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mustafayev Fizuli Najmaddin
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Large Format ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Oral Form ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extract Information

The article is devoted to the use of syntactic units in the language of film actors. The article draws attention to various ideas and considerations regarding the use of syntactic units in all areas of the cinematic language. The reader is presented about themes, genres, style problems in Azerbaijani cinema, screen artists, large-format publishing, a variety of styles in the director’s work, various problems of cinema and theater poetry, the history of television poetry and style. The differences in some cases between the written language and its oral form, innovation, accent, facial expressions and gestures of the actors by the setting of the pavilion and the fact that the dramatic point of view of the film is conveyed to the reader only by word. Since thought is known in dialogical speech, the narrative of some members of a sentence, complex sentences requiring details are omitted. The film pavilion, structure, actor’s movements, images form the basis of the article. Readers can extract information from all this, especially since directors and actors choose syntactic units that are more suitable for spoken language. The article also provides tips from individual films and presents ideas for any explanation.

scholarly journals Lithuanian and French Sounds: Comparative Analysis of Articulatory Features

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-196
Author(s):  
Loïc Boizou ◽  
Asta Kazlauskienė
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Simple Relation ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
International Phonetic Alphabet ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Articulatory Phonetics ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Qualitative Characteristics

SummaryThe aim of this article is to analyze the differences between Lithuanian and French sounds and to provide a general outlook of the Lithuanian articulatory phonetics mainly intended for French speakers. Such a comparative analysis is relevant because (a) there is no consistent equivalent between written and spoken language, even in Lithuanian, which has a relatively young written language, (b) the international phonetic alphabet does not always accurately reflect differences in pronunciation, (c) the contrastive perspective helps learners to focus on differences that could be unnoticed. Besides the articulatory aspects, the orthographic issues where the spoken form cannot be directly deduced from the written form by a simple relation from grapheme to sound but depends on the graphemic context (mainly related to some assimilation processes) are given a special attention. The questions that remain controversial between Lithuanian phoneticians (such as the retroflex status of the phonetic counterparts of <š> and <ž>) are also mentioned. The comparative analysis shows that the two systems exhibit significant differences: most sounds are not shared. Nevertheless, differences are often slight, so that it is more an issue of orthoepics. Attention should be paid to the differences in the duration and qualitative characteristics of long and short vowels and the relation of graphemes <a, e, o, i> to sounds. From the point of view of consonants, [], [r, rj], [x, ] are problematic, their pronunciation must be learned separately. The pronunciation of palatalized consonants as simple consonants, and not as clusters with [j] as the second element, is also challenging for French speakers.

On Using Written Language Training Data for Spoken Language Modeling

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Schwartz ◽  
L. Nguyen ◽  
F. Kubala ◽  
G. CHou ◽  
G. Zavaliagkos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Language ◽  
Language Modeling ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Language Training

Sinitic in a Global Perspective

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Francis Kornicki
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
The Common

This chapter focuses on the language rupture in East Asia, that is to say, the loss of the common written language known as literary Chinese or Sinitic. The gradual replacement of the cosmopolitan language Sinitic by the written vernaculars was a process similar in some ways to the replacement of Latin and Sanskrit by the European and South Asian vernaculars, as argued by Sheldon Pollock. However, Sinitic was not a spoken language, so the oral dimension of vernacularization cannot be ignored. Charles Ferguson’s notion of diglossia has been much discussed, but the problem in the context of East Asia is that the only spoken languages were the vernaculars and that Sinitic was capable of being read in any dialect of Chinese as well as in the vernaculars used in neighbouring societies.

scholarly journals The Language of Vision*

Perception ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 030100662199149
Author(s):  
Patrick Cavanagh
Keyword(s):  
Visual System ◽  
Language Planning ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Visual Language ◽  
Visual Scene ◽  
Visual Environment ◽  
Acquisition Process ◽  
Visual Processes ◽  
First Pass

The descriptions of surfaces, objects, and events computed by visual processes are not solely for consumption in the visual system but are meant to be passed on to other brain centers. Clearly, the description of the visual scene cannot be sent in its entirety, like a picture or movie, to other centers, as that would require that each of them have their own visual system to decode the description. Some very compressed, annotated, or labeled version must be constructed that can be passed on in a format that other centers—memory, language, planning—can understand. If this is a “visual language,” what is its grammar? In a first pass, we see, among other things, differences in processing of visual “nouns,” visual “verbs,” and visual “prepositions.” Then we look at recursion and errors of visual grammar. Finally, the possibility of a visual language also raises the question of the acquisition of its grammar from the visual environment and the chance that this acquisition process was borrowed and adapted for spoken language.

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