The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Thursday, 08 December 2022, 11:00
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
Fellow colloquium

Cornelia Ebert (Goethe University) & Markus Steinbach (University of Goettingen)
»Visual Communication with a closer look at perspective shift«

Abstract
In our presentation, we will briefly introduce the new DFG Priority Programme 2329 ViCom, which investigates the special features and linguistic significance of visual communication. This comprises sign languages as fully developed natural languages which exclusively rely on the visual channel for communication, but also visual means that enhance spoken language such as gestures. It aims at disclosing the specific characteristics of the visual modality as a communication channel and its interaction with other channels (especially the auditory channel) to develop a comprehensive theoretical linguistic model of human communication and its cognitive foundations.

We will then focus on one specific phenomenon that is particularly prevalent in the visual domain: perspective taking. In spoken and signed languages, manual and non-manual gestural demonstrations are a powerful means used, among other things, to reproduce linguistic and non-linguistic actions of other people and to integrate them into one's own utterance. In doing so, gestural demonstrations can trigger a context or perspective shift that allows the speaker or signer to take the perspective of the person whose actions are being reproduced or demonstrated. In this talk, we will look at recent analyses of gestural demonstrations in both linguistic modalities. Crucially, by way of combining demonstration with speech or sign language and also within demonstration alone, it is possible to express multiple perspectives simultaneously in the same utterance.

The speakers
Cornelia Ebert is a professor of linguistics/semantics at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2019. She received her Ph.D. in lingusitics at Potsdam University in 2006. Her thesis was titled »Quantificational topics. A scopal treatment of exceptional wide scope phenomena«. Following this she was a lecturer and a researcher at Osnabrück University, Stuttgart University and the Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft in Berlin. Since 2021 she carries out a British-German cooperative research project entitled »Interactions between Dynamic Effects and Alternative-Based Inferences in the Study of Meaning« (IDEALISM). And since 2022 she is one of the coordinators of the DFG Priority Programme 2329 Visual Communication. Theoretical, Empirical, and Applied Perspectives (ViCom), an interdisciplinary programme that comprises 19 projects working on different aspects of the visual components of language and communication. In 2020-24 she is a Goethe Fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.

Markus Steinbach is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Goettingen. He received his Ph.D. from Humboldt University of Berlin with a thesis on »Middle Voice - A Comparative Study of the Syntax-Semantics Interface of German« in 1998. In 2009, he completed his habilitation on »Schnittstellen-Phänomene. Empirical Studies on German and German Sign Language« at the University of Mainz. His research is concerned with the influence of language modality (spoken or sign languages) on language structure, development, and processing. He focuses on the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics, experimental linguistics and sign language linguistics.

Participation and registration
For participation on site, please register in advance (contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de).