J Kuhn
Biographic Data
| ID | 52768 |
|---|---|
| NAME | J Kuhn |
| GIVEN NAMES | J |
| FAMILY NAME | Kuhn |
| SIGNATURE | KUHN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institut Jean Nicod |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9644-8560 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Non-signing children's assessment of telicity in sign language
Adults with no knowledge of sign languages can perceive distinctive markers that signal event boundedness (telicity), suggesting that telicity is a cognitively natural semantic feature that can be marked iconically (Strickland et al., 2015). This study asks if non-signing children (5-year-olds) can also link telicity to iconic markers in sign. Experiment 1 attempted three close replications of Strickland et al. (2015) and found only limited succe…
The many meanings of an NPI: The view from artificial language learning
Cross-linguistically, Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are often ambiguous, allowing additional, non--polarity sensitive uses. We document several common patterns of ambiguity and show that in each case, there is a systematic logical relation between the two forms. For example, in English and other languages, two interpretations commonly available to NPIs are each other's logical duals. We explore the hypothesis that these systematic ambiguities ar…
Negative concord in Russian Sign Language
The dynamics of negative concord
Disjunctive discourse referents in French Sign Language
Disjoined noun phrases, like indefinites, may introduce indeterminate discourse referents. Disjunction provides more flexibility in some respects than indefinites, though, as the two disjuncts may bear different morphological features, and a disjunctive discourse referent may have a split antecedent. Sign language, too, has been shown to bear on arguments pertaining to discourse anaphora. Notably, discourse referents may be established at locatio…
Boundaries in space and time: Iconic biases across modalities
Groups versus covers revisited: Structured pluralities and symmetric readings
Boundaries in space and time: Iconic biases across modalities
The idea that the form of a word reflects information about its meaning has its roots in Platonic philosophy, and has been experimentally investigated for concrete, sensory-based properties since the early 20th century. Here, we provide evidence for an abstract property of ‘boundedness’ that introduces a systematic, iconic bias on the phonological expectations of a novel lexicon. We show that this abstract property is general across events and ob…
Gather/numerous as a mass/count opposition
Logical meaning in space: Iconic biases on quantification in sign languages
Typologically, the world's languages vary in how they express universal quantification and negative quantification. In patterns of concord, a single distributive or negative meaning is expressed redundantly on multiple morphological items. Sign languages, too, show semantic variation, but, surprisingly, this variation populates a specific corner of the full typological landscape. When we focus on manual signs, sign languages systematically have d…
Negative concord as a marker of empty discourse referents
Negative concord items are restricted to a narrow set of negative environments: roughly, those that are anti-additive or anti-veridical. These environments share the property that they prevent discourse referents from being introduced.Here, I propose that this is the explanatory property of NC items. NC items are indefinites that flag the fact (in their lexical semantics) that they will fail to introduce a discourse referent. After spelling this …
Pluractionality and distributive numerals
Cross‐linguistically, morphological marking on verbs and nouns can indicate that a plurality of events or individuals is distributed with respect to another plurality. In the verbal domain, these have been called pluractionals ; in the nominal domain, they have been called distributive numerals or dependent indefinites . This paper discusses recent semantic approaches to the cross‐domain parallels between the two phenomena. After establishing som…
On the - oo Suffix of Campbell’s Monkeys
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/ling
Dependent indefinites: The view from sign language
In many languages, an indefinite determiner or numeral may be inflected to indicate that the value of the indefinite DP depends on another DP in the sentence or in context. Most semantic analyses of dependent indefinites formalize a similar insight: dependent indefinites contribute a variation condition: the value of the variable introduced by the indefinite must vary with respect to the value of another variable in the sentence or in context. Th…
Pluractionality, iconicity, and scope in French Sign Language
Many languages across the world are known to have constructions that indicate pluractionality, entailing the existence of a multitude of events. In this paper, we introduce a pattern of pluractionality in sign language, via reduplication of verbal forms. We focus on the semantics of two pluractional markers that appear pervasively in French Sign Language (LSF): exact repetition (/‐rep/) and two‐handed alternating repetition (/‐alt/). We show that…
ASL Loci: Variables or Features?
American Sign Language (ASL) famously disambiguates pronoun antecedents with the use of space. In ASL, both referential and quantificational noun phrases (NPs) can be signed at different locations (‘loci’) in the signing space. Pronouns can later retrieve these NPs by pointing at the same locus. Many analyses of ASL pronouns assume that these spatial loci are the overt realization of formal variables ( Lillo-Martin & Klima 1990 , i.a.), based on …
Formal monkey linguistics: The debate
We explain why general techniques from formal linguistics can and should be applied to the analysis of monkey communication – in the areas of syntax and especially semantics. An informed look at our recent proposals shows that such techniques needn’t rely excessively on categories of human language: syntax and semantics provide versatile formal tools that go beyond the specificities of human linguistics. We argue that “formal monkey linguistics” …
Formal monkey linguistics
We argue that rich data gathered in experimental primatology in the last 40 years can benefit from analytical methods used in contemporary linguistics. Focusing on the syntactic and especially semantic side, we suggest that these methods could help clarify five questions: (i) what morphology and syntax, if any, do monkey calls have? (ii) what is the ‘lexical meaning’ of individual calls? (iii) how are the meanings of individual calls combined? (i…
Logical meaning in space: Iconic biases on quantification in sign languages
Typologically, the world's languages vary in how they express universal quantification and negative quantification. In patterns of concord, a single distributive or negative meaning is expressed redundantly on multiple morphological items. Sign languages, too, show semantic variation, but, surprisingly, this variation populates a specific corner of the full typological landscape. When we focus on manual signs, sign languages systematically have d…
On the - oo Suffix of Campbell’s Monkeys
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/ling
ASL Loci: Variables or Features?
American Sign Language (ASL) famously disambiguates pronoun antecedents with the use of space. In ASL, both referential and quantificational noun phrases (NPs) can be signed at different locations (‘loci’) in the signing space. Pronouns can later retrieve these NPs by pointing at the same locus. Many analyses of ASL pronouns assume that these spatial loci are the overt realization of formal variables ( Lillo-Martin & Klima 1990 , i.a.), based on …
Formal monkey linguistics: The debate
We explain why general techniques from formal linguistics can and should be applied to the analysis of monkey communication – in the areas of syntax and especially semantics. An informed look at our recent proposals shows that such techniques needn’t rely excessively on categories of human language: syntax and semantics provide versatile formal tools that go beyond the specificities of human linguistics. We argue that “formal monkey linguistics” …
Formal monkey linguistics
We argue that rich data gathered in experimental primatology in the last 40 years can benefit from analytical methods used in contemporary linguistics. Focusing on the syntactic and especially semantic side, we suggest that these methods could help clarify five questions: (i) what morphology and syntax, if any, do monkey calls have? (ii) what is the ‘lexical meaning’ of individual calls? (iii) how are the meanings of individual calls combined? (i…
Dependent indefinites: The view from sign language
In many languages, an indefinite determiner or numeral may be inflected to indicate that the value of the indefinite DP depends on another DP in the sentence or in context. Most semantic analyses of dependent indefinites formalize a similar insight: dependent indefinites contribute a variation condition: the value of the variable introduced by the indefinite must vary with respect to the value of another variable in the sentence or in context. Th…
Pluractionality, iconicity, and scope in French Sign Language
Many languages across the world are known to have constructions that indicate pluractionality, entailing the existence of a multitude of events. In this paper, we introduce a pattern of pluractionality in sign language, via reduplication of verbal forms. We focus on the semantics of two pluractional markers that appear pervasively in French Sign Language (LSF): exact repetition (/‐rep/) and two‐handed alternating repetition (/‐alt/). We show that…
On the - oo Suffix of Campbell’s Monkeys
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/ling
Negative concord as a marker of empty discourse referents
Negative concord items are restricted to a narrow set of negative environments: roughly, those that are anti-additive or anti-veridical. These environments share the property that they prevent discourse referents from being introduced.Here, I propose that this is the explanatory property of NC items. NC items are indefinites that flag the fact (in their lexical semantics) that they will fail to introduce a discourse referent. After spelling this …
Pluractionality and distributive numerals
Cross‐linguistically, morphological marking on verbs and nouns can indicate that a plurality of events or individuals is distributed with respect to another plurality. In the verbal domain, these have been called pluractionals ; in the nominal domain, they have been called distributive numerals or dependent indefinites . This paper discusses recent semantic approaches to the cross‐domain parallels between the two phenomena. After establishing som…
Boundaries in space and time: Iconic biases across modalities
The idea that the form of a word reflects information about its meaning has its roots in Platonic philosophy, and has been experimentally investigated for concrete, sensory-based properties since the early 20th century. Here, we provide evidence for an abstract property of ‘boundedness’ that introduces a systematic, iconic bias on the phonological expectations of a novel lexicon. We show that this abstract property is general across events and ob…
Gather/numerous as a mass/count opposition
Logical meaning in space: Iconic biases on quantification in sign languages
Typologically, the world's languages vary in how they express universal quantification and negative quantification. In patterns of concord, a single distributive or negative meaning is expressed redundantly on multiple morphological items. Sign languages, too, show semantic variation, but, surprisingly, this variation populates a specific corner of the full typological landscape. When we focus on manual signs, sign languages systematically have d…
Boundaries in space and time: Iconic biases across modalities
Groups versus covers revisited: Structured pluralities and symmetric readings
The dynamics of negative concord
Disjunctive discourse referents in French Sign Language
Disjoined noun phrases, like indefinites, may introduce indeterminate discourse referents. Disjunction provides more flexibility in some respects than indefinites, though, as the two disjuncts may bear different morphological features, and a disjunctive discourse referent may have a split antecedent. Sign language, too, has been shown to bear on arguments pertaining to discourse anaphora. Notably, discourse referents may be established at locatio…
Negative concord in Russian Sign Language
Non-signing children's assessment of telicity in sign language
Adults with no knowledge of sign languages can perceive distinctive markers that signal event boundedness (telicity), suggesting that telicity is a cognitively natural semantic feature that can be marked iconically (Strickland et al., 2015). This study asks if non-signing children (5-year-olds) can also link telicity to iconic markers in sign. Experiment 1 attempted three close replications of Strickland et al. (2015) and found only limited succe…
The many meanings of an NPI: The view from artificial language learning
Cross-linguistically, Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are often ambiguous, allowing additional, non--polarity sensitive uses. We document several common patterns of ambiguity and show that in each case, there is a systematic logical relation between the two forms. For example, in English and other languages, two interpretations commonly available to NPIs are each other's logical duals. We explore the hypothesis that these systematic ambiguities ar…
Computer Science (17 works) · Linguistics (17 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Mathematics (9 works) · Natural Language Processing Techniques (7 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (6 works) · Artificial Intelligence (5 works)