How languages signal highlights using mismatches as methodology

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr Jenneke van der Wal, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages
• Tuesday 01 March 2016, 13:10-14:00
• The Richard King Room, Darwin College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Duncan Needham.

How do you indicate what is most important in your message? In English you can use intonation: “We’re going to DARWIN College”. Many African languages, however, have fascinating other ways of highlighting the focus of the sentence. For example, Luganda uses a reduces form of the noun:

Yagula e-bitabo ‘He bought books’ Yagula _-bitabo ‘He bought BOOKS ’

But how can we know whether this means ‘surprisingly he bought books’ or ‘books and nothing else’? And is that meaning baked into the grammar, or is it something we infer from context? Come along and learn how other languages signal highlights, using mismatches as methodology.

This talk is part of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Chris Davis' list
• Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars
• Darwin College Research Talks
• Darwin Lectures and Seminars
• ESRC DTP
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• The Richard King Room, Darwin College
• custom

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.