The combination of phrase-structure syntax and model-theoretic semantics have led to a powerful, general model of language. However, previous research has not sufficiently explained how syntactic structure and structural differences across languages relate to mathematical operations on meaning: some constraints observed in the language implementation of these operations are a consequence of the language form, while others can come from human reasoning processes, beyond language. This project investigates this domain from the perspective of partitives and the formal subset relation. Nominal partitives as 'two of the beans' explicitly express the subset relation in English. Other Romance and Germanic languages have similar, but not identical forms: e.g. in German genitive case can be used. Pseudo-partitives like 'two cups of beans' share many of the lexical items of partitives, so if structure and meaning are projected from lexical items, both need to be considered in parallel. Partitives are interestingly more constrained than the subset relation. For example, they express only proper partitivity: 'Two of her parents' is odd. We explore the boundaries between linguistic competence and other cognitive systems, with one leading question: what is the source of these constraints? We adopt the methodology of syntax and semantics, with an experimental component. The issue is addressed pursuing three goals: i) on the basis of syntactic cross-linguistic variation, we build a syntax/semantics for partitives; ii) we establish which constraints come about from the format and from standard interpretation rules; iii) we specify pragmatic or other general cognitive limitations in the processing of the subset operation. The project contributes to integrate syntax and semantics with the cognitive sciences. Furthermore, it requires the acquisition of new skills by the researcher in formal and experimental semantics and pragmatics, fields of excellence of the host institution.

The SPAGAD project will investigate speech acts, the basic linguistic units with communicative function. It is made possible by recent breakthroughs in our understanding of speech acts as devices to change the world by establishing new commitments and constrain the future development of a conversation. The project will propose a formal model for speech acts. In the light of this model it will investigate the role of speech acts in three areas. It will elucidate their role in grammar in typologically diverse languages: how they are expressed by morphological, syntactic and prosodic means, how expressions like adverbials and clause-embedding verbs can operate on them, and how they can be integrated in a formal model of the syntax/semantics interface. It will investigate speech acts in discourse: how they are used to enrich the common ground, how they can be employed to negotiate conflicts in the development of conversation, how questions, contrastive topics and discourse particles are devices that restrict the development a discourse can take, and how the choice of one speech act out of set of alternatives creates pragmatic effects like bias in questions or politeness in commands. And it will explore speech acts in communication: What are the societal norms of different speech acts, like the prohibition against asserting falsehoods, which strategies can increase or decrease the commitments of speakers, how does the context influence the type of commitments, how do social groups within one language community differ, what are the difference across language communities, how are the societal norms that come with speech acts acquired? The SPAGAD project will have a major impact on linguistic semantics and pragmatics; it will reconceive them by a model theory based on commitments, rather than truth. Due to the pivotal role of speech acts, it will offer new perspectives for syntax, discourse studies, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and the philosophy of language.

Why does humanitarianism take the form of an archipelago, an aggregation of “single issues,” selective, resistant to generalization, and even at times inconsistent? In order to answer this question, which is crucial to, but has been sidelined in histories of humanitarianism, the project develops a novel approach. This approach homes in on the rupture of humanitarian morality with quotidian moral norms and values. For this purpose, the project investigates the history of a particular moral norm, the imperative of saving lives from shipwreck, that emerged in the ambit of volunteer lifeboat movements from the 1820s onward. Such movements had emerged first in Britain and the Netherlands, then elsewhere, most prominently France and Germany. The imperative in question took the form of a novel unconditional norm that demanded taking counterintuitive risks in order to save lives. Previously, assistance to the shipwrecked had been situational. Moral detachment from suffering had been recognized as a value. Existential risk had constituted an exemption from lifesaving duty. Lifeboat movements overturned this quotidian moral rationale. This shift was neither determined by economic incentives nor by technological or legal innovation. The saving of lives from shipwreck thus provides an ideal laboratory, with a rich and varied source base, for understanding humanitarian-moral innovation on its own terms. The intervention of the project is twofold. On the plane of historical knowledge, it provides a model for the deep contextual analysis of moral culture in terms of the emergence, sustenance, representation, and insular distinctness of humanitarian imperatives. On the plane of theoretical knowledge, the project develops innovative answers to questions of moral theory, especially about the generality of norms and the conflicted relation of humanitarianism and everyday morality. The project develops novel methodological tools for combining moral theorizing and historical research.

The goal of this project is to investigate how multilinguals acquire acoustic and articulatory representations of their non-dominant language. Recent research has shown that linguistic representation is distributed in the motor cortex, where it serves as acquired speech motor plans, and in the auditory cortex, where it serves as acquired acoustic-perceptual categories. In order to properly acquire a language, learners must develop a set of acoustic and articulatory representation. Acoustic and articulatory representations play a large role in speech comprehension and speech production, as well as phonological knowledge specific to the acquired languages. Research into multilingual acquisition has indicated that both early and late bilingual learners can form novel acoustic and articualtory categories in their internalized language structure. However, multilinguals have been shown to acquire representations that do not mirror the target language or the learner's L1 and it is still unclear how their representations develop. My project examines the multilingual acquisition of German and Upper and Lower Sorbian at different stages of fluency to assess how acoustic and articulatory representation develops. To do this, I am examining speech production using acoustic and ultrasound techniques. The aim of each of my studies is to investigate multilinguals at various stages of language acquisition to determine how similar sounds in each language emerge with distinct acoustic and articulatory representations. I am also using bio-mechanical models to simulate the movement of the tongue and jaw during speech. Bio-mechanical models give a unique interdisciplinary vantage point for the findings in this study and will provide robust insight into the articulatory representation that speakers develop during the language acquisition process. The results of this study has theoretical implications for cognitive and articulatory models of speech, and biomechanics.

Oppressive speech is speech that harms and disempowers its targets. It also seeks to influence third parties, changing their behaviour and attitudes towards targets, legitimating discrimination, creating implicit bias, and inciting to hatred and violence. The purpose is ultimately to change society: it’s not just doing unjust things with words, but it’s creating and maintaining unjust structures of social power. Oppressive speech is thus one of the most urgent social and political issues of our time. There is currently no simple, unifying framework that models oppressive speech or explains its many effects. The proposed research project seeks to address this gap through a multidisciplinary approach that combines the complementary strengths of game theory, and theories of social norms and social injustice. The core idea is that conversational games are embedded within a larger social game such that oppressive conversational games focus on the acquisition of power in the larger social game to achieve later payoffs. I hypothesise that game theory can be used to explain fundamental phenomena of interest in the context of oppressive speech: (i) the effects of oppressive speech within a conversation; (ii) the shifting of conversational and social norms that govern the conversational and social games; (iii) the motivation of some people to oppress others through speech and the role that speech plays in maintaining social injustice. The research objectives are three interlinked parts of a new model of oppressive speech: RO1 Deliver an initial model of oppressive speech as a conversational game that alters power. RO2 Deliver an extension of the model from RO1 that explains the harmful social effects on targets, by explaining how oppressive speech sets up unjust social norms. RO3 Deliver a model extending RO1 and RO2 that explains how unjust social structures affect speech, what motivates agents in a group to oppressive acts, and what is needed to change harmful norms.