Speaker: Mikael Vinka (Umeå)

Title: The Japanese Long Distance Reflexive 'zibun', West African Logophoric pronouns and the South Saami pronoun 'satne': Similar but not the same

Abstract:

In this talk I will be concerned with so-called long distance binding of the Japanese reflexive 'zibun'. LD binding of 'zibun' has been studied in depth over the years, perhaps most prominently by Susumu Kuno. The syntactic distribution of LD 'zibun' and that of West African logophoric pronouns intersect in interesting ways. However, closer scrutiny has revealed that distributional patterns diverge in whether or not the relevant element is contained in a complement clause or not. Unlike West African logophoric pronouns, 'zibun' is licit in adjunct clauses, provided that conditions on Point-of-View or perspective, such Awareness and/or Empathy are satisfied. The South Saami long distance pronoun is subject to specific aspects of Point-of-View. Interestingly, in standard discourse, the distribution of the pronoun closely matches West African logophoric pronouns; however, in contexts of free indirect discourse, a 'zibun'-style pattern emerges. I will discuss some overall conclusions that can be drawn from the cross-linguistic mix of distributional similarities and differences, as well as raise some question.
 

Speaker: Alexandre Ryzhkov-Shukumine (Helsinki)

Title: Epistemic authority in Okinawan

Abstract:

All finite verbs in the Shuri dialect of Okinawan, an endangered Japonic language, end with an obligatory mood suffix (table 1).

Table 1: Mood markers in present and past tenses

Moods in Okinawan can be broadly classified into a declarative sphere, an interrogative sphere and an imperative sphere, with at least three moods in each. While the functions of the interrogative and imperative moods are relatively easy to describe with established typological concepts, the three declarative moods seem to exhibit a rare organisation that can be called epistemic authority. A similar phenomenon has previously been described for some languages of South America (Landaburu 2007, Bergqvist 2016, Grzech 2017).

In essence, Okinawan epistemic authority marks three possibilities:

1. speaker expects addressee to agree, on the speaker’s authority
2. speaker expects addressee to find evidence and then agree, on the addressee’s authority
3. speaker does not necessarily expect addressee to agree.

Absent from Japanese, the dominant language on Okinawa today, this fascinating system is rapidly eroding. We will explore its workings hands-on with the help of a collection of natural dialogues (National Language Research Institute 1982–1987), classifying all attestations according to their function in discourse. Time permitting, we can discuss alternative explanations for the data and the place of epistemic authority in grammatical typology.

References

Bergqvist, Henrik 2016. Complex epistemic perspective in Kogi (Arwako) // International Journal of American Linguistics 82(1), 1–34.

Grzech, Karolina 2017. “Autoridad epistémica y atenuación en Tena Kichwa: análisis de enclítico =cha basado en el corpus”. Normas 7(2), 48–71.

Landaburu, Jon 2007. “La modalisation du savoir en langue andoke (Amazonie colombienne)”. In: Z. Guentchéva & J. Landaburu (eds), Lʼénonciationmédiatisée II. Peeters.

National Language Research Institute = 国立国語研究所 1982–1987『方言談話資料（6～10）』国立国語研究所.