Coreference and disjoint reference in the semantics of narrative dance

Abstract

This paper presents an exploratory production study of Bharatanatyam, a figurative(narrative) dance. We investigate the encoding of coreference vs. disjoint reference in thisdance and argue that a formal semantics of narrative dance can be modeled in line withAbusch’s (2013, 2014, 2015) semantics of visual narrative (drawing also on Schlenker’s,2017a, approach to music semantics). A main finding of our investigation is that larger-levelgroup-boundaries (Charnavel, 2016) can be seen as triggers for discontinuity inferences(possibly involving the dynamic shift from one salient entity to another).Keywords: co-reference, disjoint reference, dance semantics, iconic semantics, picturesemantics.

Editorial: Surrogate Languages and the Grammar of Language-Based Music

“…Recent results reveal implications of whistled and instrumental speech surrogates for phonetics (Meyer, 2008), phonology (McPherson, 2018;Seifart et al, 2018), and syntax (Winter, 2014). This linguistic interest in speech surrogacy appears at a time of renewed theoretical interest in the linguistic analysis of music (Katz and Pesetsky, 2011;Schlenker, 2017) and dance (Patel-Grosz et al, 2018;Charnavel, 2019) also in circumstances that do not involve speech surrogacy.…”

Rapid dissonant grunting, or, But why does music sound the way it does?

“…While signals communicate simple meanings (the shake of the rattlesnake's tail means you are in danger), music communicates complexes of meaning, supporting a semantics with a richness different from but rivaling that of language (Schlenker, 2019). This may also be true of dance (Charnavel, 2019;Patel-Grosz, Grosz, Kelkar, & Jensenius, 2018). What could possibly get us from the mechanistically and computationally simple raw material of reward-learning and signaling to the confoundingly meaningful playground of music-as-we-know it?…”

The evolution of music: One trait, many ultimate-level explanations

“…Although signals communicate simple meanings (the shake of the rattlesnake's tail means you are in danger), music communicates complexes of meaning, supporting a semantics with a richness different from but rivaling that of language (Schlenker, 2019). This may also be true of dance (Charnavel, 2019;Patel-Grosz, Grosz, Kelkar, & Jensenius, 2018). What could possibly get us from the mechanistically and computationally simple raw material of reward-learning and signaling to the confoundingly meaningful playground of music as-we-know-it?…”