Actualité scientifique |

Conférences du Professeur Felix Ameka

Felix Ameka, Professeur à l'Université de Leyde, invité par Hilary Chappell (EHESS-CRLAO), sera en visite au CRLAO du 30 mai au 4 juin 2022.

Figure de proue de la typologie sémantique, de la documentation linguistique et de l’interaction socioculturelle, Felix Ameka, qui a été membre de l’Institut Max Planck de Nimègue (1998-2017), vient d’être nommé à la nouvelle Chair of Global Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World de l’Université de Leyde, où il est professeur de linguistique depuis plus de 30 ans.

Felix Ameka, Professor at the University of Leiden, will be visiting EHESS from May 30 to June 4, 2022 under the Visiting Professors Program (« short invitations »).

A leading figure in semantic typology, linguistic documentation, and socio-cultural interaction, Felix Ameka, who has been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen (1998-2017), has just been appointed to the new Chair of Global Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Diversity in the World at Leiden University, where he has been a professor of linguistics for over 30 years.


Ses conférences à l'EHESS

√ Contact semantics and diversity: On verb meanings across dialects où il analysera de façon critique certains points de vue sur la polysémie et la co-lexification
Mercredi 1er juin 2022 à partir de 16h, BS1_28, au 54 bd Raspail; 75006 Paris

√ une Master Class pour les doctorants sur le cadre théorique du Natural Semantic Metalanguage et sa mise en œuvre en ce qui concerne les artefacts culturels dans les langues gbe du Ghana et sa région, l’éwé surtout.
Vendredi 3 juin 2022, de 10h à 12h
Salle L0.04, Inalco, Maison de la Recherche, 2, rue de Lille, 75007, Paris
 

Abstracts

Contact semantics and dialect polysemies: the dynamics of verb semantics in Ewe varieties
Felix K. Ameka, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

The goal of this presentation is to investigate the dynamics of verb semantics in varieties of Ewe (Gbe, Kwa, Niger-Congo) language of West Africa focusing on the diversity of verb meanings across dialects. Semantic features of dialect variants such as synonymy, general vs. specific readings; and differences in figurative extensions have been touched upon in the semantic rather than the dialectology literature. In this talk I discuss variations in polysemic structure of three auto-antonymous verbs in Ewe: dró ‘put up/down from head’, klã́ ‘attach/detach, separate’ and tú ‘close/untie’. I show that while the semantic variant of the lexical units is shared across the dialects, some readings and extensions are specific to some varieties. For instance, in the Inland dialects the verb tú has a reading of ‘migrate, move house’ which is absent in the other dialects. I argue that this difference in the dialects is due to different histories of contact with Akan which has a lexical unit tú with similar semantic structure. Moreover the verb klã́ ‘attach/detach, separate’ is extended to an illocutionary meaning of ‘give notice’ in some dialects and in other dialects the form has been modified to krá ‘give notice’ due to contact with Akan which has such a form. Contact-induced semantic change thus triggers diversification of form and meaning invarieties.
In the discussion assumptions and practices in semantic analysis such as multiple meanings and interpretations of forms, auto-antonymy, colexification and polysemy will be interrogated based on the data presented. The challenge of translation equivalents especially in the crosslinguistic study of meaning will be raised. I suggest that parallel to dialect syntactic studies, more attention should be paid to dialect semantics and especially of diversification in semantic structures.
 

­­­­­­­­­­Exploring the semantics and cultural logic of artefacts
Felix K. Ameka, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

“[T]he essence of linguistics is the quest for meaning” (Whorf 1956). However progress in this quest has been impeded by an Anglo-centric bias in the conceptualisation of meaning. Furthermore, the use of English as the metalanguage for describing various “object languages” has led to a widespread assumption that the meaning of a linguistic sign is its translation into English. Analysts then rely on these equivalents for further analyses. In this masterclass, I first explore with the participants the construal of meaning in everyday discourse in various languages represented in the group. I hope to demonstrate the variation in the everyday conceptualisation of meaning across languages and how these differ from the dominant Anglo-American conceptualisation of the “meaning” of “meaning” that is present in academic semantics discourse.
I then examine the conceptual semantics and the cultural logic of words for some artefacts, some of which are translation resistant. We will investigate the significance of words in various languages translated as ‘headpad’. We will also discuss the content of the Dutch cultural keyword kaasschaaf ‘cheese slicer’ and some African cooking utensils. As ‘fire’ is critical for cooking, we will also briefly consider variation among temperature expressions and their extensions across languages focusing on Kwa languages of West Africa. We will situate the explorations in the frame of discovery procedures, desiderata for semantic representation and explanation of the kinds of words discussed. We will draw on “semantics of understanding” (Fillmore 1989) and the natural semantic metalanguage (e.g. Wierzbicka 2021, Goddard 2018) approaches to semantic analysis.
 

References

Fillmore, Charles J. 1989. Frames and the semantics of understanding. Quaderni di semantica 6(2). 222-254.

Goddard, Cliff. 2018. Ten Lectures on Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Exploring language, thought and culture using simple, translatable words. Leiden: Brill

Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, thought, and reality.(Edited by John B. Carroll.). Cambridge Mass. MIT Press

Wierzbicka, Anna. 2021. “Semantic Primitives”, fifty years later. Russian Journal of Linguistics 25(2). 317-342.


Pour toute information supplémentaire, merci de contacter Hilary Chappell (hilary.chappellatehess.fr)

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