Seminars

This research is an initial attempt to account for the distribution of three Greek forms—εἰ, ἐὰν, and ἄν—in the New Testament, focusing on the writings attributed to John (Gospel of John, Letters of John, and Revelation). While traditionally described as conditionals, these forms contribute to a range of messages beyond simple “if…then” relations. The study examines the communicative effects to which they contribute, and seeks to identify the distinct semantic values of each signal and how they are used by the writer to guide interpretation within the discourse.

This paper analyzes a moment of speech and gesture repair in Mopan (Mayan). In the example, inflection of the verb ‘go’ is repaired from Irrealis to non-Irrealis, while an accompanying gesture is repaired from a right to a left arm point. On the face of it these two repairs, though simultaneous, seem unrelated. But a look at the surrounding text shows that the simultaneous repairs to grammar and to gesture act as partner components in a single multimodal re-ordering of mental perspective, or ‘frame of reference’, with respect to the landscape being described. In this re-ordering, the speaker switches from invoking a textual ‘map’ within a list of sequential place names to a view of a geographic ‘territory’ in full deictic relation to himself and his body. While deictic locatives have often been excluded from scholarly discussions of spatial frames of reference in language, this multimodal example suggests that such exclusion should be reconsidered.

This Seminar will examine how the “optional” participant functions as a component of the signaling mechanism for two Spanish grammatical systems. The discussion will incorporate insights from Huffman’s From Sound to Signal (2025) and apply them to the semantic domains of Attentionworthiness (Ho-Fernández, forthcoming [2026]) and Control (Ho-Fernández, in progress).

To understand indigenous languages, it is advantageous to investigate linguistic features inductively based on actual usage, in line with the core tenets of Columbia School theory. Ludmila will illustrate this approach with an analysis of the Mapudungun form pu in Las últimas familias i costumbres araucanas (Guevara 1913), showing that, while pu has been traditionally associated with plurality and interiority, its attested distribution is more accurately explained by the meaning UNITY AS A CLASS. Accounting for the distribution of pu will include examining its combined use with other forms that are also associated with plurality: kom, fentren, -ke, and -yngun.

This presentation aims to contribute to the understanding of the Spanish form 'para' by testing the hypothesis of its basic meaning and exploring the contrast with other forms like 'a' and 'por'. Specifically, it will examine how 'para' suggests a location in a determined and oriented area, contributing to messages that conceptualize spaces in both literal and metaphorical senses.

The paper proposes an explanation, in exclusively semantic terms, of the distribution of the infinitive form of the verb when used with wh- words in contemporary English in both independent and subordinate clauses. The explanation proposed is based on the meaning of the infinitive, the meaning of to and the pragmatic implications of the meanings of the wh-words as regards the existence of what they refer to. The method followed shows that linguistic semantics can contribute in a significant way to the explanation of what would appear to be mere distributional or syntactic facts.

This talk will explore the variation in czas przyszły złożony [Compound Future Tense] forms in Polish, describing the traditional hypotheses and the ways they fail to match the existing corpus data. The talk proposes a new hypothesis for the data, based on the Columbia School of Linguistics approach.