Locative Shift

Abstract

In sign language, one may sometimes re-use a locus that originally referred to a spatial location in order to denote an individual found at that location ("Locative Shift"). We suggest that Locative Shift arises when a covert individual-denoting variable a is merged with a location-denoting locus b to form a complex expression a b , which denotes a situation stage of an individual. We investigate basic properties of Locative Shift in ASL: the phenomenon extends to temporal and modal shift; indexical loci are not usually locative-shifted; Locative Shift may have interpretive consequences, some of which appear to be at-issue; and Locative Shift can occur in highly iconic cases, possibly even without prior establishment of a situation-denoting locus. We further investigate the behavior of the co-opted loci under predicate ellipsis. The individual component of a locative-shifted locus can be bound, and in some cases its locative specification can be disregarded in the elided clause, under conditions that are reminiscent of the behavior of phi-features. In other cases, locative specifications are preserved under ellipsis, possibly even with elided indexical pronouns, whose overt counterparts resist Locative Shift. Some of our main findings can be replicated in LSF, although our data leave many questions open. Finally, we argue that some pointing gestures in English can undergo something like Locative Shift.

Timelines and Temporal Pointing in Chinese Sign Language

“…(Plural indexing with two loci, as in (4)b, is slightly degraded.) 2013) explicitly stated that the analysis could be developed in terms of time-denoting or in terms of situation-denoting variables, and argued in the end for a situation-based analysis due to a separate observation: temporal anaphora shares a crucial property with locative anaphora (as well as modal anaphora) in allowing for 'Locative Shift', a phenomenon whereby a locus associated with a place can be re-used later to refer to an individual that is located at that place (see also Schlenker 2018). Positing that locative, temporal and modal anaphora all involved reference to situations makes it easier to capture the existence of Locative Shift in all three cases: instead of association with a place, association with a situation was taken to drive Locative Shift.…”

Spatial verbs are demonstration verbs

“…Example (7b) looks similar to (7a): the final place of articulation of the verb send aligns with a locus in the signing space that had previously been associated with a location, namely China. However, it appears that this locus is being re-used as a referent locus in the first clause in (7b) by means of a mechanism that Schlenker (2018) refers to as 'locative shift'. 9 As such, the final place of articulation of send can be said to align with a locus which doubles as both a location ('China') and a referent ('the Chinese').…”

“…And since referent loci, once they have been set up, become part of the division of the signing space within the context of that discourse, a spatial verb might as well align with them whenever that is informative. I argue against analyzing instances like the latter as expressions of agreement: under the assumption, following Schlenker (2018), that person loci are a fusion of both a spatial location and a more abstract grammatical element, it can be argued that these loci simply represent locations in the eyes of a spatial verb. Indeed, classifier predicates can also align their initial and final places of articulation with person loci, e.g.…”