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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Academic Paper


Title: Variable “subject” presence in Australian Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language
Author: Rachel McKee
Email: click here to access email
Homepage: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/rachel-mckee
Institution: Victoria University of Wellington
Author: Adam C. Schembri
Email: click here to access email
Homepage: http://www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk/team/adam_schembri.html
Institution: La Trobe University
Author: David McKee
Email: click here to access email
Institution: Victoria University of Wellington
Author: Trevor Johnston
Institution: Macquarie University
Linguistic Field: Sociolinguistics; Syntax
Subject Language: Australian Sign Language
New Zealand Sign Language
Abstract: This article reports the findings of parallel studies of variable subject presence in two closely related sign language varieties, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL). The studies expand upon research in American Sign Language (ASL) (Wulf, Dudis, Bayley, & Lucas, 2002) that found subject pronouns with noninflecting verbs to be more frequently unexpressed than expressed. The ASL study reported that null subject use correlates with both social and linguistic factors, the strongest of which is referential congruence with an antecedent in a preceding clause. Findings from the Auslan and NZSL studies also indicated that chains of reference play a stronger role in subject presence than either morphological factors (e.g., verb type), or social factors of age, gender, ethnicity, and language background. Overall results are consistent with the view that this feature of syntactic variation may be better accounted for in terms of information structure than sociolinguistic effects.

CUP at LINGUIST

This article appears in Language Variation and Change Vol. 23, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site .



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