ViCom was delighted to organize the special session “Beyond Descriptive Meaning: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Demonstrations and Depictions (LingDem)” as part of the 30th edition of “Sinn und Bedeutung” (SuB), the premier European conference on semantics, pragmatics, and the philosophy of language.
We are especially happy that a topic so closely tied to visual communication found a platform as a satellite event of SuB, bringing these questions into dialogue with the more theoretical traditions of linguistics. The session offered a rich and varied program. Our invited speaker, Floris Roelofsen (University of Amsterdam), opened with a fascinating talk on polar questions in Dutch Sign Language. This was followed by three contributed sessions dedicated to sign languages, spoken languages, and gesture. The talks addressed a wide range of issues, including for example demonstrations in quotation, intensification in French Sign Language (LSF), lexical demonstrations in German Sign Language (DGS), and the interplay of at-issueness and commitment in gesture.
A lively and diverse poster session rounded out the day, further broadening the scope of discussion. We are proud that so many ViCom members and associates contributed to the event. The session was organized by Kathryn Barnes, Cornelia Ebert, Lennart Fritzsche, Markus Steinbach, and Sebastian Walter, and it featured several presentations by ViCom researchers and collaborators. Among them were a talk by Mailin Antomo and Yuqiu Chen on at-issueness, lying, and commitment in co-speech gestures, and a talk by Thomas Finkbeiner, Nina-Kristin Meister, and Patrick Trettenbrein on lexical demonstrations and word classes in DGS. Posters included work by Christopher Saure and Stefan Hinterwimmer on perspective shift in indirect discourse, as well as a contribution by Vanessa Wing Yan Tsang, Gladys Tang, and Aaron Yiu Leung Wong on iconicity and role-shift in entity classifier predicates in Hong Kong Sign Language.
A special highlight of this year’s session was that, for the first time in the history of Sinn und Bedeutung, interpretation into International Sign was provided. This was generously funded by Goethe University Frankfurt, and ViCom is proud to have played a role in shaping this development—one that we hope will inspire future editions of SuB to become even more inclusive and accessible. Beyond the academic program, the session also fostered community and exchange. Lively discussions continued into the evening over a traditional dinner in a Frankfurt Apfelweinkneipe, providing a convivial close to a successful and inspiring event. All in all, the special session was a wonderful success—an excellent platform for advancing the discussion of demonstrations and depictions, and a fitting prelude to the main conference of Sinn und Bedeutung.