*** Veuillez noter que le passeport vaccinal (ou preuve comparable) est obligatoire pour y assister. ***

Nous vous invitons à cette conférence linguistique en sémantique et pragmatique. Chris(topher) Davis, professeur agrégé en linguistique au Department of Languages and Cultures à l'University of the Ryukyus, au Japon, donnera une communication (en anglais) le mercredi 17 novembre 2021 de 12 h 45 à 13 h 45 au Pavillon De-Sève, à la salle DS-3470. 

Titre : Towards a Semantics and Pragmatics of the Javanese Speech Level System

Résumé : Javanese has an elaborate system of what are called ``speech levels’’, in which suppletive alternants are used to signal different degrees of formality/deference/etc toward the addressee. I propose an analysis of this system in which (i) five classes of lexical items marked with distinct combinations of two binary speech level features combine syntagmatically to generate the three traditionally recognized speech levels (Ngoko, Madya, and Krama), and in which (ii) competition within particular paradigms of lexical alternatives generates continuous gradation within the Madya level. I suggest one approach to the semantics of the speech level features, grounded in recent formal treatments of honorifics in languages like Japanese and Korean, and discuss which features of the system such a formalization accounts for, and which remain unexplained.