How to Do Things with Negation. For a Sociopragmatic, Multimodal and Embodied Account of Negation in Spoken and Sign Language

The UniMe unit will lead the research activities carried out in WP3. WP3 will contribute to the general aim of the project by empirically investigating the role of sensorimotor information in the expression of linguistic negation in LIS and, in the light of the debate on the embodiment of language, by theoretically accounting for the modalities of integration of linguistic and sensorimotor knowledge in the production/comprehension of abstract linguistic expressions, such as negation. The activities carried out in this work-package will benefit from the collaboration of the UniMe research unit with the UniCt research unit. The latter has the necessary research experience in sign language linguistics which complements the expertise of the UniMe unit on the empirical and theoretical investigation of the embodiment of language. The UniCt will collaborate with UniME by contributing to the following tasks of WP3: • Participants recruitment. • Data acquisition. • Data analysis. During the first three months of the NEMO project, the UniMe unit will collaborate with UniCT for the creation and validation of the stimuli which will be used in the behavioral experiment (WP3.Step 1). Activities of WP3 will start at the beginning of the fourth month of the project. Experimental research activities for the behavioral study (WP3.Step 1) will be carried out from the fourth to the eighth month of the project. Theoretical research activities for the development of an account of the interface between linguistic and sensorimotor knowledge in the expression of negation (WP3.Step 2) will be carried out from the ninth to the fifteen month of the project. From the sixteenth to the twenty second month of the project, the UniMe unit will collaborate with all the NEMO team to develop a new integrated framework of negation (WP4). From the twentieth to the twenty fourth month of the project, the UniMe unit will collaborate with all the NEMO team to disseminate the project results. The UniPA unit will lead the research activities carried out in WP4. All the NEMO team will contribute to this WP which aims at integrating together results of WP1, WP2 and WP3 to provide a new integrated account of negation which encompasses the role of sociopragmatic, multimodal, and sensorimotor information in the expression of negation along with the purely linguistic dimension. All the NEMO team will contribute to the activities carried out in WP5, which aims at disseminating findings of this project inside and outside academia.