ASL Abstract: https://youtu.be/_g9aQu07lik

The meanings of words do not reside in the words themselves nor do they reside as preexisting structures in the mind. Word meaning is dynamically created in our minds while we create utterances. This inevitably causes problems when communicating, especially communicating something that was originally created in a completely different language — such is the plight of the interpreter and the translator. There are multiple of problems that can arise, however we will focus on one for this workshop: minimal utterances that communicate a maximal amount of information conceptually and how to manage the conceptual transfer into another language.

In other words, when should I “expand” when using depiction? Relying on cognitive studies we see how language works in the mind. In addition, we see how traditional accounts of expansion has ironically been form centric. This has lead to a working proposal for how to manage a situation where the source does not “explicitly” (or better put no standalone form) say something, but it does communicate it conceptually. These points will be discussed in this workshop with the aim to provide tools on how to determine what can be brought from our conceptual world into the target language.