1.1 What is Locative Shift?

Sign languages often realize pronominal reference by establishing loci (= positions in signing space) which stand for discourse references, and by pointing towards them to express anaphora (e.g. Lillo-Martin and Klima 1990; Schlenker 2011b). Loci may denote individuals, but also spatial locations; in ASL (American Sign Language) at least, they may also denote temporal and modal situations (Schlenker 2013). But a curious phenomenon arises when a locus is available for a spatial location, and one has talked about an individual that is found at that location: one may sometimes point towards the spatial locus to refer to the individual. We refer to this phenomenon as “Locative Shift”.¹ Earlier research explored cases in which an individual locus is iconically modulated to represent properties of its denotation, yielding for instance high loci to denote tall individuals (e.g. Schlenker et al. 2013); but the co-optation of situation loci to refer to individuals has yet to be understood, and systematically investigated.

Let us illustrate with data from ASL. (1a) displays the expected pattern, without Locative Shift: in the first sentence, JOHN is associated with a pointing sign IX-b which establishes a locus b. Working in a French city is associated with locus a, working in an American city is associated with locus c; in the second sentence, the object pronoun refers to John and is realized by pointing (by way of IX-b, boldfaced) to the locus b associated with John (the rating is of 5.5 on a 7-point scale, thus slightly degraded). The surprising fact is that an analogous reading can be obtained (more felicitously in this case) by pointing to the locus a to refer to John-in-the-French-city (IX-a+) and to the locus c to refer to John-in-the-American-city (IX-c+), as illustrated in (1b) (see Section 1.4.2 for transcription conventions).²

1.2 Goals

On an empirical level, this article offers a detailed study of Locative Shift in one consultant’s ASL (it is thus an investigation of this consultant’s idiolect). We state several generalizations that constrain the appearance of Locative Shift (such as the observation that it cannot target indexical pronouns) and its interaction with binding and predicate ellipsis. Some of the main findings are replicated in LSF (French Sign Language), a language that is historically related to ASL (both are descended from Old French Sign Language; Supalla and Clark 2015) and shares with it numerous properties in the area of anaphora (e.g. Schlenker 2011b; Schlenker et al. 2013; 2016; 2017a; b). For reasons of brevity, the LSF findings are very briefly summarized in the main text, and presented in greater detail in Appendix II. We also argue that simple cases of Locative Shift might exist in an understudied type of gestures in spoken language, called “pro-speech gestures” (= gestures that replace than accompany words; see Ladewig 2011).

On a theoretical level, we follow much of the literature in treating (some) loci as overt variables. We analyze Locative Shift as arising when a covert individual-denoting variable a is merged with a location-denoting locus b to yield a complex expression a^b, spelled-out as b.³ Under an assignment function s, this complex expression a^b denotes a situation stage of an individual: the situation stage of individual s(a) at situation s(b). While in examples such as (1) the locus b refers to a locative situation, we will see further examples in which b may refer to a temporal or to a modal situation. The notion of world and time stages of individuals was advocated both in the philosophical and in the linguistic literature (e.g. Carlson 1977; Lewis 1979; 1986; Paul 1994; Musan 1997). We will use a natural extension of this framework to situation stages of individuals, in such a way that temporal, modal and spatial versions of Locative Shift can uniformly be analyzed by reference to situation stages of individuals.

In some cases, different semantic results will be obtained depending on whether Locative Shift is or isn’t applied. Thus if John (associated with locus b) owns an apartment in a French city (locus a) and another one in an American city (locus c), the expression POSS-b APARTMENT (without Locative Shift) will just refer to the apartment John owns, without specifying whether it is in France or in the US, very much like the expression his_b apartment with a variable b that denotes John. By contrast, if we apply Locative Shift by co-opting the spatial locus c, POSS-c APARTMENT will refer to the apartment owned by the situation stage of John corresponding to the American city, hence the Noun Phrase will refer to John’s American apartment. In this case, the representation is akin to his_bc apartment, where b^c is a complex expression (spelled out as c) denoting the situation stage of John (denoted by b) corresponding to the American city (denoted by c).

Our proposal will also interact in interesting ways with binding and predicate ellipsis. First, we will show that under Locative Shift, in the expression b^c the individual component b may be bound, including by an expression that does not have the same locative specifications. As a result, a binder may not fully determine the value of a locative-shifted locus it binds. For instance, the expression λb t_b saw himself_b^c will associate to any individual x the value true just in case x saw the situation stage of x associated with the location denoted by c. This is because in general the denotation of b^c (= a situation stage of an individual) is different from that of b (= an individual). Second, we will show that under ellipsis, locative specifications may be retained in some cases, and may be disregarded in others, under conditions that are reminiscent of the behavior of phi-features. Finally, we will suggest that certain constraints on Locative Shift are relaxed under ellipsis: Locative Shift cannot target overt indexical pronouns but, for our consultant at least, it can target elided ones, with the result that some elided clauses have readings that their overt analogues lack.

1.3 Structure

The rest of this article is organized as follows. After discussing elicitation methods and transcription conventions in the rest of this section, we provide relevant background on Locative Shift and iconic loci in Section 2. We study the main properties of ASL Locative Shift in Section 3, and discuss its interaction with ellipsis in Section 4. In Section 5, we suggest that some pointing gestures in English can undergo something like Locative Shift. Conclusions and questions for future research are stated in Section 6. Appendix I extends some of the main findings to LSF, while subtle issues pertaining to ASL ellipsis are discussed in Appendix II. Finally, raw data for all original examples can be found in Supplementary Materials.

2.1 Basic cases of Locative Shift

Locative Shift has been studied before. In (2), from Padden (1988), locus c is introduced in the first sentence to refer to a spatial location, one to which the agent has walked; but in the second sentence, this same locus is used to refer to the agent herself. (Here and throughout, we keep the original transcription conventions when citing earlier literature. Most are transparent, but pointing signs, which we gloss as IX, appear as INDEX in Padden 1988 and as PRO in Emmorey 2002.)

Van Hoek (1992) studies the phenomenon within the framework of cognitive semantics, arguing that Locative Shift shows that pronouns “carry a great deal of additional information pertaining to the conceptual location of referents in the discourse space”. One of her examples is cited by Emmorey (2002), who adapts the transcription to her own conventions, with PRO standing for a pointing sign (i.e. INDEX or IX in other transcriptions):

Emmorey (2002) mentions a particularly interesting example in which the same index can have a location-denoting or an individual-denoting interpretation depending on the rest of the sentence it appears in, as shown in (4).

Still, some individual-denoting pronouns could in principle be null, and thus it is not always easy to ascertain that, say, the pronoun in (4a) is individual-denoting: it could in principle be location-denoting (‘there’), with a null subject pronoun referring to the relevant individual. But this problem does not arise in the examples in (5), from Schlenker (2013) (see the original for the full paradigm, from which (1) was also extracted).⁵ Here the first person locus comes in two varieties, one slightly to the signer’s right and transcribed as 1a, and the other slightly to the signer’s left and transcribed as 1c (because a and c are positions to the signer’s right and left respectively). The position of the loci is diagramed after the example, in (6).

These examples involve two versions of the verb HELP: a plain form, whose object is expressed as a separate pronoun, and an agreeing form, which targets the locus corresponding to its object; in this case, a separate object pronoun may but need not be separately expressed. The agreeing form is of interest because there is no doubt that the locus it targets corresponds to its object, i.e. the helpee – whereas in the case of the plain verb one might ask whether the post-verbal pronoun could be a locative argument (with a null pronoun, or even an intransitive use of HELP akin to “I do some helping”). Since there is no sense in which the signer claims to be helping cities, the examples in (5b, c) present very clear cases in which a locus that initially denoted a spatial location does double duty in denoting an individual as well.

2.2 Other cases of locus displacement: high and low loci

Locative Shift should be investigated within the broader context of iconic uses of loci, as discussed for instance by Liddell (2003); Kegl (2004); Schlenker et al. (2013) and Schlenker (2014).⁶ As Liddell (2003) emphasized, multiple examples suggest that loci need not be points in space, but may sometimes be entire areas that serve as simplified pictorial representations of their denotations. Schlenker et al. (2013) emphasize that this “iconic life” is perfectly compatible with a simultaneous “logical life” of the same loci, functioning as variables. Here we retrace basic facts about high and low loci, used in particular to refer to tall and short individuals. Their connection to our topic is the following: with Locative Shift, we will see that one can co-opt part of a location-denoting iconic representation (e.g. the top of a tower) to refer to an individual located in the relevant place. But this suggests that high and low loci might be a special case of the same phenomenon: when loci are structured areas, one typically points towards a subpart that corresponds roughly to the head, and as a result one may point high or low in signing space simply because the person’s head is understood to be high or low in real space. We will suggest that one should probably start from a null hypothesis on which high and low loci are a special case of Locative Shift: in the case of structured (area-based) loci, the head of the locus corresponds to a situation stage (here: a spatial position) of the head of the denoted individual.

2.3 Summary and outlook

In this section, we saw initial cases of Locative Shift that were discussed in the literature: an individual-denoting locus may “move” in space to take the position of a location-denoting locus if the denoted individual is found at the corresponding location. We also saw other cases of locus displacement: high or low loci may serve to denote individuals whose head appears high or low. The phenomenon involves “iconicity in action”: as a tall individual is rotated, the corresponding locus can be rotated as well; and the phenomenon seems to be quasi-gradient. In addition, positional specifications of high and low loci can be disregard under ellipsis in the same environments as phi-features.

We will submit that once the powerful mechanisms necessary to account for Locative Shift are in place, high and low loci can probably follow as a special cases. We will see that locative-shifted loci can be used in iconic and gradient fashion, just like high and low loci. In addition, it turns out that locative-shifted specifications can be disregarded under ellipsis in the same kind of conditions as phi-features and high/low specifications. Thus locative-shifted loci share important formal properties with high and low loci. In addition, their interpretation is rather similar as well. We announced at the outset that in cases of Locative Shift, a covert individual-denoting variable a is merged with a location-denoting locus b to yield a complex expression a^b, spelled-out as b. Under an assignment function s, this complex expression a^b denotes a situation stage of an individual: the situation stage of individual s(a) at situation s(b). In cases of high loci, a covert individual-denoting variable a is merged with a spatial specification high to yield a complex expression a^high, located high in signing space (the case of low loci is symmetric). And under an assignment s, a^high denotes individual s(a) whose upper part is situated high; this can be thought of as a high situation stage of s(a), with the auxiliary assumption that in standard cases the position of an individual can be identified with that of the upper part of his or her body. On this view, then, a^high denotes a ‘high’ stage of individual s(a).

3.1 Temporal and Modal Shift

Schlenker (2013) argues that Locative Shift has a temporal and a modal analogue. Thus in (17), the loci a and b are respectively associated with times at which John was a college student and a college professor. In the second sentence, however, the boldfaced pronouns index the same loci but refer to John rather than to time periods.

Turning to the modal case, in (18) the loci a and c are initially associated with possible situations in which John is a college student and a college professor respectively, but are used in the second sentence to refer to John himself.

Schlenker (2013) shows that temporal and modal counterparts can be constructed for the full paradigm in (5), and that for his consultant patterns of preference among the various constructions are closely matched across domains, which suggests that a same phenomenon is at work.

3.2 No Locative Shift with indexical pronouns

Schlenker (2011a) notes that Locative Shift fails to apply to indexical pronouns, while results with deictic third person pronouns were not entirely clear. This can be seen in the contrasts obtained with the agreement form of HELP in (19) (where we average over more judgments than were reported in Schlenker (2011a), with the same results). The observation is that (19b), which involves Locative Shift of a third person locus (namely a, denoting John), is acceptable: since a corresponds to the French city and c corresponds to the American city, we find 1-HELP-a and 1-HELP-c to mean that I help John in the French city and in the American city respectively. By contrast, (19b)’ involves Locative Shift of the second person pronoun (with you replacing John as the helpee), and the result is very degraded.

Similarly, we can see that an attempt to apply Locative Shift to a first person helpee in (20b) utterly fails: the sentence is very degraded.

For Schlenker (2011a); Schlenker et al. (2013), the failure of Locative Shift with indexical loci followed from a rule according to which when someone is present in the context of speech, the associated locus normally corresponds to this person’s actual location. Schlenker et al. (2013) formalize this constraint with the presuppositional rule in (21):

In other words, the rule required that loci denoting individuals present in the extra-linguistic situation should correspond to their real position. This rule immediately predicted that Locative Shift cannot change the locus assigned to individuals present in the extra-linguistic situations. We will see several cases below in which this seems to be clearly true for second person pronouns.

As alluded to in Schlenker (2011a), this analysis predicts that deictic pronouns referring to a third person who is present in the extra-linguistic situation should also fail to undergo Locative Shift, but judgments are less clear. (22) displays a flip in preference between the non-deictic case with JOHN (= Locative Shift preferred) and the deictic case (= Locative Shift dispreferred, but the effect is still less than striking:¹¹

3.3 Interpretive effects

In the examples discussed thus far, application of Locative Shift did not affect interpretation in any obvious way because the location of the relevant individuals is made clear by the preceding discourse. But there are cases in which Locative Shift does affect interpretation, as is illustrated in (23). Here different readings are obtained depending on whether the possessive pronoun indexes the locus b introduced by JOHN or the locus c introduced by AMERICAN CITY: in the first case, no specification is obtained about the apartment’s location, and a plural reading could be obtained referring to both apartments (a bit degraded due to lack of pluralization); in the latter case, the apartment in question is the one John owns in an American city.

One might think that in (23b) we obtain a reading akin to “the apartment in the American city”, with a kind of all-purpose genitive (= ‘the American city’s apartment’) not involving genuine possession. This is not plausible, as in (24b) a locative-shifted version of the second person possessive pronoun is highly degraded. This is expected if Locative Shift is genuinely involved (since Locative Shift cannot target indexical loci), but not if the reading obtained in (23b) is due to an all-purpose genitive, which should be just as available in the second as in the third person case.

3.4 Iconic cases

In the cases considered so far, Locative Shift involved antecedents that played a standard grammatical role (as a first approximation, loci corresponded to discourse referents).¹⁶ But as noted in Section 2.2, high loci can play an iconic role. Do such cases also arise with loci undergoing Locative Shift? This appears to be the case.

3.5 Proposal

4.1 The import of predicate ellipsis

As we saw in Section 2.2.2, it was shown in earlier literature (Schlenker 2014) that height specifications can be disregarded under ellipsis in the same kind of configuration as phi-features, including when these specifications have a highly iconic semantics. We will now see that there are numerous cases in which spatial specifications of locative-shifted loci can be disregarded in similar environments.

4.2 Locative specifications of individual-denoting loci can be ignored under binding

The acceptability of (46b) contrasts with the deviance of (46d) and suggests that the locative specifications of the locative-shifted locus c can be disregarded under ellipsis.

This observation does not decide between the views sketched in (42). On a Syntactically Constrained view, we could take the locative-shifted locus to be made of two parts, one of them denoting JOHN, and the other bound by THERE with locus c. On this view, the first sentence of (46b), repeated as (47a), could conceivably be given the analysis in (47b), by analogy with the treatment of bound first person pronouns in (44). However this analysis must be combined with the hypothesis (argued for in Schlenker 2016) that loci can sometimes be inherited in the same way as features, and can remain uninterpreted in the same configurations.

In (47b), b denotes John, c denotes the relevant American city, and in addition c appears (by agreement, but without being interpreted) on the variable introduced by the λ-operator, hence the struck-through c in: λi^c … b^ic. Finally, b^ic is spelled out as c, and if i denotes a city, b^ic denotes a locative stage of John in that city. Of course the acceptability of (46c) and unacceptability of (46d) is expected: in the former case, POSS-b just indexes the locus for JOHN; in the latter case, the last clause has a semantic mismatch between POSS-c APARTMENT (meaning: John’s apartment in the American city) and THERE-a (meaning: in the French city), and since no ellipsis is involved, no specifications can be disregarded, and a near-contradiction arises.

These observations extend to locative deletion under ONLY, as is seen in (48).

4.3 Can locative specifications be ignored without restriction?

We cannot exclude that, for our ASL consultant, locative specifications can be ignored under ellipsis in a rather unrestricted fashion. Consider the following paradigm:

In (49a), we obtain a strict reading relative to the locus specification, which is unsurprising given that the second sentence doesn’t mention another locative specification. (49b), which is only provided for completeness, is complicated to analyze: IX-a may be understood as a locative pronoun referring to the French city, or as a locative-shifted individual pronoun referring to John (or rather, to John-in-the-French-city).³¹ The sentence of interest is (49c), which is degraded but yields two readings. On one reading, John doesn’t like his American apartment. This is expected if the locative features of the possessive POSS-c present in the antecedent VP are preserved, since c is associated with the American city. But we also obtain a kind of bound variable reading (relative to the locative specification) on which John doesn’t like his French apartment. Now in the antecedent sentence, the subject is the pronoun IX-b. It indexes the neutral locus associated with JOHN, which does not come with any locative specification. Thus we cannot argue that the locative features of the possessive are somehow inherited by agreement under binding. The only way to explain their disappearance under ellipsis is to allow for a very liberal process of locative deletion under ellipsis. Still, the fact that (49c) is somewhat degraded might suggest that this mechanism is costly.³²

Since the further data we have are both complex and somewhat preliminary, they are discussed in the Appendix II.

4.4 Locative specifications of individual-denoting loci can be preserved under ellipsis

Standard theories of ellipsis resolution certainly don’t force features to be deleted under ellipsis (unless other requirements come into play). The features that appear on the bound variable may trigger a semantic failure, but if they don’t, they won’t affect the interpretation because the value of the bound variable is fully determined by the binding process. Interestingly, things are different with Locative Shift, since it makes it possible to refer to a situation stage of an individual. In such cases, it can be crucial that locative specifications are preserved under ellipsis. This process was illustrated in the elided part of (27a) above: the elided clause IX-b NOT SEE SELF-top gave rise to a reading on which the subject-denotation Peter didn’t see himself being at the top. Several other examples that lead to the same conclusion are discussed in Appendix II.

The same pattern is found in (50), which behaves roughly like the overt control in (51). While one could think that LOOK and FILM are interpreted with location-denoting pronouns (meaning ‘look there’, ‘film there’), the bound variable interpretation makes this a bit unlikely. More importantly, the second person example in (52) entirely lacks this reading: the last sentence means that the addressee didn’t want the signer to watch and film the first gymnast in specific positions. This is expected if (50) and (51) involve Locative Shift, which cannot target indexical pronouns, as we saw in Section 3.2. On the other hand, if the objects of LOOK and FILM are interpreted as ‘there’ (i.e. ‘look there’, ‘film there’), it is mysterious why the mechanism of pragmatic strengthening that gives the illusion of a bound variable reading in the third person case is inapplicable in the second person case.

4.5 Locative specifications of individual-denoting loci can yield new readings under ellipsis

4.6 Theoretical conclusions

We conclude that, within our ASL data, some aspects of the behavior of locative specifications are clear, and others are not.

• It is clear that locative-shifted loci can be bound, including by elements that do not have the same locative specifications.

• The application of Locative Shift may affect meaning. This happens when a locative-shifted locus is dependent on a non-locative-shifted antecedent that is not interpreted with the same locative specification (be it for semantic or pragmatic reasons).

• This semantic contribution sometimes appears to be at-issue, although it is too early to tell whether this is so because of the semantics, or because of a pragmatic process of accommodation (e.g. presupposition accommodation).

• Under ellipsis, locative specifications may be preserved, in which case they may affect interpretation. This is because the binder of a locative-shifted locus may determine which individual it denotes, while the locative specification may determine where this individual is located.

• There are also cases in which locative specifications are disregarded under ellipsis. In particular, a locative specification may be disregarded under binding by an individual or spatial expression with the same locative specification.

• Overt indexical pronouns cannot usually undergo Locative Shift. There is suggestive evidence that elided indexical pronouns are not so constrained. It may be because they are devoid of indexical features, or because the prohibition against locative-shifted indexical pronouns is limited to overt elements.

• There might also be cases in which locative specifications are disregarded under ellipsis although their binder does not carry the same locative specifications. It is too early to tell whether this argues for a very liberal system of erasure (along the lines of (45)), or whether the binder should in such cases be taken to carry covert versions of the relevant specifications (as was advocated in some cases in Schlenker 2014).

5.1 Loci in pro-speech gestures

Schlenker and Chemla (2018) argue that a (possibly simplified) version of the locus system of sign language exists with pro-speech gestures. Their study focuses on gestural verbs with object agreement, as illustrated in (59). They note that a gesture with the meaning of shooting can be realized in different ways depending on whether it targets the speaker (glossed as SHOOT-1), the addressee (glossed as SHOOT-2), or a third person (SHOOT-a).³⁹ The distinction between speaker-, addressee- and third person-denoting loci mirrors one that is found in sign language. Importantly, deviance is obtained when SHOOT targets a third person locus to refer to the addressee; this result was confirmed (for different gestural verbs) on the basis of experimental data. (A complicating factor is that the second person form SHOOT-2 also plays the role of a neutral form, unmarked for person; this is why it is glossed as SHOOT(–2).)

5.2 Multiple loci and Locative Shift in gestures

While Schlenker and Chemla (2018) concentrate on cases in which at most one third person locus appears, we will need to consider examples with further loci, some individual-denoting and some location-denoting. We will introduce these loci by way of co-speech gestures, and retrieve them by way of pro-speech gestures, our main target. It is of course noteworthy that besides performance limitations, there does not seem to be an upper limit on the number of loci that can be introduced in this way – which makes spoken language gestures far closer to sign language than is usually thought.

Our initial paradigm is illustrated in (60).

Notation: IX-i refers to a pointing finger towards locus i, IX-hand-i to a pointing hand towards i. Pro-speech pointing is represented in normal capital letters. Co-speech pointing is represented in superscripts on the spoken expression it co-occurs with (as in John^IX-hand-a).

John is associated with locus a, the addressee with locus 2, and New York with locus c. Our understanding of the data is as follows:

• – (60a) refers to the addressee, and the answer might be pragmatically odd, as one might expect John to be the one fired later (since he is the one being transferred).

• – With one exception, (60c) was found to be acceptable: the gestural locus initially associated with New York is re-used to refer to John-in-New York. In fact, (60b) is sometimes found to be degraded to refer to John in that case.⁴⁰

If the discourse is changed so as to deny that John will be transferred to New York, the data change and Locative Shift becomes impossible, as seen in (61c).

If gestural locus c refers, as in sign language, to the situation stage of John-in-New York, this result is unsurprising: there is no such stage to refer to in this case (more precisely, this sentence presumably violates the presuppositional requirements of (36a, b), since there is no situation w’ salient in the context such that John is located in New York in w’).

We conclude, very tentatively, that (i) multiple individual or locative loci can be used in speech-accompanying or speech-replacing gestures, that (ii) Locative Shift can target third person loci. But it is clear that a more thorough investigation of Locative Shift with gestures should be conducted, both to confirm these tentative findings, and to test the more fine-grained properties that we unearthed in ASL (including the prohibition of Locative Shift as applied to indexical pronouns). Furthermore, the data reported by Schlenker and Chemla (2018) suggest that person and height specifications of gestural verbs can be disregarded under ellipsis, which mirrors sign language data similar to ones that were discussed above. This should make it possible to investigate the behavior of locative specifications of gestural loci under ellipsis.

6.1 Empirical conclusions

We have shown that, for our ASL consultant at least, (i) some individual loci can undergo Locative Shift, that (ii) this can have semantic consequences, and that (iii) shifting can target highly iconic loci, including ones that were not explicitly introduced. We argued that the readings obtained suggest that a locus that underwent Locative Shift denotes a situation stage of an individual, and hence has a more fine-grained semantics than a locus that hasn’t undergone Locative Shift. In addition, (iv) shifting seems to be degraded with indexical loci, and possibly with non-indexical deictic loci as well. This can be explained in at least two ways: if indexical and possibly deictic loci are incompatible with a locative specification (for instance because they intrinsically come with one); or if loci established by iconic means (via the extra-linguistic situation) are fixed, possibly because they are non-arbitrary.

We also studied the interaction between Locative Shift and ellipsis, and concluded the following: (v) Locative Shift can target bound variables, including when the antecedent has different or no locative specifications; and (vi) locative specifications may be preserved or ignored under ellipsis. Concerning cases in which locative specifications are preserved under ellipsis, we saw (vii) that these cases may give rise to bound, elided readings in which locative specifications have semantic consequences, and that (viii) this might include covert indexical loci, which seem to admit Locative Shift (unlike overt indexical loci). Concerning cases in which locative specifications are not preserved under ellipsis, (ix) some clear cases might involve agreement between a locative-shifted locus and an antecedent with the same locative specifications; (x) further cases might involve an antecedent that does not display the same locative specifications, but can be interpreted in accordance with them; and (xi) there might even ben cases that argue for a mechanism of liberal ‘deletion’ of locative features under ellipsis. It goes without saying that these findings should be tested with further consultants, if possible using comparable (i.e. quantitative and easily replicable) methods.

Points (i)-(iv) as well as (ix) were replicated with our LSF consultant, as discussed in Appendix I, although many questions are left open for that language.

We then speculated that Locative Shift might exist in English with pro-speech gestures, although a more thorough investigation should be conducted to confirm our tentative findings, and to determine whether further properties of Locative Shift can be replicated with gestures.

6.2 Theoretical directions

We turn to some theoretical directions for future research.

1. An initial question concerns the potential difference between earlier cases of high and low loci, which could be iconically modulated (Schlenker et al. 2013; Schlenker 2014), and instances of Locative Shift. It is not clear to us that there is a difference: once it has been established that a locative locus denoting a situation s may also be used to denote a situation stage of individual i, i_at_s, it might be possible to extend this mechanism to cases in which the position of the individual i is identified with the spatial position of his head or of the upper part of his body. For this to be possible, it is essential that Locative Shift can apply even in the absence of an explicitly introduced locative locus; but we saw examples of precisely this in ASL.⁴¹ In a special case, this mechanism could give rise to the appearance of high and low loci discussed in the literature, including ones that are highly iconic (e.g. “high” loci realized very low because the relevant individual is tall but is upside down).⁴² Still, this theoretical direction will have to be developed and tested further in future research.

2. Another question is how one should think of locative specifications of loci. There are at least three ways to go. First, they could have the same status as phi-features; if so, they are expected to give rise to agreement phenomena. Second, they might be non-featural lexical material. Third, they might be thought of as gestures that are incorporated into some grammatical signs.

   The first two possibilities are self-explanatory (the difference between them is that featural but not non-featural elements can be expected to give rise to agreement phenomena). The third possibility was discussed in a different context by Aristodemo (2017) in connection with the adjective FULL in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Aristodemo noticed that this adjective is realized with an iconic element that modifies its contribution, yielding a meaning akin to “completely full”. She argued that this contribution is comparable to that of some co-speech gestures, e.g. in Italian. In both types of cases, non-trivial patterns of projection were obtained (within the “cosuppositional” analysis of co-speech gestures in Schlenker 2018a). And in both cases, the iconic component could be freely disregarded under ellipsis, a behavior that was argued to hold of co-speech gestures in general in Schlenker (2015b, 2018a). Thus one could in principle propose a similar analysis with a sign-cum-gesture in the case of locative-shifted loci.

   The choice will depend on generalizations about ellipsis in general, and about the behavior of locative specifications under ellipsis. In spoken language, it is relatively uncontroversial that (a) co-speech gestures can be ignored under ellipsis (e.g. Schlenker 2015b; 2018c); (b) non-gestural material can only be ignored under restricted conditions – possibly only featural material can be ignored, and possibly only under agreement. If it turns out that locative specifications can be ignored without restriction, we might have an argument for treating them as incorporated gestures. If they can only be ignored under restricted conditions, we might be able to conclude that they display the behavior of grammatical elements, although the details will depend on one’s theory of ellipsis, and on the precise behavior of locative specifications under ellipsis.⁴³

3. On a conceptual level, we have left open what a situation stage of an individual is. As we noted, time- and world-stages of individuals have an old history, and an extension to situation stages might seem natural. But it would be important to clarify what locative stages of individuals could be (beyond the technical notions that allow the semantics to work, and the paraphrases that allow one to think of those as individuals qua associated with certain spatial locations).

6.3 Further issues

We leave three important questions for future research.

1. Phonetic realization: We saw that in ASL (and LSF), a locative locus is fully co-opted to realize a locative-shifted individual locus. As a result, the literature describes cases of ambiguity between an individual and a spatial reading, as we saw in (4). But this needn’t preclude the possibility that in some cases signers might still phonetically distinguish between a spatial and an individual reading of a locative-shifted locus. Fine-grained phonetic work would be needed to address this issue.

2. Typology: Locative Shift involves locative/situation marking on an individual-denoting pronoun. Are there similar cases in spoken language? We do not know of clear cases, but some might be found in future research.⁴⁴ It could also be that more abstract analogues of Locative Shift will be found when one revisits more closely the extant literature on reference to stages of individuals (e.g. Carlson 1977; Paul 1994; Musan 1997).

3. Processing: Emmorey and Falgier (2004) asked whether locative-shifted pronouns reactivate their nominal antecedent, their locative antecedent, or both. Given the present analysis, one might expect that both the nominal and the locative antecedent should be reactivated, but this is not what the authors found: they concluded that ASL pronouns only activate their antecedent noun phrases. We do not know why this is, and leave this question for future research.