Towards a uniform super-linguistic theory of projection

Abstract

Formal semantics/pragmatics has recently seen an upsurge in studying secondary modality content like gestures and facial expressions. Much of this work has focused on how such content projects from under semantic operators, but most of it has assumed  that projection of secondary modality content is governed by independent rules. I argue that projection behavior of compositionally integrated content is guided by the same lin guistic principles in all modalities, but to see that we need to treat secondary modality  morphemes as linguistic objects across the board. I apply this approach to two novel case studies: conventionalized co-speech gestures and degree modifiers in various modalities.