Abstract

One of the tasks for a theory of discourse semantics and pragmatics is to explain why sequences of clauses as in the famous saying attributed to Julius Caesar "Veni, vidi, vici" / "I came, I saw, I conquered" are understood to present events in a chronological order. It is a popular idea that the chronological interpretation is a manifestation of iconicity. Unlike symbolic signs, where the mapping between forms and meanings is arbitrary, iconic signs are characterised by similarity between form and content. In the case of ‘Veni, vidi, vici’, the order of words reproduces the sequence of events. There is growing evidence that the iconic aspect of narrative temporality goes beyond the relative order of events, extending to pacing, duration of events, distances between events, as well as absolute alignment of the time of the story with the time of the telling. The goal of this project is to bring new evidence for temporal iconicity and to develop a theory that integrates iconic and symbolic aspects of narrative interpretation.

Team

Principal Investigator: PD Dr. Katja Jasinskaja 

Talks and Posters

• Jasinskaja, Katja. 2025. Referential choice in direct speech: Replicating an experiment with an LLM. Poster at the workshop on Large Language Models for Linguistic Analyses: Applications and Limitations. 24–25 November 2025. University of Cologne.
• Jasinskaja, Katja. 2025. Event duration and pace in fictional narrative: An experimental study. TbiLLC 2025: Fifteenth International Tbilisi Symposium on Logic, Language and Computation. September 8-12, 2025. Kutaisi, Georgia.
• Jasinskaja, Katja & Klaus von Heusinger. 2025. Tracking multiple common grounds: Mismatches in activation. Mismatches in anaphoric relations (RED 25). May 29-30, 2025. University of Graz, Austria.
• Jasinskaja, Katja. 2025. Iconic representation of duration in narrative discourse. 25th Szklarska Poręba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics. February 21-24, 2025. Szklarska Poręba, Poland.
• Jasinskaja, Katja. 2025. Iconic representation of duration in narrative discourse. ViCom Workshop on the Dimensions of Iconicity in the Visual Modality. February 13-14, 2025. University of Göttingen.
• Jasinskaja, Katja. 2024. Discourse Time is Real. Invited talk at the Workshop Incremental constructions within and across languages at the 35th European Summer School in Logic, Language, and Information, ESSLLI 2024. Leuven, Belgium.

Events

• The 26th Szklarska Poręba Workshop on the Roots of Pragmasemantics. February 20-23, 2026. Szklarska Poręba, Poland.

Project-Related Teaching

• The Linguistics behind Common Writing Advice for Fiction (WiSe 25/26)