Hana Gruet-Skrabalova

Verbs and particles in minimal answers to yes-no questions in Czech

Verbs and particles in minimal answers to yes-no questions in Czech

Hana Gruet-Skrabalova

Introduction

Czech belongs to those languages1 , in which a yes-no question can be minimally answered not only by answering particles ano ('yes') and ne ('no'), but also by echoing the verb of the question, eventually by combining these two elements, see (1). 2 When the answer is negative, the verb bears the negative prefix ne-.

(1) Jsou rodiče doma? -Ano. / Jsou. // Ne. / Nejsou.

are.3pl parents home yes are.3pl no neg.are.3pl 'Are the parents at home?' 'Yes (they are).' 'No (they are not).'

The verb in the answer must be finite and bear the same tense feature as the verb in the question, see (2). In case of complex verbal forms with the auxiliary verb být ('be'), past and conditional clitic auxiliaries cannot constitute felicitous answers. This follows if we assume that clitic auxiliaries only bear agreement features and the lexical participle the interpretable tense feature, as proposed by Veselovská (1995). Consequently, the participle may combine with negation and constitute a felicitous answer to polar questions in (3). The future forms of the auxiliary verb být are expected to appear in minimal answers for they bear both tense and agreement features and combine with negation, see (4) 3 .

(2) Pozveš Marii na tu oslavu? -(Ne)pozvu. / *(Ne)pozval.

invite.2sg Mary.acc to that party (neg)invite.1sg (neg)invited.sg.m 'Will you invite Mary to the party?' 'I will (not).'

(3) Koupil jsi / bys mu to? -*(Ne)jsem. / *(Ne)bych / (Ne)koupil.

bought.sg.m aux/cond.2sg him it (neg)aux.1sg / (neg)cond.1sg /(neg)bought 'Did / Would you buy it for him?' 'I did (not). / 'I would (not).' (4) Budou pracovat i v neděli? -(Ne)budou.

fut.3pl work also on Sunday (neg)fut.1pl 'Will they work on Sunday too?' 'They will (not).'

The data presented above raise two issues that will be addressed here: (i) what is the syntactic structure of minimal verbal answers? (ii) what is the syntactic and semantic status of answering particles?

The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, I argue, following [START_REF] Laka | On the Syntax of Negation[END_REF], that minimal verbal answers involve clausal ellipsis after movement of the finite verb bearing the focused polarity feature to the CP domain. In section 3, I show the distribution of particles in answers to positive and negative questions. In section 4, I argue that negative questions contain expletive or true negation. In the former case, they behave as positive questions. In the latter case, they behave as negative declaratives that convey a negative presupposition and can be (dis)confirmed by the particles. In section 5, I propose that particles are generated in the specifier of the polarity projection where they express absolute or relative polarity, depending on the polarity of the question. The focused verb moves to the Focus projection below the PolP. The complement of the head of PolP or FocP can be elided for they are given in the question. Section 6 sums up the proposed analysis.

The syntax of verbal answers

In this section, I argue that minimal verbal answers involve ellipsis of the whole clause except for the finite verb that has been moved to the CP domain for it bears the polarity feature that is focused in yes-no question/answer pairs.

Absence of arguments

Although Czech is a pro-drop language, it is not plausible that minimal verbal answers are full sentences with null pronominal arguments. On the one hand, overt complements are disallowed with the echoing participle, but must be overt in declarative sentences, compare (5a) and (5b). The same holds of reflexive pronouns that are excluded from answers, although they are obligatory in questions and independent clauses, compare (6a) and (6b On the other hand, the presence of an overt subject requires a complete verbal form as well as the obligatory complements, and it is thus disallowed with an echoing participle, see (7) The data above imply that minimal verbal answers do not contain any null argument (neither complement nor subject), but rather elided structure involving these arguments. Assuming that 2P-clitics occupy the lowest position in the CP (as proposed by Veselovská 1995), the elided structure would correspond to the whole clause including the clitics (i.e. FinP, see Lenertová 2001[START_REF] Rizzi | The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery[END_REF]).

Verbal forms

An additional piece of evidence for clausal ellipsis comes from the verbal forms themselves. Although participles in replies to questions in past tense and in conditional mood look identical, they are interpreted correctly with respect to tense and mood, as shown in (8). This means that these answers have a complete structure at LF, which follows if they involve an elided clausal structure.

(8a) Poslala jsi mu to? -Poslala (ale teprve včera / #ale až budu mít čas). Note also that the verb in the answer does not simply repeat the verb of the question, but it has the form it would have in a full sentence answer, as shown in (9a), where the second person past auxiliary is reduced to a suffix on the participle only in the question, and in (9b), where the two verbs bear distinct agreement features.

(9) a. Poslalas mu to? -Poslala. = (8a) b. Pošleš mu to? -Pošlu.

send.2sg him it send.1sg 'Will you send it to him?' 'Yes (I will).'

Clausal ellipsis would furthermore explain why answers containing complex verbal forms without arguments are not felicitous, as in (10a). This observation does not hold for modal verbs in (10b), which may appear with or without auxiliary clitics. Modal verbs differ however from lexical verbs in that they allow VP-ellipsis (see Gruet-Skrabalova 2012b), as shown in (11) Finally, minimal verbal answers may be modified by sentential (modal) adverbs that are presumably generated in the CP domain [START_REF] Cinque | Adverbs and Functional Heads[END_REF], which also suggests that they have an underlying CP structure.

(13) Mluví Jan italsky? -Asi mluví. / Nejspíš nemluví.

speaks.3sg Jan Italian probably speak.3sg most-probably neg.speak.3sg 'Does Jan speak Italian?'

Ellipsis analysis

To account for verbal answers, I first assume, following [START_REF] Laka | On the Syntax of Negation[END_REF], that clauses contain a functional projection in the CP domain that encodes polarity 7 . I also assume that the polarity of yes-no questions is open in the sense that polar questions ask [P or not P], cf. [START_REF] Hamblin | Questions in Montague English[END_REF]. The cases where this assumption does not hold are discussed in section 3. [START_REF] Laka | On the Syntax of Negation[END_REF] argues that in answers to yes-no questions in Basque, the head of the polarity projection is obligatorily realized by an overt polarity particle (ba, ez), to which the finite verb must right-adjoin because it is focused. The IP is then deleted, see ( 14). ( 14) [START_REF] Laka | On the Syntax of Negation[END_REF] yes-it.know.I no it.know.I 'Yes (I know it).'

[ ∑P ba-dakit [ IP ø]] // [ ∑P ez dakit [ IP ø]] (Basque,
'No (I don't know it).'

We have seen that verbal answers in Czech only contain the finite verb. It seems therefore plausible that the verb moves out of the IP to the CP domain, because it bears the interpretable polarity feature that is focused in yes-no questionanswer pairs (see [START_REF] Holmberg | The syntax of yes and no in Finnish[END_REF], Gruet-Skrabalova 2012a). In other words, the finite verb assigns a positive or negative polarity value to the head encoding polarity. The complement of this head, i.e. clause including second position clitics (FinP), would then be elided, for it is given in the question, as shown in ( 15). I assume that morphological difference between the verb in the answer and its antecedent in the question, due to agreement features, is not relevant for ellipsis. Other elliptical constructions, e.g. gapping in (16a) 8 or short answers to wh-questions in (16b), show that identity between deleted materiel and its antecedent is not based on their surface structure (see Goldberg 2005, Merchant 2001, 2013 9 7 "Both Neg(ation)P and Aff(irmation)P are claimed to be different instantiations of a more abstract projection: the ∑ Phrase." (Laka 1990: 86) 8 This allows to have a unified analysis of gapping in languages without and with a rich verbal morphology, like English and Czech: I eat apples and the other children (eat) pears. / Já jím jablka a ostatní děti (jedí) hrušky. 9 "Any identity relation based on morphological or phonological identity (of the elided verb phrase) with its antecedent would be clearly wrong." (Merchant 2013:27) (16b) Co jsi poslala Petrovi? -Dopis (jsem mu poslala).

what aux.2sg sent to-Peter letter (aux.1sg him sent)

The analysis proposed here will be revised in section 5 to account for the role of the particles as well as for their combining with (not only) verbal answers.

Answering particles

In this section, I discuss the distribution of answering particles in answers to positive and negative questions. I show in particular that there are two types of answers to negative questions, which are not equivalent: polarity-based answers and truth-based answers.

Particles in answers to positive questions

If we use particles to answer positive questions, i.e. questions containing a positive verb, they will function in the same way as the verbal answers do. So, ano will express a positive answer and combine with a positive verb, while ne will express a negative answer and combine with a negative verb, as shown in (17). [START_REF] Pope | Questions and answers in English[END_REF] Given that particles and verbs in (17) express the same value, I propose following [START_REF] Holmberg | The syntax of yes and no in Finnish[END_REF] that particles are generated in the specifier of the polarity projection where they agree with the verb in the polarity head according to Spechead agreement (Chomsky 1991), as shown in (18). Assuming further that the verb can move at LF, we explain that the particles appear alone. When the verb moves overtly, particles have an emphatic role and are thus facultative. 10

(18) [ PolP Pošleš [ FinP mu t ten dopis]] -[ PolP Ano [+] [ Pol' pošlu [+] [ FinP Ø]]] -[ PolP Ne [-] [ Pol' nepošlu [-] [ FinP Ø]]]
(will you) send.2sg him the letter yes send.1sg // no neg.send.1sg

10 Verbal answers in Basque can also be preceded by the particle bai ('yes') or ez ('no'). Laka claims that these particles are not in ∑P, but their syntactic status is not clear.

The proposal in (18) correctly predicts that both particles and verbs can be embedded under a complementizer (C) But the analysis also predicts that particles and verbs always agree, which is not true in all answers to negative questions, as we will see in section 3.2. Moreover, although the particles are used in the same way independently of whether the question is interpreted as an informative question or not, e.g. a dubitative question in (20a), the proposal does not account for answers to formally polar questions that only ask to confirm a focused XP, as in (20b). I will come back to these answers in section 5.

(20a) On si koupil Škodovku?! (tomu nemůžu věřit) -Ano, koupil.

-Ne, nekoupil.

Particles in answers to negative questions

Verbal answers to negative questions are identical to verbal answers to positive questions. But if we look more carefully on particles, we observe that both ano and ne can be used to confirm a negative question as in (21ab) or to deny it as in (21cd), where ano is furthermore obligatorily preceded by the conjunction ale ('but') 13 . Consequently, particles and verbs do not always agree, since ano cooccurs with a negative verb in (21b) and ne with a positive verb in (21d If we assume following [START_REF] Kosta | Negace a větná struktura češtiny[END_REF] that negative verbs in Czech are always ambiguous between sentential and VP-negation reading, this distinction cannot explain why ano+negative V and ne+positive V may answer only a subset of negative questions. Consequently, I'd rather argue in the following section that use of particles depends on whether sentential negation is interpreted as true or as expletive. Only questions containing true negation, thus conveying a negative presupposition, will be confirmed by ano and denied be ne. Such answers are called by [START_REF] Pope | Questions and answers in English[END_REF] truth-based answers.

Negative questions

In this section, I argue that we have to distinguish between negative questions with expletive negation and negative questions with true negation (see e.g. [START_REF] Brown | Asymmetries in the scope of Russian negation[END_REF][START_REF] Brown | Asymmetries in the scope of Russian negation[END_REF][START_REF] Abels | Expletive (!) Negation[END_REF]. The former ones behave as positive questions, while the latter ones behave as negative assertions, that can be confirmed by ano and denied by ne. Questions with true negation are syntactically rising negative declaratives (see [START_REF] Gunlogson | True to form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English[END_REF].

Negative questions with expletive vs. true negation

It has been claimed for Russian [START_REF] Brown | Asymmetries in the scope of Russian negation[END_REF] that there are several semantic types of negative questions 15 and that only presumptive and emotionally charged questions have a negative presupposition, i.e. they contain true sentential negation. The other ones contain expletive negation, i.e. a formally negative morpheme, but semantically void of content (cf. pleonastic negation in Romance languages, Espinal 1992). [START_REF] Abels | Expletive (!) Negation[END_REF] argues that negative morpheme is always semantically negative since it licenses Genitive of Negation, but it becomes expletive when it is attracted by an interrogative complementizer. Consequently, it is not able to license ni-phrases in Russian. 16 The analysis implies that expletive negative morpheme occurs high in the syntactic structure. Although Czech main questions do not usually contain any interrogative complementizer, questions with initial negative verb as in (23a) do not license ni-phrase as subject, like positive declaratives in (23d), while questions with non initial verb as in (23b) licences it, like negative declaratives in (23c). This suggests that (23a) contains expletive negation while (23b) contains true negation. Finally, when the question contains an interrogative particle like copak in (26a), it can be answered exactly like a positive question, which again shows that negation here is interpreted as expletive. However, when the verb appears below the subject in (26b), it is still able to license the subject nikdo. Negation in ( 26) seems therefore expletive only with respect to the polarity of the question and not with respect to ni-phrases. This confirms Abel's (2002) proposal that negation becomes expletive by virtue of its movement to the C.

(26a) Copak zdravotní systém v Americe není drahý? -Ano, je. (ČNK)

INT.PART health system in America neg.is expensive yes is 'Isn't the American health system expensive?' 'Yes, it is.' (26b) Copak nikdo neví, jak se to dělá ? -Ne / Ano, nikdo.

INT.PART anybody neg.know.3sg how refl this make.3sg 'Does nobody know how this is done?' 'No, nobody.' I conclude that negation in questions with clause-initial negative verb (i.e. before the subject) is interpreted as expletive and that such questions behave as positive questions, as shown in ( 27). In contrast, negation in questions with noninitial negative verb can be interpreted as true negation. Consequently, such questions are confirmed by ano (+ne-V) and denied by ne (+V). In next section, I argue that these questions are negative rising declaratives.

(27a) Nechtěl byste šálek čaje? -Ano (*ne)chtěl. // Ne *(ne)chtěl.

Negative rising declaratives

Questions can be expressed not only by interrogative sentences, but also by declarative sentences with rising intonation (so-called rising declaratives). [START_REF] Gunlogson | True to form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English[END_REF] argues that such rising declaratives are non neutral questions that differ from interrogative sentences in that they convey a presupposition, like declaratives sentences.17 Following Gunlogson, I claim that negative questions confirmed by ano and denied by ne are rising declarative that convey a negative proposition and are used to elicit the agreement or disagreement of the addressee with this negative proposition.

Evidence for this claim comes both from the form and from the meaning of these questions. First, they contain a non initial negative verb, like declarative sentences (cf. section 4.1). Second, they are always interpreted as non neutral questions, conveying a negative presupposition.18 So, if A. says to me that she doesn't see well at a certain distance and I ask her (28), I presuppose that she can't read the panels. If she replies ano (familiarly jo), she confirms this negative presupposition. But if she can still read the panels, she would say (ale) ne / ale ano. The question in (28) therefore behaves as the negative declarative assertion in (29) that expresses a negative proposition and is also confirmed by ano and denied by ne.

(28) Ty na ty cedule nevidíš? -Jo (nevidím). // -(Ale) ne / Ale jo (vidím). Furthermore, negative declaratives used as questions behave like declaratives with respect to negative polarity items in that they license the subject nikdo (nobody), see ( 23) above.

Finally, particles in answers to negative declaratives are usually emphasized and separated from the following verbal answer by a pause. The particle ne can also be accompanied by the conjunction ale that emphasizes disagreement with the negative expectations of the question, as in (28b). This indicates that the particle is more related to the presupposition conveyed by the question than to the polarity expressed by the following verb. I conclude that negative questions confirmed by ano and denied by ne are negative declarative sentences used as questions that convey a negative presupposed proposition. Consequently, answering particles are used by the addressee to (dis)agree with this proposition.

Proposal

In this section, I propose a semantic and syntactic analysis of minimal answers containing particles and verbs. Particles are generated in the specifier of the polarity projection where they express absolute or relative polarity, depending on the polarity of the question. The focus verb or another focused XP move to the Focus projection below the PolP. The complement of the head PolP and FocP can be elided for they are given in the question.

Absolute vs. relative polarity

To account for the distribution of answering particles in answers that have been presented in the previous sections, I propose that particles express either absolute polarity, or relative polarity. Absolute polarity is the feature that has two values: positive [+] and negative [-]. Relative polarity, defined in [START_REF] Farkas | The grammar of polarity particles in Romanian[END_REF] as the relation between the absolute polarity of the question [Q] and the absolute polarity of the answer [A], is a feature that also has two values: same [Q,A] and reverse [Q,A]. The value same means that the polarity of the question and that of the answer are identical. The value reverse means that they are different. Given the absolute polarity of the question and of the answer, the value same can have two interpretations: [+,+] and [-,-]. Likewise, the value reverse can have two interpretations: [+,-], and [-,+].

Positive questions and negative questions with expletive negation have open polarity, because they ask [P or not P]. Consequently, the particle ano expresses the positive value [P] and the particle ne the negative value [not P]. On the contrary, negative rising declaratives have negative polarity and only ask to confirm [not P]. Consequently, the particle ano confirms the same value [not P], while the particle no disconfirms [not P], thus implies the reverse value [P]. More precisely, ano realizes the value [-,-], and ne the value [-,+]. In some other languages, this value is realized by a specific reversing particle. 19The second interpretation of same and reverse applies in answers that convey a positive presupposition (i.e. positive rising declaratives). Here ano realizes the value [+,+] and ne the value [+,-], which implies that these answers are at surface identical to answers where particles express absolute polarity, thus [+] in case of ano and [-] in case of ne (see section 3.1).

Particles and verbs

To account both for particles that agree with the verb and for the particles that (dis)agree with the questions presupposition, I propose to revise the analysis of verbal answers and agreeing particles in section 3.1 in the following way.

First, I propose that particles are always generated in the specifier of the PolP. When the polarity of the head is open, the particles assign the value [+] or [-] to this head, see (30). When the polarity is given (in the presupposed proposition), the particle express the value [same] or [reverse] with respect to this polarity, see (31). In both cases, the complement of PolP can be elided.

(30) Pošleš [x] mu ten dopis? -[ PolP Ano [+] [ Pol' [+] [ XP Ø]]] (will you) send.2sg him the letter -[ PolP Ne [-] [ Pol' [-] [ XP Ø]]] (31) Oni ten návrh nepřijali [-] ? -[ PolP Ano [same] [ Pol' [-] [ XP Ø]]] they did not accept the proposal -[ PolP Ne [reverse] [ Pol' [-] [ XP Ø]]]
Second, the verb in verbal answers moves to the head of Focus projection below PolP, because it is focused, see ( 32) and (33). Since the verb bears itself the polarity feature of the answer, the particle are not necessary if the verb moves overtly. Answers combining both elements are emphatic, and verbs and particles 'agree' in (33).

(32) Pošleš [x] mu ten dopis? -

[ PolP Ano [+] [ Pol' [+] [ FocP pošlu [+] [ XP Ø]]]] -[ PolP Ne [-] [ Pol' [-] [ FocP nepošlu [-] [ XP Ø]]]] (33) Oni ten návrh nepřijali [-] ? -[ PolP Ano [same] [ Pol' [-] [ FocP nepošlu [-] [ XP Ø]]]] -[ PolP Ne [reverse] [ Pol' [-] [ FocP pošlu [+] [ XP Ø]]]]
In answers containing a focused XP as in (19b) above, this XP moves to the specifier of Focus projection below PolP, see (34). The head of FocP must contain an overt negation (ne or negative verb) in case of negative answer, since the negative value cannot be given by the focused XP (contrary to the focused verb). 20

(34) Petr si koupil Finally, the proposal above does not directly predict that embedded particles always express absolute polarity, as shown in (36) (cf. (18) above). However, [START_REF] Gunlogson | True to form: Rising and Falling Declaratives as Questions in English[END_REF] argues that rising declaratives commit the addressee to the 20 According to this proposal, ellipsis in verbal answers and answers containing an XP can be considered as instances of sluicing, for it has been argued [START_REF] Stjepanović | Multiple Wh-Fronting in Serbo-Croatian Matrix Qustions and the Matrix Sluicing Constructions[END_REF][START_REF] Grebenyova | Sluicing and Multiple Wh-fronting[END_REF]) that sluicing in Slavic languages is triggered by focus feature. 21 Czech is thus in "mid way" between languages like Spanish that use a unique particle yes in all positive answers and languages like French that possess two different particles yes: Spanish: ¿Viene? (Is he coming?) Sí, viene. (Yes, he is.) ¿No viene? (Is he not coming?) Sí, viene. (Yes, he is.) French: Il vient? (Is he coming?)

[+] Škodovku? -[ PolP Ano [same] [ Pol' [+] [ FocP Škodovku [ Foc' ([+]) [ XP Ø]]]]] -[ PolP Ne [reverse] [ Pol' [+] [ FocP Škodovku [ Foc' ne [-] [ XP Ø]]]]]
Oui, il vient. / *Si, il vient. (Yes, he is.) Il ne vient pas? (Is he not coming?) *Oui, il vient. / Si, il vient. (Yes, he is.) propositional content, which implies that the addressee must be able to reply such questions by a straightforward answer. I leave this issue for further research.

(35) Jan nemluví francouzsky? -Myslím, že ne (= nemluví / ≠ mluví).

John neg.speak.3sg French think.1sg that no neg.speak.3sg speak.3sg

-?Myslím, že ano (= mluví / ≠ nemluví).

think.1sg that yes speak.3sg neg.speak.3sg

Summary

In this paper, I examined verbs and answering particles in minimal answers to yes-no questions in Czech. I argued that minimal answers involve ellipsis of the clause (IP) including second position clitics except for the verb that moves to the CP domain and the particles that are generated in the polarity projection in the CP domain. The verb moves to the FocP because it bears the polarity feature that is focused in polar question-answer pairs. Other focused XPs can also move to FocP.

I also argued that negative questions contain expletive or true negation. In the former case, they behave as positive (open) questions, while in the latter case, they behave as negative declaratives, i.e. convey a negative presupposition and have a fixed polarity. Negative questions containing true negation are confirmed by ano and denied by ne, because the particles here (dis)confirm the polarity of the presupposition conveyed by the question. To account for distribution of the particles, I proposed that particles express two kinds of polarity: (i) absolute polarity [+] or [-] in answers to open questions, and (ii) relative polarity [same] or [reverse] in answers to questions with fixed polarity. Relative polarity simply indicates whether the polarity of the question and that of the answer are identical or different. The proposed analysis does not claim that there are two ano or ne in the lexicon. Rather, each particle is a single lexical item, whose polarity is interpreted in an absolute or in a relative way.

  ).

	(6a) Cítíte se jako velký favorit? -Ano, cítím *(se)! (ČNK) 5
	feel.2pl refl as	big favourite	yes feel.1sg refl
	'Did you feel like a real favourite?'	'Yes, I do'.
	(6b) Po dobrém tréninku *(se) vždy cítí jako velký favorit.
	after good training	refl always feel.3sg as big favourite
	'After a good training, he always feels as a big favourite.'
	(5a) Poslali jste	Pavlovi ten dopis?	-Poslali. / *Poslali mu ho. 4
	sent.2pl.m aux.2pl Paul.dat this letter.acc	sent.pl.m sent.pl.m him it
	'Did you send the letter to Paul?'	'Yes (we did).'
	(5b) Rodiče napsali Pavlovi dopis a my jsme *(mu ho) poslali.

parents wrote.pl.m Paul.dat letter.acc and we aux.1pl him it sent.pl.m 'The parents wrote a letter for Paul, and we (then) sent it to him.'

  11, 12 , as shown in (19), and modified by a CP adverb, as shown above (see ex. (13), section 2.2): (19) Mluví Jan francouzsky? -Myslím, [ CP že [ FocP ano / ne [ FinP Ø]]].

	speak.3sg John French	think.1sg	that	yes no
		-Myslím, [ CP že [ FocP (ne)mluví [ FinP Ø]]].
		think.1sg	that	(neg)speak.3sg

Table 1 :

 1 ). Did Pope John Paul not become a victim of a criminal plot?' 'No, he did not.' 11 The complementizer že ('that') is always overt in Czech. 12 Their co-occurrence is possible, but pragmatically odd, because the matrix predicate (a mental verb or a predicate of saying) expresses itself emphasis or rather doubt. 13 See section 5.2 for further remarks on ale ano/ale ne.However, the 'double' use of ano and ne in (21) does not mean that both particles are equally available in all answers to negative questions, as shown in table1. So, ne can always accompany a negative verb, and ano/ale ano a positive verb, while the opposite is not true. Yes and no in answers to negative questions

	(21a) Nestal	se Jan Pavel I. obětí zločinných intrik? -Ne, nestal. (ČNK)
	neg.become refl John Paul I victim (of) criminal plots	no neg.become
	'

[START_REF] Holmberg | The syntax of negative questions and their answers[END_REF]

argues that in English, negative questions answered by yes are positive questions containing VP-negation, because only sentences with low not, which are ambiguous between sentential and VP negation reading, can be answered by yes, see

(22)

. Answers no+positive V are only mentioned in a footnote, because they are very difficult to obtain in English. This is however surprising, since positive questions should be easily denied by no. (22a) Is John not coming? -No. (sentential negation) / Yes. (VP-negation) (22b) Isn't John coming? -No. (sentential negation) / *Yes. (*VP-negation)

  / nobody know.3sg how refl this make.3sg 'Somebody knows how this is done.' Answers in (24ab) confirm our hypothesis. Question (23a) can only be answered by ne (neví) and ano (ví), exactly as a positive question. Question (23b) with nikdo can be confirmed both by ne and by ano and denied by ale ano and ne. The negative morpheme ne-can (but not must) be therefore interpreted as true negation, if the verb does not move overtly to the CP domain. Question (23b) with někdo can only be confirmed by ano and denied by ne, see (24c). It therefore behaves as negative assertions (see section 4.2). Někdo neví, jak se to dělá? -Ano (někdo to neví). // Ne (všichni to vědí). yes somebody it neg.knows / no everybody it knows Furthermore, both particles in (24b) may combine with the negative word, as in positive questions with a focused XP (see (19) above), see (25a) and (25b), where the negative word appears in object DP . The denial would be expressed by (ale) ne or ale ano accompanied by a positive clause: někdo to ví ('someone knows it'), nějakou pozval ('he invited some schoolmate').

	(23a) Neví neg.know.3sg nobody / somebody how refl this make.3sg *nikdo / někdo, jak se to dělá? 'Does anyone know how this is done?' (23b) Nikdo / Někdo neví, jak se to dělá? nobody / somebody neg.know.3sg how refl this make.3sg 'Nobody knows how this is done?'/ 'Somebody doesn't know how this is done?' (23c) Nikdo / Někdo neví, jak se to dělá. nobody / somebody neg.know.3sg how refl this make.3sg 'Nobody knows how this is done.'/ 'Somebody doesn't know how this is done.' jak se to dělá. (24a) Neví někdo, jak se to dělá? -Ne, neví. / *Ano, neví. // Ano, ví. (24b) Nikdo neví, jak se to dělá? -Ne / Ano (nikdo to neví). -Ale ano / NE (někdo to ví). (24c) (25a) Nikdo neví, jak se to dělá ? -Ne / Ano, nikdo. anybody neg.know.3sg how refl this make.3sg no / yes anybody (25b) Jan nepozval žádnou spolužačku? -Ne / Ano, žádnou. 15 I .(23d) Někdo / *Nikdo ví, Jan neg.invited any schoolmate no yes any

e. informative, rhetoric, dubitative, presumptive and emotionally charged questions. 16 The contrast is not relevant for Czech, because Czech does not have Genitive of Negation. somebody

  Pope John Paul I become a victim of a plot?' 'Yes, he did.' / 'No, he did not.'

	neg.wanted cond.2pl cup tea	yes	wanted no neg.wanted
	'Would you like a cup of tea?'	'Yes (I would).' / 'No (I would not).'
	(27b) Nestal	se Jan Pavel I. obětí intrik? -Ano, (*ne)stal. // Ne, *(ne)stal.
	neg.become refl JP I	victim (of) plots	yes become	no neg.become
	'Didn't

  Anna na ty cedule nevidí. -Jo, to se dalo čekat, její rodiče nosí brýle.

	you on the panels neg.see.2sg	yes neg.see.1sg	(but) no but yes see.1sg
	'You cannot read the panels?'	'No, I cannot. // 'Yes, I can.'
	(29) Anna the panels neg.see.3sg	yes this refl could expect her parents wear glasses
	'A. cannot read the panels.' 'Yes, that's what we could expect, for her parents wear glasses.'
	-Ne, to není možný, vždyť vždycky dobře viděla!
		'No, that's impossible, she has always had a good sight!'

E.g. Basque[START_REF] Laka | On the Syntax of Negation[END_REF]), Irish (McCloskey 1991), Portuguese[START_REF] Martins | Enclisis, VP-deletion, and the nature of Sigma[END_REF], Welsh[START_REF] Jones | The Welsh answering system[END_REF], Finnish(Holmberg

2001). 2 I do not deal here with answers like možná ('maybe'), samozřejmě ('of course'), and so on. 3 The same contrast between the future auxiliary forms and the past/conditional clitic auxiliaries can be observed in VP-ellipsis constructions (Gruet-Skrabalova 2012b).

Annotation ČNK indicates attested examples from Czech National Corpus.

Overt subjects are focused and appear clause-initially.

Gunlogson (2001:22-25): Rising declaratives are unsuitable in contexts where the speaker is expected to maintain an attitude of neutrality or ignorance. Consequently, they cannot be used to raise an open issue, to solicit an opinion, nor to instigate a

discussion. 18 I rely on attested examples from the CNK and on judgements of 34 native speakers, who kindly answered my questionnaire. I also rely on my own intuition. The example (28) is taken from a true conversation.

E.g. si in French, doch in German or ba in Romanian (see Farkas

2010).


Nicolas Guichon
email: nicolas.guichon@univ-lyon2.fr

Ciara R Wigham
email: ciara.wigham@univ-lyon2.fr

A semiotic perspective on webconferencing-supported language teaching

Keywords: multimodality, webconferencing-based interaction, framing, gestures, teacher-training

In webconferencing-supported teaching, the webcam mediates and organizes the pedagogical interaction. Previous research has provided a mixed picture of the use of the webcam: while it is seen as a useful medium to contribute to the personalization of the interlocutors' relationship, help regulate interaction and facilitate learner comprehension and involvement, the limited access to visual cues provided by the webcam is felt as useless or even disruptive.

This study examines the meaning-making potential of the webcam in pedagogical interactions from a semiotic perspective by exploring how trainee teachers use the affordances of the webcam to produce non-verbal cues that may be useful for mutual comprehension. The research context is a telecollaborative project where trainee teachers of French as a foreign language met for online sessions in French with undergraduate Business students at an Irish university. Using multimodal transcriptions of the interaction data from these sessions, screen shot data, and students' post-course interviews, it was found, firstly, that whilst a head and shoulders framing shot was favoured by the trainee teachers, there does not appear to be an optimal framing choice for desktop videoconferencing among the three framing types identified. Secondly, there was a loss between the number of gestures performed by the trainee teachers and those that were visible for the students. Thirdly, when trainee teachers were able to coordinate the audio and kinesic modalities, communicative gestures that were framed, and held long enough to be perceived by the learners, were more likely to be valuable for mutual comprehension.

The study highlights the need for trainee teachers to develop critical semiotic awareness to gain a better perception of the image they project of themselves in order to actualise the potential of the webcam and add more relief to their online teacher presence.

Introduction

In webconferencing-supported teaching, the computer screen constitutes the interface, both technological and semiotic (see Souchier, Jeanneret & Le Marec, 2003: 35), between the protagonists of the interaction. The screen gathers an array of information that is made accessible through different modes (writing, aural and visual). Among the various tools that are available in this situation (text chat, whiteboard, etc.), the webcam provides participants with a restricted and imperfect access to everyone's image and voice [START_REF] Zähner | Task-based Language Learning via Audiovisual Networks[END_REF].

The image provided by the webcam is composed of a sequence-shot, that is to say a single, uninterrupted, ephemeral and unedited filmic element. Although the quality of desktop videoconferencing has constantly been improving, bandwidth and processing limitations continue to entail imperfect synchronization between sound and image, micro-cuts and even breakdowns [START_REF] Parkinson | Video-linking emotions[END_REF]. Besides, the delivery of the webcam image is below the 24-image per second filmic norm, which can make its reception somewhat jerky. Yet, despite its many imperfections, the webcam image, when used in pedagogical interactions, seems to focus the interlocutors' attention and push the other semiotic resources into the background [START_REF] Guichon | The impact of the webcam on an online L2 interaction[END_REF].

Given that the webcam image not only mediates but also organizes the pedagogical interaction, this article aims to study its meaning-making potential from a semiotic perspective. We follow van Lier's (2004: 62) proposition to envisage any learning context as "an activity space" which includes affordances that may become "meaning-making material" (ibid.) when they are used appropriately. Van Lier defines affordances as "possibilities for action that yield opportunities for engagement and participation that can stimulate intersubjectivity, joint attention, and various kinds of linguistic commentary " (2004: 81). [START_REF] Kress | What is mode?[END_REF] and Jewitt (2009[START_REF] Jewitt | The changing pedagogic landscape of subject English in UK classrooms[END_REF] have shown that the study of language learning and teaching should include an examination of the variety of modes that make up a pedagogical situation and therefore all the semiotic resources that are available as well as the ways in which they are orchestrated. This theoretical standpoint requires a "multimodal analysis" (Jewitt, 2009) in order to explore how teachers (and learners) "make choices among various semiotic options in discursive practices" (Pinnow, 2011: 384) and assess their "meaning potential, based on their past uses, and affordances based on their possible uses" (Jewitt, 2011: 185).

Drawing from this semiotic perspective, the present study sets out to determine how the webcam is an artefact that organizes the pedagogical interaction and provides a certain number of affordances. In line with similar studies [START_REF] Codreanu | Effects of webcams on multimodal interactive learning[END_REF][START_REF] Develotte | The use of the webcam for teaching a foreign language in a desktop videoconferencing environment[END_REF][START_REF] Kern | Technology as Pharmakon: The Promise and Perils of the Internet for Foreign Language Education[END_REF]), we will use data from a telecollaboration project using videoconferencing whereby trainee teachers mediate online sessions designed to develop interactions skills of their distant Irish learners of French. The specific aim of this study is to determine how trainee teachers learn to harness the potential of the webcam for language teaching by paying attention to framing.

Theoretical framework

Examining a pedagogical interaction from different perspectives: champ, contrechamp and hors-champ

In Figure 1, we identify the different elements that constitute a webconferencing-based interaction and use notions from the field of film semiotics to organize our study. These notions are those of champ, contre-champ and hors-champ, 1 which we will explain with reference to [START_REF] Deleuze | L'image-mouvement[END_REF] contribution to film analysis. We organize our presentation of these elements from the teachers' perspective, starting with the champ.

Figure 1. An online pedagogical interaction from different perspectives

The champ is restricted to what is visible within the frame of the screen. The information provided by the webcam during a videoconferencing interaction is rather poor in content. From the teacher's perspective, its main elements are:

 the learner gestures that appear in the frame;  non-verbal micro-events that come across the learners' faces (smiles, frowns, mimics);  lip movements when the learner speaks (usually with a slight time lag between image and sound);  some information about the learner's contexts (classroom setting, decor, etc.) and personality (clothes, etc.) but, because of the close-up framing and the fixedness of the shot, contextual elements usually remain fairly unremarkable.

The visual cues produced by the webcam are scarce since the learners' faces saturate the champ by a close-up and there are very few changes in what is made visible to the interlocutors. Yet, being able to view the partner's image via the webcam seems to facilitate mutual comprehension and help decode an interlocutor's intended meaning [START_REF] Guichon | The impact of the webcam on an online L2 interaction[END_REF][START_REF] Yamada | Awareness and performance through self-and partner's image in videoconferencing[END_REF].

The contre-champ is composed of the teacher's own image, either inserted in or next to the learner's image. This is a unique affordance of videoconferencing: contrary to a faceto-face teaching situation, the contre-champ image allows online teachers to see themselves. [START_REF] Yamada | Awareness and performance through self-and partner's image in videoconferencing[END_REF] have indicated that having access to one's selfimage seemed to enhance a participant's awareness of his actions. If teachers choose to pay attention to this counter-image, they can regulate/modify their own image by getting an almost instant view of what they are endeavouring to make visible (the explicitness of a facial expression, the theatricality of a gesture). It can be hypothesized that the possibility to see oneself while engaged in aninteraction with a interlocutor can reinforce the empathic dimension of webconferencing-supported communication. Contrary to other online learning environments, which offer cultural artefacts (newspaper articles, TV reports, radio programmes), a teacher involved in a webconference is the actual document. By allowing his image and voice to become the main learning resource, the teacher's face gains a metonymic value: it becomes, by extension, the face of French language and culture, a perception that is reinforced by the fact that trainees are actually in France -even if France is barely visible in the frame.

The hors-champ corresponds to the environment of the interaction, that is to say all the elements that remain out of the frame but are nevertheless part of the pedagogical interaction. [START_REF] Jones | The problem of context in computer-mediated communication[END_REF] cautions researchers working in the computer-mediated communication (CMC) field not "to stop at the screen's edge" (p. 24) so as to gain a fuller understanding of context and not to separate what is going on online from what is going on around the participants.

For instance, Figure 2 shows an extract from our data depicting a trainee teacher shot from the side, which provides a glimpse of her environment.

Figure 2. Hors-champ

As can be seen, the hors-champ is comprised of physical elements of the context (the pencil she is holding, the sheets of paper that are placed beside the computer, the space around her, the way she is sitting on her seat, the lighting, etc.). Although they are invisible, the heat and the noise made by the other trainees also form part of the context. Such a view helps remind us that below the faces and the shoulders that occupy most of the frame in desktop webconferencing-supported teaching, there are bodies that may be tired, relaxed or tense, in sum, bodies that have a life and remain invisible to the interlocutor.

The hors-champ also comprises symbolical elements: values, attitudes, teaching philosophy but also perceptions vis-à-vis the learners, their culture, needs and academic objectives. Despite its invisibility, the symbolical hors-champ is omnipresent: it depends on the construction of a common context through a "grounding" process [START_REF] Clark | Grounding in communication[END_REF] that facilitates coordination and collaboration. It is negotiated by the interactants and involves the comprehension of cultural elements such as values, socio-economic aspects and language registers.

Attention to framing

In webconferencing-supported teaching, framing is a matter of choice determined by the participants: they can choose to focus on their face or can provide a view of their shoulders or their torso, thus providing some information about their clothes. There are two ways to attend to the content of the frame, either by adjusting the camera (see Figure 3) or by sitting more or less close to the webcam. It is important to underline that the contre-champ provides cues as to the exact content of the frame and the image that is projected. [START_REF] Sindoni | Spoken and written discourse in online interactions[END_REF] insists that the way people position themselves in front of the camera is never neutral but involves "an intentional act on the part of each participant" and thus becomes "an integral part of the interaction" (Sindoni, 2013: 57). Such semiotic choices, Jewitt (2009) insists, realize social functions.

The work of [START_REF] Goffman | Frame Analysis: An essay on the organization of experience[END_REF] that focused on non-mediated interactions is of paramount importance to feed the reflection on framing and enrich the cinematic reference. Goffman envisages framing as timely interactional procedures that provide interlocutors about one another's current action and projected identity. These procedures contribute to creating "an environment of mutual monitoring possibilities" (Goffman, 1974: 134) whereby each interlocutor both makes himself accessible to others while they simultaneously become accessible to him. In line with Goffman's approach, [START_REF] Jones | The problem of context in computer-mediated communication[END_REF] highlights that CMC technologies offer unique semiotic possibilities allowing users "to be present to one another and to be aware of the people's presence" (Jones, 2004: 23). [START_REF] Guichon | The impact of the webcam on an online L2 interaction[END_REF] have proposed the term "online teacher presence" by which they refer to the ways teachers make themselves present to their students during online synchronous interaction. Online teacher presence is the subjective perception experienced by students towards their online teacher and it depends on three elements: the degree of proximity felt towards their teacher (immediacy), the extent to which they feel they understand or are understood by him or her (intimacy), and the degree of social and emotional projection (sociability), that is, how they feel about the quality, naturalness, and enjoyment of the online interaction.

Framing in other -non-pedagogical -conversational contexts may not be that important.

For instance, [START_REF] Sindoni | Spoken and written discourse in online interactions[END_REF] has studied people interacting in a videochat (Camfrog, Camshare Inc. 2014) and has observed that, although they left their webcam on, participants were performing other tasks (e.g., checking emails or webpages). She concluded that they seemed "to demonstrate a parallel high level of reciprocal tolerance with regard to the low levels of the other participant's attention" (Sindoni, 2013: 77).

Yet, visual cues may prove important for pedagogical interaction since they contribute to "impression formation, rapport, and acquaintanceship development" (Manstead, Lea & Goh, 2011: 147) and help regulate the interaction, for instance by helping define turntaking and reducing overlaps [START_REF] Guichon | The impact of the webcam on an online L2 interaction[END_REF][START_REF] Ricci Bitti | Non-verbal communication and cultural differences: issues for face-to-face communication over the Internet[END_REF]. Furthermore, the space that is shared by the teacher and the learner thanks to framing constitute a site of display that is defined by Jones (2009: 114) as "social occasions in which particular configurations of modes and media converge in a particular time and space in order to make particular social actions possible". Thus, it can be thought that attention to framing constitutes a crucial element of online teaching since what the online teacher chooses to show of herself (facial expressions, gestures, clothes, smile, nods, etc.) contributes to the personalization of the relationship and facilitates learner comprehension and involvement.

Research questions

To conduct an online interaction, we suggest that language teachers need to develop a critical semiotic awareness that allows them to make the most of the semiotic resources and the tools that are at their disposal and to adapt their performance, in order to optimize the learning potential and maintain the learners' attention (Ricci Bitti & Garotti, 2011: 89). We see this critical semiotic awareness as an intricate part of what it is to teach a language online. It has a semiotic content because teaching is seen as the production of an array of signs that are verbal and non-verbal. It needs to become critical since teachers progressively have to (1) develop a high level of consciousness regarding all the information they are conveying when they interact with their learners and (2) become able to assess the impression with which they provide their learners.

The present qualitative study aims to analyse how framing is used by trainee teachers with regards to the pedagogical interaction. We choose to explore the following questions:

1. How do trainees position themselves in front of the webcam? 2. What are the communicative functions of gestures that are visible / invisible in the frame? 3. To what extent were the trainees aware of their framing choices? How were the framing choices perceived by the learners?

Methodology

Pedagogical context and participants

The context for this study was a telecollaborative project that brought together French as a foreign language (FFL) trainee teachers (henceforth 'trainees') and undergraduate Business students in their third semester of learning French at Dublin City University.

The trainees were second-year students on the Master of Arts in Teaching French as a Foreign Language programme at Université Lyon 2 (UL2). The telecollaboration project formed part of an optional module entitled 'Online teaching'. The primary objectives were for students to:

 develop professional skills to teach FFL online (activity preparation, mediation, corrective feedback);  analyse their teaching practice and develop reflective analysis around this;  understand issues linked to pedagogical engineering.

For the language students from Dublin City University (DCU) the project formed part of a 12-week blended French for Business module. This module, worth 5 ECTS credits, had CEFR level B1.2 (Council of Europe 2001) as its minimum exit level. The project was aligned with various module learning outcomes including being able to:

 understand standard written and spoken language (live or broadcast), on topics related to professions, work placements and job applications;  apply for a job or a work placement through French;  demonstrate a sufficient range of written and spoken language to talk about competencies, past academic or professional experiences, and personal goals;  make effective use of digital resources and tools for communication purposes.

The participants met for six 40-minute online sessions in autumn 2013 via the webconferencing platform Visu [START_REF] Bétrancourt | Assessing the use of a Trace-Based Synchronous Tool for distant language tutoring[END_REF]. Visu was specifically designed for synchronous language teaching and was the outcome of a research and development project involving computer scientists and specialists of language education and cognitive psychology (see below for the description of functionalities). Following an introductory session, each online session was thematic and focused on Business French (professional experiences, preparing for an internship, project management, pitching a project, interviews, labour law). The pedagogical scenario for each of the six sessions was designed by two of the trainees and formed part of the circular learning design of their online teaching module (Figure 4). The webconferencing platform was used for steps four, five and seven of the process modelled in Figure 4. The platform offers three spaces: an area for preparing educational resources (step 4), a multimodal webconferencing room for synchronous interactions between participants (step 5) and a retrospection room where interactions can be replayed for training purposes (step 7). The interaction data focussed upon in this study comes primarily from the webconferencing-based interactions of step five.

A research protocol was designed by the researchers involved in the telecollaboration project and was approved by Dublin City University's research ethics committee. Participation in the study was voluntary: not all students gave permission to use their data: all trainees (ten females, two males) and 12 of the 18 students (eight females, four males) gave permission. To preserve anonymity, all participant names have been changed. Groups were formed randomly by the two course lecturers with no consideration of gender. Because of the uneven number on both sides, this resulted in five of the seven trainees working with two learners whilst the other two trainees had one-to-one sessions. Each participant had their own computer and used headsets in order to ensure the best communication. Trainee teachers and students were in language labs during the exchanges. Students who were working in the same triad were, wherever possible, physically separated in the language lab

Data collection

To study the framing choices at play when teacher trainees interact with their distant learners and the impact they had on the interactions, three complementary data sets were used:

-(1) the hors-champ and webcam films of three trainees (Pam, Victor and Samia , see for example Figure 2) who were engaged in an interaction. Our data sample is limited to three sessions for technical and practical reasons: it was unreasonable to imagine that for each session we could position a video camera on the hors-champ environment of each participant as the size of the classroom did not allow us to do this and we did not have sufficient access to video cameras. We also felt that doing so would disturb the interaction: the research aspect of the project would become obtrusive. The three traineeteachers for which a hors-champ recording was made were therefore volunteers. All webcam recordings were recorded and stored automatically by the Visu software.

-(2) screen shot images: These were taken from each of the twelve trainees' webcam videos to examine whether transformations exist in the trainees' webcam positioning over the six weeks of interaction. Around minute 17, a screen shot of the dominant framing choice was taken. Minute 17 was chosen because the sessions were underway and any initial technical issues, occurring most frequently during the opening phases of sessions, had been resolved.

-(3) extracts of trainee feedback and learner interviews and in an attempt "to "zoom in" on fine-grained detail and pan out to gain a broader, socially and culturally, situated perspective" as advocated by Flewitt, Hampel, Hauck & Lancaster, 2009: 44). With regards to trainee feedback, transcriptions of the reflective feedback sessions (step 7, Figure 4) were utilized in order to examine the importance the trainees grant to framing and gestures. Learner interviews comprised recordings of post-course interviews conducted face to face with the DCU students. The following questions pertaining to this study were asked:

 To what extent / when were you looking at your tutor's webcam image?  What were you looking at more specifically?  What did the webcam image bring to the conversation with your tutor?  Did seeing your tutor sometimes bother you?  During the sessions, were you aware of the image that you communicated of yourself through the webcam?

Data transcription and annotation

To address our first research question concerning how trainees positioned themselves in front of the webcam, we classified each screen shot image taken of the 12 trainees' framing at minute 17. Table 1 shows the four different categories used to classify the trainees' framing choices.

Framing category

Explanation extreme close-up shot

The trainee's face saturates the frame but is only partially visible. At least one crucial element is missing (eyes, mouth or eyebrows are not visible).

close-up shot

The webcam is focused on the participant's face. head and shoulders shot The trainee's face and shoulders can be seen.

head and torso shot The trainee's face, shoulders and torso can be seen. 1992) schema that categorises gestures as iconic (representations of an action or object), metaphoric (illustrating an abstract concept), deictic (pointing gestures at concrete or abstract spaces) and beats (movements to accompany the rhythm of the discourse). To this schema we add the category of emblems [START_REF] Kendon | The study of gesture: some observations on its history[END_REF] referring to culturally specific gestures. We also annotated actions: communicative actions that impact on the communication, for example, writing something down or typing, and extra-communicative actions, for example scratching forehead, 'playing' with pen, as well as movements of the webcam or the computer screen. The latter allowed us to see when trainees explicitly changed their framing choices. Although text chat is not the focus of this article, it was included in transcriptions to facilitate future analyses on the interactions between different modalities in the verbal mode. For example, scratching forehead, pushing hair behind ear, 'playing' with pen.

The ELAN software was chosen as it is open-access and because it was specifically designed for the analysis of language, including sign language and, thus, is adapted to the transcription of non-verbal acts. Each horizontal line in ELAN is used to transcribe one modality that is used by a specific participant. Thus, ELAN gives researchers access to all modalities occurring at a given time and being used by different participants. The software allowed us to align the webcam and hors-champ videos of each session studied (see Figure 5). For the trainees' feedback and the learners' interview data, we first conducted an exploration of all the data and then identified remarks and comments pertinent to our third research question that focuses on the extent to which trainees were aware of their framing choices and the perception of these by the learners.

Data coverage and annotation reliability

The screen capture data used for this study is comprised of the online interactions of involving three trainees. This data set totals 88 minutes and 40 seconds of interaction in which 304 audio acts (participants' verbal output) as well as 550 co-verbal and non-verbal acts were identified.

Ten minutes (11.4 per cent) of the total interaction data were annotated separately by two researchers with regards to gesture act types (n=101 gesture acts). The inter-rater reliability rate was 0.73 for the categorization of different gesture types. To calculate this rate, gesture type annotations agreed upon by both researchers were attributed the value of 1 and annotations that differed were attributed the value of 0. The researchers agreed on the annotations of 74 of the total 101 gesture acts. 74/101=0.73. This is high considering that there were seven possible annotation categories (see Table 2). Following initial coding of a sample of the data, the researchers met to reconcile any differences in categories before the other gesture acts were annotated.

Analyses and discussion

Framing choices

In relation to the first research question, we look at how the trainees positioned themselves in front of the webcam, using the screen shot images taken at minute 17 of each of the sessions. Since our data were captured in natural settings, absences and technical problems had an impact on data collection and out of 84 potential screen shots, only 66 could be retrieved. This moment was chosen because it is situated more or less in the middle of the session when all participants are fully engaged in the pedagogical activity and technical matters have been taken care of. The results that are obtained are organized along a continuum (see Figure 6) from extreme close-up shot, to close-up, to head and shoulder shot, to head and torso shot. The percentages that are provided are to be considered as simple indicators of frequency for each category but no statistical tests have been run.

Figure 6. Continuum of framing choices at minute 17 of the interaction

Extreme close-up shots are quite rare in the data and were mostly produced by the same trainee across all six sessions. Probably due to a lack of attention to the positioning of the webcam (and to her contre-champ image), it zooms in on the upper part of the trainee's head leaving out her eyes, mouth and gestures. All the expressive and affective cues were thus invisible and might have hindered the interaction with the learner as an image was produced that was devoid of empathy.

Close-up shots make up approximately one third of the whole. They give close access to the trainees' eyes and mouths and thus to their facial expressions. It can be hypothesized that such shots reduce the feeling of distance between interlocutors and facilitate the learner's attention to their teacher's voice. Two out of the four learners who were interviewed noted the fact they concentrated on their teacher's lips, which were perceived as crucial to understand certain characteristics of French pronunciation. Thus Aiden said: "when she uses words with /r/ I look to see if she's doing something special with her mouth". Since close-up shots saturate the frame and focus on the faces, they leave out many of trainee teachers' gestures but make their lip movements more visible to students.

Head and shoulder shots are favoured by a lot of the trainees (44% of the whole): thanks to this framing, the learner can see the teacher's entire face but can also glimpse certain expressive gestures when they are made visible by the teacher.

Head and torso shots can only be produced when the teachers sit back in their chairs, keeping the webcam at a certain distance and thus allowing the production of gestures to be quite visible. The communication space is thus larger and allows teachers to be more than 'talking heads' by revealing the way they are dressed and some of the context in which the interaction is taking place.

A close examination of the data reveals that a certain type of framing seems to be chosen by each trainee and that this choice evolves only marginally during the six-week telecollaboration project. This may indicate a difficulty to adjust one's posture to new teaching circumstances involving dealing with many other elements simultaneously. If we exclude extreme close-ups that do not seem to be semiotically adapted to this type of communication, framing seems to provide a trade-off between the visibility of the face and the visibility of the gestures, the first being maximized by close-up shots and probably facilitating the teacher's endeavour to show empathy while the second requires head and torso shots and foster the teacher's bodily expressivity (maybe to the expense of producing a certain distance with the learner). It is difficult to say which of the framing choices is most appropriate for webcam-mediated language teaching. Indeed, it can be hypothesized that framing may be usefully adapted by the teacher, interaction after interaction or moment by moment, according to the task at hand (fine-grained comprehension and focus on pronunciation might better be transmitted by close-up shots while some collaboration tasks might require head and torso shots), the familiarity of the interlocutors (getting literally closer with time but needing space at first), the learners' culture (proxemics being culturally significant as Hall showed back in 1966) or pedagogical intentions. This leads us to advance that trainees have to become critically aware of the semiotic effect each type of framing can have on the pedagogical interaction so that they make informed choices to monitor the image they transmit to their distant learners according to an array of professional preoccupations that are of affective, cognitive, and expressive orders.

Relationship between framing choices and gestural space

The framing choices of the trainees influenced whether a shared gestural space was established, or not, between the trainee and his/her students. In head and shoulders shots and head and torso shots (see Figure 5), the gestural space becomes shared and both the trainees' gestures, in addition to their facial mimics, can be seen by students, thus providing a common "site of display" (see Jones, 2009:115). The students attributed importance to the possibility of sharing this space, describing that it made them feel more at ease during the pedagogical interaction, helped to clarify potential misunderstandings and also increased their level of concentration, as Examples 1 & 2 demonstrate.

Example 1 (Catriona): "it felt more comfortable to see who you were talking to … we could see what was happening if she was laughing"

Example 2 (Catriona) "she tried to use her hands a lot to explain things …it's more attractive… you listen more to what she says"

The trainees' framing choice also had pragmatic implications. In Example 3, one student describes that she had said something in Spanish, rather than in the target language French, and that if she had not been able to see the pouting mimic of her teacher she would not have been able to interpret that she was joking about being angry at the use of another language.

Example 3 (Ana) "I said something in Spanish she pouted. It was a joke. If I hadn't seen her I would have thought she was angry"

In this example, the trainee exploits the characteristics of head and shoulders' framing to shape the interaction in a positive way by developing the social relationship between herself and her student through her co-verbal behaviour.

Examples 1-3 demonstrate that the content of the webcam image has an impact on students' appreciation and comprehension of the online situation: this reinforces the importance of making online teachers semiotically aware of the image they project of themselves to their students.

Visibility and communicational functions of gestures

The framing choices of the trainees also influenced whether gestures used in the interaction were visible to their students.

In Figure 7, image A, the emblem gesture to encourage the students is clearly directed at the webcam for the students' benefit and therefore is visible in both the hors-champ and the webcam views. In image B, however, although the circular gesture, associating the speaker and the interlocutor that accompanies the phrase 'our theme today' is performed by Pam, it is barely visible in the webcam view for the students who indeed would not be able to interpret its meaning from the webcam view. Figure 8 shows, for the three sessions examined, the total number of gestures performed by the three trainees (seen in the hors-champ view on the left of Figure 8). When we examined whether each gesture was visible, barely visible or not at all visible in the webcam view, our data show a significant loss of information between the gestures performed (shown in cross-hatching) and those that were clearly visible to the students (shown in grey).

Figure 8. Gestures in and out of the frame for the three trainees Indeed, for all three trainee-tutors examined there is a distinct loss between the numbers of communicative gestures performed (emblems, metaphorics, iconics, deictics and beats) and those visible for their interlocutors in the webcam view. For Pam, 18 of her communicative gestures (n=129) are visible in the webcam view, for Victor three of his communicative gestures (n=11) are seen in the webcam and for Samia only four of her total communicative gesture acts (n=74) are visible to her students. It should be noted that the participant Samia had technical difficulties during the session and that for short intervals during the session her webcam was not connected. This could partially explain the difference between the number of gestures produced and those that were visible. In contrast with Pam and Samia, Victor uses significantly fewer communicative gestures (n=11) than extra-communicative actions (n=61).

To illustrate this, in the hors-champ shot in Figure 9, Samia's gesture to accompany the phrase 'the last two weeks' clearly duplicates what is being said in the audio modality and therefore may have been performed to aid students' comprehension (see [START_REF] Tellier | L'impact du geste pédagogique sur l'enseignement/apprentissage des langues étrangères : Etude sur des enfants de 5 ans[END_REF] "pedagogical gesture"). However, in the webcam shot this information is not conveyed maybe because it was a self-regulatory gesture made by the trainee to help her with her own speech. There has been a missed opportunity for the trainee to coordinate her actions in the two semiotic modalities, the audio and the kinesics, in order to aid comprehension for her students. In contrast, when trainees coordinate the two semiotic modalities, their communicative gestures may become valuable for mutual comprehension. Figure 10 illustrates this. Pam is explaining the difference between the vocabulary items salarié (employee) and bénévole (volunteer). The trainee looks directly at the screen and communicates in the kinesic modality to her students with the first deictic gesture 'you' which is visible in the webcam view. Although both trainees in these examples make the same framing choice of a head and shoulders shot, Pam manages to better frame her gestures to aid the interaction. She shows she is aware, through her framing choices and use of a shared gestural space, that she is communicating using both the kinesic and audio modalities. In this gesture sequence, Pam's gestures are held long enough within the framed image, so that these particular gestures can be perceived by the students. Her attention to both framing and purposeful gesturing testify that she is developing her critical semiotic awareness.

Following her first deictic gesture, Pam then illustrates the concept of earning money.

Using an emblem that is culturally specific, she rubs her thumb and her index upward as the French do to mean "make money". Here, we can see that the choice to frame gestures has implications from a cultural perspective even if the meaning of this gesture might be lost on the Irish learners would do not share the same emblem. The teacher then uses a self-deictic 'I'm a volunteer' before insisting on the difference with a gesture that accompanies 'I' but that is not seen by the students. Mutual understanding is then aimed for with a final gesture that accompanies 'I don't earn money'. This abstract deictic gesture moves backwards pointing back to a shared communication space between the teacher and her students earlier in the explanation. In this example, we clearly see that the teacher is aware of the modalities in which she is communicating and uses them to try to achieve mutual understanding. Example 4 (Pam) "c'est vrai que je trouve qu'il y a vraiment du langage qui passe par le corps moi quand je m'exprime j'ai souvent j'ai besoin de bouger faire des choses avec mes mains… je me regardais quand même, et je me rendais compte que je disais dis-le et je faisais ça ça et des trucs comme ça et je disais ah oui… je me rendais compte qu'on était là vraiment pour regarder ça et du coup beh oui je le faisais car effectivement c'est de se regarder" (It's true that I find that I really use body language when I'm talking I often need to move to do things with my hands…I looked at myself all the same and I realised that I say 'say it' and I did this and this and things like this and I kept saying 'oh yes'…I realised that we were there really to look at ourselves and so I did because indeed it's about looking at yourself) (Our translation)

Example 5 (Samia) "j'ai l'impression qu'il y a un gros mur là face à moi et je suis limite obligée de passer fin pour me faire comprendre et c'est vraiment c'est c'est ce que je ressens…d'avoir un gros mur face à moi" (I was under the impression that there was a huge wall in front of me and that I more or less had to get over it to be understood and it's really it's what I felt…like I had a huge wall in front of me) (Our translation)

Opening up the shared gesture space, through portrait framing choices, means that some extra-communicative actions come into view (see Figure 11). Extra-communicative actions have little impact on the communication for they do not possess any semiotic meaning. These are actions that are for the trainees themselves (self-centred) rather than for their students.

To illustrate this, our minute 17 screen shot data showed two predominant types of extracommunicative actions. Firstly, the trainees used body-focused adaptors such as scratching a part of their head, touching their face and biting their lips (See Figure 11). These actions allow the trainees to maintain a sense of coherence for themselves, helping them in their thinking processes [START_REF] Codreanu | Effects of webcams on multimodal interactive learning[END_REF]. Whilst these actions are performed for the trainees themselves, they do not go unseen during the interaction as Example 6 illustrates. Secondly, our data illustrate examples of potentially distracting extra-communicative actions (See Figure 12). These gestures are, like the adaptors, self-centred. They could cause interference as they are potentially distracting and detract from the message. We can wonder whether the trainees either forget about the presence of the webcam and thus these gestures yield some kind of naturalness to the interaction, or whether the opposite is true and the participants are too focused on their own images causing them to readjust their hair etc. The analysis of our data has helped us uncover what critical semiotic awareness means when teachers are faced with the use of a tool that reveals only partially the communication space they are involved in. The champ gives access to a limited site of display and it is up to the online teacher to enrich it with cultural and socio-affective cues so as to increase its potential for communication in the target language. Not only is framing essential to display online teachers' gaze, mimics and mouth to render the interaction smoother and more enjoyable, but it requires that they make sure they produce, ostentatiously, communicative gestures that are within the frame and held long enough to be perceived by the learners. Indeed, student interviews revealed that there was an impact of the visibility of mimics and gestures on the perceived quality of the pedagogical interaction, even if our data do not make it possible to determine if the impact was on a socio-affective level only or also for language learning.

As long as the webcam gives access to the teacher's face, there does not seem to be an optimal framing choice for desktop videoconferencing among the three framing types that we identified. As seen in Section 4.3, two trainees (Pam and Samia) used the same framing choices but one used gestures to help move the interaction forward whilst the other did not use the site of display as richly. Yet, we saw that most gestures are invisible to the webcam but if a particular iconic or metaphoric gesture is to be used to help comprehension, online teachers should be careful to display it so that it is visible in the webcam field. This also highlights the importance of communicative facial expressions and mimics which really are visible in this type of interaction.

Thus, choosing either a close-up shot, a head-and-shoulder shot or a head-and-torso shot in order to frame oneself is a decision that can be made timely by the teacher depending on perceived learning needs, pedagogical intentions, task types, familiarity with the learner and intercultural considerations. If the image produced by the webcam is not to be flat, intrusive or devoid of meaning, the online teachers should develop appropriate strategies to actualise the potential of their projected image and thus give more relief to what [START_REF] Guichon | The impact of the webcam on an online L2 interaction[END_REF], also referring to webconferencing mediated pedagogical situations, called "online teacher presence"(see supra). Besides, attention to framing demonstrates online teachers' attentiveness to their learners' cognitive and socio-affective needs and may help to contribute to what Kern (2014: 341) terms "relational pedagogy".

Critical semiotic awareness may be enhanced if teachers use their contre-champ image, as some kind of rear-view window to the interaction, so as to get a better perception of the image they project of themselves and, when needs be, adjust it by reframing themselves, getting closer or further from the webcam or checking that their communicative intentions are not lost by being too furtive or invisible. It can also be a way to reduce extracommunicative gestures that are not necessarily distracting but whose repetition could detract from the message by being not congruent with what is being said. It can be hypothesized that as online teachers become attuned to this situation, they will need only occasional glances at their contre-champ image at critical moments (openings, changes of tasks, cases of misunderstandings etc.).

Developing critical semiotic awareness is thus a matter of learning to adjust one's communication to the constraints of a technology not "to recover the information 'lost in translation' from off-line to online communication, but instead to augment and improve interaction" (Kappas & Krämer, 2011: 9). Mediated pedagogical interactions have long been evaluated as being impoverished and lacking in relief. Now that the technical aspects are improving, we believe that teacher training, that is sensitive to the semiotic elements of online teaching as well as other important aspects of online pedagogy (see [START_REF] Guichon | Training future language teachers to develop online tutors' competence through reflective analysis[END_REF][START_REF] Hampel | The use of videoconferencing to support multimodal interaction in an online language classroom[END_REF], is needed to help teachers make the most of original sites of display without feeling that they are losing something in the process.

Finally, let us not forget that the webcam frame is embedded in the bigger frame of the computer window, an interface which provides the learner with a complex semiotic ensemble. Two questions remain unanswered: (1) how does the content within the webcam frame mesh with the rest of the content included in the frame of the computer ; in other words, how does this specific semiotic resource connect with other dynamic (chat) and static (layout) semiotic resources to make a coherent whole?;

(2) how is the activity in the webcam frame perceived by the learners on a cognitive rather than a symbolic level: what attentional resources are allocated to the webcam frame and to the rest of the computer window and with what changes in intensity? For these two questions, data collected in an ecological situation may be irrelevant, and punctual experiments using eye-tracking might provide insight to complete the present study.

Figure 3 .

 3 Figure 3. Attention to framing

Figure 4 .

 4 Figure 4. Circular learning design of the UL2 module 'Online teaching'

Figure 5 .

 5 Figure 5. Alignment of trainee hors-champ video with trainee and student webcam videos in ELAN.

Figure 7 .

 7 Figure 7. Visibility of gestures in hors-champ and webcam views

Figure 9 .

 9 Figure 9. Missed opportunity for communicative gestures

Figure 10 .

 10 Figure 10. Coordinated acts in the audio and kinesic modalities Our transcriptions of the reflective feedback sessions illustrate that the extent to which gestures are visible may be influenced by framing choices but also, considering Pam and Samia both of whom used a head and shoulders framing shot, by the extent to which the trainees are semiotically aware and feel able to devise appropriate communication strategies (Examples 4 and 5).

Figure 11 .

 11 Figure 11. 'Thinking' extra-communicative actions Example 6 (Siobhan, interview data) "it was really easy to see when she [the trainee] was in difficulty, for example when she asked a question and [my classmate in Dublin] didn't reply and I was thinking you could see in her face, ARGH what do I do now, what do I say, when she made her 'Idon't-know-what-to-do face' I tried to think more quickly".

Figure 12 .

 12 Figure 12. Potentially distracting extra-communicative actions in both webcam and horschamp views

Table 1 .

 1 Classification of screen shotsWith regards to our second research question concerning the functions of gesture that are visible or invisible in the frame, we devised a methodological framework to transcribe the webcam recordings and the videos of the hors-champ environments using ELAN[START_REF] Sloetjes | Annotation by category -ELAN and ISO DCR[END_REF]. Building upon our previous work to understand multimodal communication structures[START_REF] Develotte | The use of the webcam for teaching a foreign language in a desktop videoconferencing environment[END_REF][START_REF] Wigham | A study of verbal and non-verbal communication in Second Life -the ARCHI21 experience[END_REF], we transcribed acts in both the verbal, co-verbal and non-verbal modes (see Table2). To annotate communicative gestures in the kinesics modality, we used McNeill's (

Table 2 .

 2 Classification of communication acts for transcription

	Communication	Communication	Act type	Explanation
	mode	modality
			Audio act	Verbal act in the full duplex audio channel
		Audio
	Verbal		Silence	Interval between two audio acts greater than three seconds
		Text chat	Text chat act	Message entered into the text chat window
			Communicative gesture
	Co-verbal	Kinesics	(iconic, metaphoric, deictic, beat, emblem,	Gestures seen in the webcam or in the hors-champ recording.
			communicative action)
		Proxemics	Movement	Participant moves webcam or computer as seen in the hors-champ recordings.
	Non-verbal		extra-communicative
		Kinesics	gesture (non-communicative
			action)

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a Projet émergent research grant from the École normale supérieure de Lyon . The authors are also grateful to the ASLAN project (ANR-10-LABX-0081) of Université de Lyon, for its financial support within the program "Investissements d'Avenir" (ANR-11-IDEX-0007) of the French government operated by the National Research Agency (ANR). The authors wish to thank Amina Dib for her contributions to the process of data transcription as well as Marion Tellier, Cathy Cohen and our anonymous reviewers for their feedback on earlier drafts.