A Featural Approach to Sign Language Negation

Pfau, Roland

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-17464-8_3

Cited by 70 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…The realization of standard negation in individual sign languages, as well as the attested typological variation across sign languages, has been described in a number of studies, both from a descriptive and a theoretical perspective (Zeshan 2004(Zeshan , 2006aQuer 2012;Pfau 2016). In Section 2.1, we will therefore refrain from providing a detailed description of all the typological patterns but, for the most part, restrict our attention to a crucial typological distinction that has been identified.…”

Section: Sign Language Negationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the sake of comparison, we use examples from HKSL and DGS, but this should not be taken to imply that all manual dominant and all non-manual dominant sign languages behave typologically in exactly the same way. Rather, it has been demonstrated that typological variation is also attested within the two groups (Pfau 2016).…”

Section: Sign Language Negation In Typological Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

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Signing not (or not): A typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Oomen

Pfau

2017

Linguistic Typology

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The expression of standard negation by means of manual and/or non-manual markers has been described for a considerable number of sign languages. Typological comparisons have revealed an intriguing dichotomy: while some sign languages require a manual negative element in negative clauses (manual-dominant sign languages), in others negation can be realized by a non-manual marker alone (in particular a headshake; non-manual-dominant sign languages). We are here adding data from Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) to the picture, and we demonstrate that NGT belongs to the latter group. Still, detailed comparison suggests that NGT patterns differently from other non-manual-dominant sign languages, thereby improving our understanding of the typological variation in this domain. A novel contribution of the present study is that it is based on naturalistic corpus data, showing more variation than often found in elicitation and grammaticality judgment studies of sign languages, but also presenting new problems of interpretation.

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Section: Sign Language Negationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sign Language Negation In Typological Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Signing not (or not): A typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Oomen

Pfau

2017

Linguistic Typology

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“…The typological picture is much more complex because the two broad typological groups are not homogeneous. Within the two groups, sign languages may differ with respect to the position of the manual negator; the availability of negative concord; and at least within the nonmanual dominant group, the scope options for the headshake (Pfau 2014).…”

Section: Nonmanual Markersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although the distinction between manual dominant and nonmanual dominant systems is modality specific, it is important to determine to what extent the patterns reported for sign languages fit into the existing spoken language typologies (e.g., Payne 1985, Dahl 2011. Pfau (2008Pfau ( , 2014 suggests that Italian Sign Language and Kata Kolok employ negative particles (which are lexically specified for the headshake), whereas German Sign Language displays split negation, as the headshake accompanying the verb is independent of the negative particle. As such, the former two sign languages pattern with spoken languages such as English, whereas German Sign Language resembles French.…”

Section: Hs (4a) Corpse-ash Put Negmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sign Language Typology: The Contribution of Rural Sign Languages

Vos

Pfau

2015

Annu. Rev. Linguist.

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Since the 1990s, the field of sign language typology has shown that sign languages exhibit typological variation at all relevant levels of linguistic description. These initial typological comparisons were heavily skewed toward the urban sign languages of developed countries, mostly in the Western world. This review reports on the recent contributions made by rural signing varieties, that is, sign languages that have evolved in village communities, often in developing countries, due to a high incidence of deafness. With respect to a number of structural properties, rural sign languages fit into previously established typological classifications. However, they also exhibit unique and typologically marked features that challenge received views on possible sign languages. At the same time, the shared features of geographically dispersed rural signing varieties provide a unique window into the social dynamics that may shape the structures of modern human languages. 265

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“…Pfau (2016) also regards the non-manual headshake in German Sign Language or Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) as an affix (p.56).…”

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confidence: 99%

Negation in Singapore sign language

Ang¹

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This thesis describes strategies of negation employed by Singapore Sign Language (SgSL), a language that has been historically influenced by vastly differing sign languages. These languages of influence are American Sign Language (ASL), a sign language that prefers non-manual negation strategies, and Shanghai Sign Language (SSL), which prefers manual negation strategies. With lacking descriptions of SSL, the present study looks to Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL), a language related to SSL through historic relations (Sze, Lo, Lo & Chu, 2013). Negation is of interest to SgSL as negation grammaticalizes early in language emergence (Sandler, Meir, Padden & Aronoff, 2005). Thirteen manual negative forms are described in total. Traces of both ASL and SSL are noticeable in these forms, of which, seven forms bear similarities to ASL negators. Therefore, reflecting heavier lexical borrowing from ASL. Furthermore, SgSL uses morphological negation strategies common to East Asian sign languages (Zeshan, 2004) and likewise prefers manual negative strategies (Zeshan, 2006). Despite few manual negative markers of SSL origin, SgSL prefers manual dominant strategies in negation, like its relative sign language, HKSL (Zeshan, 2006). Patterns of negative handshapes and movements were also present in the data.

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A Featural Approach to Sign Language Negation

Cited by 70 publications

References 37 publications

Signing not (or not): A typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Signing not (or not): A typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Sign Language Typology: The Contribution of Rural Sign Languages

Negation in Singapore sign language

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