ASL Syntax

Kegl, Judy

doi:10.1075/sll.7.2.09keg

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Emmorey 2003). This observation corresponds to the cross-linguistic pattern described in Padden (1988), Kegl (2004), Milković et al (2006), Hendriks (2008) and Kimmelman (2012), among others. Interestingly, the semantic feature of animacy seems to be an important factor too.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Argument Linearization in a Three-Dimensional Grammar: A Typological Perspective on Word Order in Polish Sign Language (PJM)

Rutkowski¹,

Łozińska²

2016

J. Univers. Lang.

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The aim of this paper is to analyze the underlying order of major sentential constituents (the verb and its arguments) in Polish Sign Language (polski język migowy, PJM). Although the issue of sign language sentence structure has been present in the literature for more than 30 years now, no satisfactory account thereof has yet been proposed in the case of PJM. Since visual-spatial communication is not fully linear, the importance (or even presence) of basic word order has gone unnoticed in most early February 15, 2016; Revised March 10, 2016; Accepted March 15, 2016 110 Argument Linearization in a Three-Dimensional Grammar : A Typological~ accounts of the linguistic properties of PJM. We analyze the issue of argument linearization on the basis of empirical material extracted from a corpus of PJM which is being compiled at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Although a thorough description has yet to be produced, our data show that PJM does have its own rules of ordering sentential constituents. We conclude that PJM should be classified as an SVO language.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 85%

Argument Linearization in a Three-Dimensional Grammar: A Typological Perspective on Word Order in Polish Sign Language (PJM)

Rutkowski¹,

Łozińska²

2016

J. Univers. Lang.

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“…This view is supported by the fact that structural iconicity has been observed across a wide range of sign language phenomena including the representation of plurals by reduplication (39), of pronouns by using pointing signs toward structured areas of space (8,9,40,41), of agreement markers (9), as well as of metaphors (42,43), and thus may be a general property of signing systems. Moreover, the precise nature of the mapping biases that sign languages appear to use suggests an iconic and nonarbitrary mapping between telic structure and visual structure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases

Strickland

Geraci

Chemla

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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According to a theoretical tradition dating back to Aristotle, verbs can be classified into two broad categories. Telic verbs (e.g., “decide,” “sell,” “die”) encode a logical endpoint, whereas atelic verbs (e.g., “think,” “negotiate,” “run”) do not, and the denoted event could therefore logically continue indefinitely. Here we show that sign languages encode telicity in a seemingly universal way and moreover that even nonsigners lacking any prior experience with sign language understand these encodings. In experiments 1–5, nonsigning English speakers accurately distinguished between telic (e.g., “decide”) and atelic (e.g., “think”) signs from (the historically unrelated) Italian Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, and Turkish Sign Language. These results were not due to participants' inferring that the sign merely imitated the action in question. In experiment 6, we used pseudosigns to show that the presence of a salient visual boundary at the end of a gesture was sufficient to elicit telic interpretations, whereas repeated movement without salient boundaries elicited atelic interpretations. Experiments 7–10 confirmed that these visual cues were used by all of the sign languages studied here. Together, these results suggest that signers and nonsigners share universally accessible notions of telicity as well as universally accessible “mapping biases” between telicity and visual form.

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“…A Sign order in FinSL transitive clauses has been shown (Jantunen 2008) to exhibit regular patterns similar to those found in other sign languages (see Liddell 1980 for American Sign Language, Engberg-Pedersen 2002 for Danish Sign Language, Johnston & Schembri 2007 for Australian Sign Language). Otherwise, the type of verbal -that is, whether the verbal belongs to the PLAIN Type 1 (e.g., THINK) or to a gesturally INDICATING Type 2 (e.g., GIVE) -does not affect the sign order (Jantunen 2008(Jantunen , 2010; Ala-Sippola 2012), as has been claimed for other sign languages (e.g., Kegl 2004 for American Sign Language). Moreover, verbal-initial structures are not used, and the gesturally DEPICTIVE Type 3 verbals (Jantunen 2008(Jantunen , 2010 including a classifier morpheme (e.g., CL-G-'move towards'-2-1 'a person walks towards') are placed at the end of the utterance (see example (11) below); this applies to all structures containing Type 3 verbals.…”

Section: Clauses With a Verbal Nucleusmentioning

confidence: 85%

Ellipsis in Finnish Sign Language

Jantunen¹

2013

Nord J Linguist

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This paper deals with syntactic ellipsis in clauses in Finnish Sign Language (FinSL). The point of departure for the paper is the observation, confirmed by several studies, that clauses in FinSL are often syntactically incomplete. Building on this, the paper first describes how all core-internal clausal material may be elided in FinSL: core arguments in clauses with a verbal nucleus, core-internal NPs in clauses with a nominal nucleus, and even nuclei themselves. The paper then discusses several grammatical contexts which especially favor ellipsis in FinSL. These are question–answer pairs, two-clause coordinated structures, topic–comment structures, blend structures, and structures containing gesturally indicating Type 2 verbals. Finally, the paper argues that FinSL conforms to the main characteristics of a discourse-oriented language, and that FinSL clauses are not highly governed units syntactically.

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ASL Syntax

Cited by 13 publications

References 6 publications

Argument Linearization in a Three-Dimensional Grammar: A Typological Perspective on Word Order in Polish Sign Language (PJM)

Argument Linearization in a Three-Dimensional Grammar: A Typological Perspective on Word Order in Polish Sign Language (PJM)

Event representations constrain the structure of language: Sign language as a window into universally accessible linguistic biases

Ellipsis in Finnish Sign Language

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