Chapter 2. Negative Concord in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Boven, Cindy van; Oomen, Marloes; Pfau, Roland; Rusch, Lotte

doi:10.1075/scl.108.02van

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 44 publications

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“…Consider the comp-noun bicycle, where simple reduplication (Figure 7a) could also be taken to mean 'to bike again and again', given the fact that the NGT verb bike has the same form as the noun (in fact, reduplication also functions as an aspect marker in NGT, cf. Hoiting & Slobin 2001;Oomen 2016;van Boven & Oomen 2021;van Boven accepted). Still, no sideward movement is added to avoid the potential confusion.…”

Section: Nounmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nominal plurals in Sign Language of the Netherlands: Accounting for allomorphy and variation

Boven

Hamann

Pfau

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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In both signed and spoken languages, reduplication is a common process in the formation of morphologically complex structures, expressing, e.g., plurality and certain aspectual meanings. A framework in which spoken language reduplication has been formalized frequently is Optimality Theory (OT). While an important attribute of OT-constraints is their universality, to date, the question to what extent such constraints are modality-independent, and thus work for sign language reduplication as well, remains largely unanswered. In the present study, we offer the first OT-formalization of plural reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The NGT-data reveal that this language features different plural allomorphs, the choice of which depends on phonological properties of the base noun. However, we also identify variation, e.g., all noun types allow for zero marking.In our formalization, we aim to introduce constraints that are maximally modality-independent, using constraint types that have previously been proposed for spoken language reduplication. Our formalization is the first to take into account base-reduplicant faithfulness for a sign language, and also the first to account for variation in sign language data by employing stochastic OT, whereby some noise is added to the ranking value of each constraint at evaluation time. Evaluating the modality-(in)dependence of our proposed account suggests that the types of constraints we employ as well as the evaluation in the spirit of stochastic OT are not specific to a modality, while the featural implementation is inevitably modality-dependent.

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Section: Nounmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nominal plurals in Sign Language of the Netherlands: Accounting for allomorphy and variation

Boven

Hamann

Pfau

2023

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Aspectual reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands: reconsidering phonological constraints and aspectual distinctions

van Boven

2024

Linguistics

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This study investigates the use of predicate reduplication to express aspectual meaning in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The study focuses on three aspect types that have been found to be encoded by reduplication across sign languages – habitual, continuative, and iterative – and addresses potential phonological restrictions. Naturalistic corpus data and data elicited from six deaf NGT signers were taken into account. The results suggest that (i) predicate reduplication can express all three aspect types, but it is optional; (ii) reduplication expressing habitual and continuative aspect appears to be phonologically constrained; and (iii) such phonological constraints do not apply to iterative reduplication, whose form is different from the other two aspects, in that the reduplication cycles are separated by pauses. Since there is no formal difference between habituals and continuatives in the data, it is suggested that this semantic distinction may not be grammaticalized in the language, and that, possibly, the inflectional system of NGT instead more broadly distinguishes imperfective/perfective viewpoint. While this latter suggestion is in line with findings reported for many spoken languages, the results are different from what has previously been described for NGT as well as for other sign languages. Potential explanations for these differences can be found in both methodological and sociolinguistic factors.

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Negation and Negative Concord in Georgian Sign Language

2022

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Negation is a topic that has received considerable attention ever since the early days of sign language linguistics; also, it is one of the grammatical domains that has given the impetus for sign language typology. In this paper, we offer a typological and theoretical contribution to the study of sign language negation. As for the typological side, we add Georgian Sign Language (GESL) to the pool of languages investigated. Our description reveals that GESL displays a number of typologically unusual features: a considerable number of negative particles, including emphatic, prohibitive, and tense-specific particles; specialized negative modals; and a wide range of possibilities for Negative Concord (NC) involving two manual negative signs, including a unique tense-specific instance of NC. Most of the patterns we report—available negative particles, their clausal position, and NC possibilities—are clearly different from those attested in spoken Georgian. As for the theoretical contribution, we investigate how the highly complex GESL negation system compares to existing taxonomies of NC and Double Negation systems, and we conclude that GESL aligns with certain languages that have been classified as atypical NC languages.

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Chapter 2. Negative Concord in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Cited by 3 publications

References 44 publications

Nominal plurals in Sign Language of the Netherlands: Accounting for allomorphy and variation

Nominal plurals in Sign Language of the Netherlands: Accounting for allomorphy and variation

Aspectual reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands: reconsidering phonological constraints and aspectual distinctions

Negation and Negative Concord in Georgian Sign Language

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