Coordination and gapping in Catalan Sign Language (LSC)

Abstract

I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor Josep Quer for giving me the chance to work on Catalan Sign Language (LSC) in a very special place where I met amazing people and learnt new languages, among which Catalan became one of my favorites. I also want to thank him for the support and for always being available to look at new LSC data and discuss them together.

Focus and contrast in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): Form and interpretation

“…'also' (see Kaplan, 1984, König, 1991. In many SLs, like ASL, 'and' is not expressed through a lexical sign, but through body leans from left to right (Davidson 2013, Zorzi 2018. In parallel constructions in SLs it is common to find the additive focus particle ALSO as an optional marker that introduces the second element in the coordinate structure.…”

“…In parallel constructions in SLs it is common to find the additive focus particle ALSO as an optional marker that introduces the second element in the coordinate structure. Zorzi (2018) argues that in LSC coordinated structures ALSO functions as a conjunction and not as a focus particle when it is found between the two conjuncts. I will expand the discussion on additive focus particles in chapter 5.…”

“…Up to now few studies have directly addressed the description of Information Structure (IS) notions in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) (Navarrete-González 2016, 2019. Some studies have described some markers of contrast that have been found while describing other topics and/or structures that may mark or involve contrast, like the use of signing space (Barberà 2007(Barberà , 2015 and coordinated structures (Zorzi 2018).…”

The expression of contrast in Catalan Sign Language (LSC)

“…Focus in LSC can be expressed syntactically, through a change in the basic word order (SOV) as in ( 21) (Quer et al 2005) to VO, placing the focused item in final position in the sentence ( 22), Kimmelman 2014), contrast in LSC is mainly expressed through a combination of prosodic and morphophonological markers: left-right body leans (bl) and head tilts (ht), and the use of the opposite sides of signing space (cf. Barberà 2012, Navarrete-González 2016, 2019, Zorzi 2018). These markers may spread over topic and focus constituents, as illustrated in ( 24), and are not found in IF, or simple aboutness topics, as shown in ( 21), ( 22) and ( 23) above.…”

Asymmetry and Contrast: Coordination in Sign Language of the Netherlands

“…Examples ( 22) and ( 23) nicely illustrate that the remnants in elliptical coordination structures, that is, the overt constituents after ellipsis, stand in a relation of contrast to their overt counterparts in the first conjunct. This is indicated by non-manual markers on the contrasting pairs across the conjuncts: a head nod marking the Gapping site in ASL ( 22), raised eyebrows ('re') and head forward ('hf') in LSC, which, according to Zorzi (2018a), are used to mark focalized elements (23). Thus, these non-manual markers can be seen as direct correlates of contrastive accent in spoken languages, which are necessarily associated with the remnants in coordinated structures (see Hartmann 2000).…”