Nominal Word Order Typology in Signed Languages

Abstract

Although spoken language nominal typology has been subject to much scrutiny, research on signed language nominal word order typology is still a burgeoning field. Yet, the structure of signed languages has important implications for the understanding of language as a human faculty, in addition to the types of universals that may exist across the world’s languages and the influence of language modality on linguistic structure. This study examines the order of nouns and attributive modifiers (adjectives, numerals, demonstratives, quantifiers, genitives, and relative clauses) in 41 signed languages, which span national and village signed languages from various lineages and geographic regions. Despite previous typological research on clausal phenomena indicating that the clausal structure of signed languages differs systematically from spoken languages (Napoli and Sutton-Spence, 2014, among others), the results of this survey indicate that signed language nominal word order typology is strikingly similar to spoken languages in several ways: 1) the most common word orders in spoken languages are also common in signed languages, 2) the uncommon word orders in spoken languages are also uncommon in signed languages, but are attested, unlike uncommon major constituent orders, and 3) the relative ranking of word order strategies, particularly relative clauses, is similar across signed and spoken languages.

Category-specific and system-wide preferences in competition: Evidence from noun phrase harmony

“…However, it is worth noting that the basic word order bias in Motamedi et al (2022), originally reported by Schouwstra and de Swart (2014), is not regularly observed in the typology of spoken languages (although see Flaherty et al, 2018;Napoli et al, 2017, for evidence in sign languages). Whereas the ordering preferences for adjectives and genitives do seem to be observable in the typology of both spoken and signed languages (Coons, 2022; but see footnote 1).…”

“…Table 2: Typological counts of the order of nouns with adjective and noun with genitive, in spoken and signed languages (Coons, 2022;Dryer, 2013aDryer, , 2013b Typological data on harmony between these two dependents shows evidence of both types of biases at work: while the two harmonic orders are both well-attested, the non-harmonic order…”

“…Table 3: Typological counts of the order of noun, genitive and adjective, based on spoken language typological data (Dryer, 2013a(Dryer, , 2013b and signed language typological data (Coons, 2022). 2 Harmonic patterns are common, but so is a particular non-harmonic ordering, with postnominal adjectives and prenominal genitives (bolded).…”

“…The signed language data in this table was collated by the first author based on available data fromCoons (2022). The included data is limited to those languages where a clear order could be defined for both dependent types.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue: Learning Sign Languages as Additional Languages: Considering Language‐ and Modality‐Specific Factors

“…Since the 1960s and 1970s, it has been shown that sign languages of deaf communities are natural languages that can be described by appealing to the levels of structure that characterize spoken languages, such as phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics/pragmatics (Bellugi & Fischer, 1972; Brentari, 2012; Emmorey, 2002; Johnston & Schembri, 2007; Klima & Bellugi, 1979; Meier, 2002; Sandler & Lillo‐Martin, 2006; Sutton‐Spence & Woll, 1999). In some cases, various aspects of structure can be compared to spoken languages, such as the basic order of subject, verb, and object (Napoli & Sutton‐Spence, 2014), relative clause patterns (Coons, 2022), and split negation (Pfau, 2002), all within the syntactic level of structure.…”