rood kool tien persoon in: Morfo-syntactische aspecten van gebarentaal [red cabbage ten person in: Morpho-syntactic Aspects of Sign Language(s)]

Abstract

The study reported on in this dissertation represents the first larger-scale research project on the grammar of Flemish-Belgian Sign Language. 1 Within the framework of the project a corpus consisting of six hours of spontaneous sign language data -four hours of dialogues and two hours of monologues -produced by ten (near)native signers, at the time of the research between 30 and 83 years old, was composed, transcribed and translated. The corpus served as a basis for the study of two different but related central research topics: the expression of the relationship between a verb and its arguments and 'basic word order'. The decision to select these particular topics and the rather descriptive approach was determined by the state of affairs of the research on the grammatical structure of Flemish-Belgian Sign Language. Considering the very limited number of existing research results it seemed appropriate to analyse and describe a relatively large number of different morphosyntactic mechanisms.With regard to the first central research topic -the expression of the relationship between the verb and its arguments -the actual role of word order is looked into. Close attention is furthermore paid to other grammatical mechanisms and constructions Flemish signers (may) use to indicate this relationship, including: verb agreement; 'verb constructions' (a.k.a. classifier predicates, verbs of motion and location, polymorphemic verbs, polysynthetic constructions,…); localisation, the use of loci and pointing signs; role taking (a.k.a. role shifting or shifted attribution of expressive elements) and reference shifting; the use of both hands simultaneously and dominance reversals; the use of null arguments. Many of these mechanisms and constructions had hardly or never been studied for Flemish-1.This research project was funded by the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (October 1990-September 1994. MYRIAM VERMEERBERGENBelgian Sign Language but they had been described for a number of other sign languages. Where possible their description (of form and usage) is compared with existing descriptions in the international literature.The second major research question discussed in the dissertation is whether it is possible to identify a 'basic word order' -defined as: the word order of simple declarative, active clauses, with no complex noun phrases -for FlemishBelgian Sign Language and, if so, how this word order should be characterised. Based on the analysis of both elicited simple declarative sentences and a corpus of six hours of spontaneous language data, a tentative description of 'basic word order' for Flemish-Belgian Sign Language is proposed. This 'basic word order' can be characterised as a combination of two clauses, each representing a subject/ predicate structure. The first part of the sentence constitutes the framework for the second part of the sentence, which allows the combination to be seen as a topic/ comment structure. The frequently occurring repetitions of a constituent within a single clause or of a part of a ...

Order of the major constituents in sign languages: implications for all language

“…This tendency is noted so often that when a language does not exhibit it, the authors typically explicitly say that (as for Sign Language of the Netherlands, Coerts, 1994 ). Surprisingly, a study of Flemish Sign Language found more variation in word order in reversible sentences (where we find SOV and OSV) than in non-reversible (where we find only SOV) (Vermeerbergen, 1996 ). For the languages that favor SVO with plain verbs in reversible sentences, it would seem that NP 1 V NP 2 order is not ambiguous (interpreted only as SVO), whereas NP 1 NP 2 V order is open to the readings SOV and OSV (and see Fischer, 1975 ).…”

Production and comprehension show divergent constituent order preferences: Evidence from elicited pantomime

“…More specifically, SOV is predicted to be grammatical in all natural sign languages; however, “In reversible sentences with plain verbs 1 , SVO is favored” (Napoli & Sutton-Spence, 2014). Although our explanation for this pattern differs from theirs (which is based on ambiguity), the fact remains that these natural languages behave as our account predicts, with the only known counterexample being Flemish Sign Language, which permits both SOV and OSV for reversibles (Vermeerbergen, 1996; cited in Napoli & Sutton-Spencer, 2014). …”

Big Things Often Have Small Beginnings: A Review on the Development, Use and Value of Small and Big Corpora for Flemish Sign Language Linguistic Research

“…However, for sentences with non-reversible arguments no clear pattern stood out as SOV, SV and SVO were all found, indicating a large word order variation. Thus, Braes (2019) showed many similarities with the findings of Vermeerbergen (1996) and—however, based on fewer participants—carefully suggests that there is no distinct evolution or change in the word order of Flemish Sign Language.…”

“…In a similar vein, Braes (2019) echoed the work of Vermeerbergen (1996) to investigate word order and a possible evolution or change in VGT word order since the late 1990s. In the context of her bachelor’s thesis, she analyzed the Volterra declarative sentences ( Volterra et al, 1984 ), taken from the VGT Corpus, which were produced by 6 informants (3 male and 3 female, 19–25 years old).…”

“…It should be noted that in most of these studies, the participating signers had to perform different elicitation tasks linked to a specific research question. Apart from Vermeerbergen (1996) , these tasks often did not include free conversations, for instance. Moreover, these smaller corpora were never made publicly accessible since the informants had not been asked to consent to that.…”