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I agree entirely with Sonja Erlenkamp's response, on the basis of
linguistic work on several sign languages. The directionality of a
sign (often along with gaze direction) encodes the relationship between
the participants, whose identity has already been established by various
means. There is no formal motivation to label any of these
participants in the syntactic terms of grammatical relations (subject,
direct object, indirect object), grammatical cases (nominative,
accusative, dative or ergative, absolutive, oblique), or semantic roles
(agent, patient, recipient). All of the necessary information for
clause interpretation is present in the meanings of spatial locations,
handshapes, and motion; and the interpretation itself does not seem to
need anything but some set of semantic roles. It follows that there
is no such thing as “grammatical agreement” in these languages.
<br><br>
I am presently working on a paper on sign languages and typology, in
which I suggest that sign languages constitute a possibly unique
linguistic type, with no alignment pattern at all. This is because
there are no arbitrary grammatical categories to align with formal
markers-no nominative/accusative or ergative/absolutive or
active/stative or agent/patient, and no relevant formal markers. In
fact, alignment may be a peculiarity of the auditory modality, and not a
necessary linguistic universal. <br><br>
Dan Slobin<br>
Psychology & Linguistics<br>
University of California, Berkeley<br><br>
At 08:18 AM 9/20/2009, Sonja Erlenkamp wrote:<br><br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Well, I have to say, I don't
agree with Ulrike on agreement (no pun intended). Most signed languages
do - as far as I can tell - show no agreement patterns at all. There are
constructions which are called "agreement" verbs by some
researchers, but as for example Scott Liddell has shown for ASL (American
Sign Language) in several of his publications from 1998 to this day,
these constructions are not agreement patterns, since there is
nothing of a linguistic structure that the verb and the noun
phrases actually share. They both make use of spatial locations to create
reference to participants, but spatial locations are not morphemes in
themselves. Signs can be placed at spatial locations, as well as verbs
directed to, but space in itself cannot be a morpheme. There are
several other reasons why the application of the term
"agreement" on this construction is misleading, but I won't go
into detail on that one here. The number of researchers who agree with
Liddell on this issue for different signed languages has been increasing
since he started the debate.<br>
<br>
My own research on Norwegian Sign Languages (and German Sign Language),
shows that these two signed languages do use different markings of
grammatical relations in different construction types withou any clear
S/A or S/O correspondence. The directionality you mention (where
movements are directed in space to mark relations between participants by
means of prompting mental connections between spatial locations and
referents) is only one type of construction, which is not even very
frequent in signed language utterances due to the fact that the verbs
involved are often ditransitive verbs. It seems as if this verb class
consists mostly of verbs conceptualizing some kind of either concrete or
metaphorical transfer, where the movement direction resembles the path of
the transfer. In fact the directional movement in these verbs moves from
the location related to the A towards the location related to the
indirect "object", not the O. I have never seen a directional
verb in the signed languages I have looked at that had a movement towards
the O exclusively, but there are some verbs that can only be moved away
from the spatial location related to the A, something which often
involves another construction: surrogate blends. I wouldn't call that
agreement though. <br>
<br>
<br>
All the best<br>
<br>
Sonja<br>
<br>
<br>
Prof. Sonja Erlenkamp<br>
University College of Sør-Trøndelag<br>
Department of teacher - and sign language education<br>
2004 Trondheim<br>
Norway<br>
<br>
> Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:23:57 +0100<br>
> From: uzeshan@UCLAN.AC.UK<br>
> Subject: Re: O-only agreement<br>
> To: LINGTYP@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<br>
> <br>
> Hi, though this is only partially what you are looking for, the
majority of sign languages have the following agreement patterns:<br>
> <br>
> - no agreement with intransitive S<br>
> - agreement with both A and O for some transitive verbs<br>
> - agreement with O only for some other transitive verbs<br>
> <br>
> Interestingly, agreement with A only in transitive verbs does not
occur.<br>
> <br>
> Verb agreement with transitive verbs is also known as
"directionality" in sign linguistics (due to the agreement
being shown by the direction of the hand movement during production of
the verb).<br>
> <br>
> Ulrike<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> <br>
> Prof. Ulrike Zeshan<br>
> Director, International Centre for Sign Languages and Deaf
Studies<br>
> Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences<br>
> Livesey House, LH212<br>
> University of Central Lancashire<br>
> Preston PR12HE, UK<br>
> uzeshan@uclan.ac.uk<br>
> Ph. +44-1772-893104<br>
> <br>
> >>> peterarkadiev <peterarkadiev@YANDEX.RU> 19/09/09
2:51 PM >>><br>
> Dear typologists,<br>
> <br>
> while Paul Hopper has come up with an example of A-only agreement in
Malay (see references below), I ask a follow-up question concerning the
mirror-image situation: are there any languages where the verb would
agree exclusively with the transitive O (patient, undergoer, direct
object), but neither with the transitive A nor with the intransitive
S?<br>
> <br>
> Many thanks and best wishes,<br>
> <br>
> Peter Arkadiev<br>
> <br>
> <br>
> Paul J. Hopper, 1987 Stability and change in VN/NV Alternating
Languages:<br>
> A study in pragmatics and linguistic typology. In M. Bertuccelli
Papi and<br>
> J.Verscheuren, eds., The Pragmatic Perspective, 455-476. Amsterdam:
John<br>
> Benjamins.<br>
> <br>
> Paul J. Hopper, 1983 Ergative, passive, and active in Malay
narrative<br>
> discourse. In F. Klein-Andreu, ed., Discourse Perspectives on
Syntax,<br>
> 64-87. New York: Academic Press.<br><br>
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><br>
Dan I. Slobin<br>
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Department of
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email: slobin@berkeley.edu<br>
3210 Tolman
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phone (Dept): 1-510-642-5292<br>
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phone (home): 1-510-848-1769<br>
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