Nouns & Verbs

[Linda Lee Lonning]

On Tue, 16 Feb 1999, Victor Brown wrote:

> I follow what you all are saying. This is not my first contact with the
> idea.
>
> I have a question though. I've seen here in Phoenix, Arizona a few deaf
> sign HAVE twice in the noun slot of the sentence. The reason it stuck
> out so is that I was voicing and got stuck for a moment.
>
> After that, I noticed that when I was signing, I would double HAVE to
> form a noun. It was concrete, so that would be legal, Right?
>
> When I "analyzed" it later, it made sense, but what is going on?
>
> Victor
>
Hello all---

I'm going out on a limb here on this one.  I attended a very informative
and seeminly very current couple-day workshop put on by Byron Bridges on
his "Deaf Tend Yours" curriculum (?) I guess you could call it.  (He
produced a book of photos and information describing them and an
accompanying video explaining use of
non-manual markers/signals [nms's] by native speakers.)  I believe that
the "double 'HAVE'" that you report you have seen is not functioning in
any way as a noun but is perhaps inflecting the sign to connote some
temporal aspect/emphasis to the possessive 'have' such as "I have it
'already'" or something of the like.

Everybody let me know you thoughts or chime in to add/revise this
description...

Linda L. Lonning, BS, CT
WISCONSIN--Postsecondary interpreter UWM & out in the community terp-ing,
too