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Dear Scholastica,<br><br>
Uou touch on an important issue here. It seems as if "plain
verbs" in a sign language are taken to be a fixed group of verbs
that never show any agreement, whereas "agreement verbs" do
show agreement and "spatial verbs" also show agreement, though
in a different way from agreement verbs. However, it is also observed
that verbs that are reported (e.g. in the literature or dictionaries) to
be "agreement verbs" are used without showing agreement (viz.
there is a lot of variability in the use of agreement). E.g. In
discourses in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) we sometimes see
verbs that can show agreement, used without agreement or only carrying a
subset of the possible agreement markers. Sometimes they are accompanied
by an auxiliary carrying the agreement marking, but not always. Also we
see that verbs that are reported to be "plain verbs" sometimes
do show agreement. It is by no means clear when, how and why the
agreement marking varies, no systematic studies have been done on NGT so
far. During the CISLR conference in Cologne last year Diane Lillo-Martin
and Adam Schembri also report unexpected agreement patterns in ASL
(children) and Auslan (adults), respectively.<br>
I'm not sure whether this answers your question, but I think it is
important to notice that the issue of sign language agreement is by no
means clear yet and needs a lot more study. As you plan to do. Good
luck!<br><br>
Inge Zwitserlood<br>
Radboud University Nijmegen<br><br>
<br>
At 17:53 8-1-2008, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Hi everyone,<br>
<br>
I think I need to rephrase my question. Sorry for any misunderstandings
caused. <br>
<br>
I tried to adopt Padden's (1983, 1988) verb classification for my HKSL
data. Yet I want to clarify the notion plain verbs. I wonder if what have
been called plain verbs may not be really "plain" in terms of
morphology (e.g. verb agreement, aspect, etc) when more studies are done
on ASL and other signed languages. <br>
<br>
Did anyone observe that the so-called plain verbs may actually be marked
with morphemes in signed languages?<br>
<br>
Scholastica <br><br>
<b><i>"Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel@ldc.upenn.edu></i></b>
wrote:<br>
<dl>
<dd>"Scholastica" (Nini Hoiting?) wrote:<br><br>
<dd>#I am a research student who works on Hong Kong Sign Language. My
focus of <br>
<dd>#study is verbs. I would like to confirm if plain verbs are
generally<br>
<dd>#unmarked for verb agreement and spatial locations.<br><br>
<dd>Dan Slobin answered:<br><br>
<dd>#By defnition, a "plain verb" is one that cannot move in
space, and so it<br>
<dd>#cannot mark agreement and spatial locations in itself. But in many
sign<br>
<dd>#languages (including Sign Language of the Netherlands, Taiwanese
Sign<br>
<dd>#Language, and others), there are "auxiliary" verbs that
accompany a "plain"<br>
<dd>#verb. Such accompanying verbs do move in space to indicate relations
such<br>
<dd>#as source-goal, agent-patient, and so forth.<br><br>
<dd>Denise Wetzler added:<br><br>
<dd>#In American Sign Language, verbs move. The movement itself contains
a great<br>
<dd>#amount of information. If want to show that I will go from my house
to the<br>
<dd>#bank and then to the library, these three locations are first
established in<br>
<dd>#the signing space. How I sign the verb 'go-to' then will show where
I<br>
<dd>#started from; went to; and where I ended up. [...]<br><br>
<br>
<dd>It's essential to know what Scholastica means by "plain
verb". Dan is evidently <br>
<dd>assuming that S. has the same definition for it that he does.
<br><br>
<dd>A sign that does not move in space can nevertheless mark agreement
with a <br>
<dd>spatial location, by its orientation and possibly its location as
well. Example: <br>
<dd>ASL PITY (open-8 handshape, palm toward object, middle finger
repeatedly <br>
<dd>bending).<br><br>
<dd>Clarification of Denise's answer: in ASL, *many* verbs move [in
space], but by <br>
<dd>no means all of them.<br><br>
<dd>-- Mark A. Mandel<br>
<dd>Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania<br><br>
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