<div class="titlewrap"><h2 class="title"><font size="2">Just googling, I found a bunch.</font></h2><h2 class="title"><br></h2><h2 class="title">Recent Perspectives on American Sign Language</h2> <span class="addmd">By Harlan Lane, Francois Grosjean<br><br>(Portions of this are available on line, and I wish that its illustrations were in Sign Writing, they would be so much clearer.)<br><br>A sample page from American Sign Language University discussion.<br><br>http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/pluralization.htm<br><br></span><div><font face="Arial" size="2">Question: A researcher asks:</font><font style="background-color: transparent;" color="#000000" face="Arial" size="2"><br> I am aware of the fact that in most cases ASL noun plurals are expressed by just putting a numeral or quantifier like MUCH or MANY in front of the noun to be pluralised. I have also read (in Wilbur 1987 and Supalla & Newport 1978) that sometimes, plural can be
expressed directly on the noun, by repeating the noun sign a couple of times, or in the case of two objects, using the "dual inflection" where the noun sign is repeated once and the body shifts from one side to the other. I suppose this way of plural marking isn't very frequent, but do you have an intuition when it is more likely to occur? Maybe there are contexts when it occurs more often than in others, and to elicit these plural forms I could try to build up such a context.<br> </font> <font style="background-color: transparent;" color="#000000" face="Arial" size="2"> <br> I am not referring to dual or plural inflection on the VERB but to pluralisation of the NOUN itself. By pluralisation I actually mean all the different ways there are of marking a noun directly for plural, i.e. not via quantifiers and numerals but through duplicating the noun sign, duplicating it with a body shift, or whatever other way
of plural marking on nouns there is that I am not aware of. Could you tell me about contexts where nouns can be directly marked for plural in ASL?</font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="2">Answer: Bill replies:<br> <br> The ways of directly marking the noun would include:<br> * Sweep: HE becomes THEY / IT becomes THOSE<br> * Inflection of the movement: PERSON becomes PEOPLE<br> * Reduplicate: ADOPT vs ADOPTIONS, TEACH vs TEACHINGS, CANCEL vs CANCELATIONS<br> * Reposition: CL:3 (vehicle) becomes "A car here, one here, and one here" via repositioning.<br> <br> Reduplication in the same location tends to occur when you turn a process into a pluralized noun. TEACH is a process. TEACHINGS are nouns. CANCEL is a process, CANCELATIONS are nouns. This is certainly related to "noun/verb" pairing, but there is a subtle difference. We do not reduplicate the sign "ADOPT" to mean "ADOPTION." We either
rely on context, we add some other sign such as "PROCESS," and/or we add a mouth morpheme.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="2">Thus there are verbs that when reduplicated become <i>plural nouns</i>.</font></div> <div><font face="Arial" size="2">Note: You asked how to elicit examples.<br> To elicit examples of various noun usage I suggest you show your language models videos of plural nouns and ask the models to describe what they saw. For example you could show a video of a car accident involving multiple cars and ask them to retell what they saw.</font></div><span class="addmd">Charles Butler<br></span></div><br><br><b><i>slling-l-request@majordomo.valenciacc.edu</i></b> wrote:<blockquote class="replbq" style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(16, 16, 255); margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;"> Send SLLING-L mailing list submissions to<br> slling-l@majordomo.valenciacc.edu<br><br>To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web,
visit<br> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l<br>or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to<br> slling-l-request@majordomo.valenciacc.edu<br><br>You can reach the person managing the list at<br> slling-l-owner@majordomo.valenciacc.edu<br><br>When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific<br>than "Re: Contents of SLLING-L digest..."<br><br><br>Today's Topics:<br><br> 1. research on plural formation in SL (Isabelle Heyerick)<br><br><br>----------------------------------------------------------------------<br><br>Message: 1<br>Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:55:48 +0200<br>From: "Isabelle Heyerick" <isavgtc@gmail.com><br>Subject: [SLLING-L] research on plural formation in SL<br>To: slling-l@majordomo.valenciacc.edu<br>Message-ID:<br> <536f47080809260755o48ab5a26q7b09861d37f35fc7@mail.gmail.com><br>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"<br><br>Dear,<br><br>Currently I am working on a research project
concerning plural formation in<br>Flemish Sign Language (VGT).<br>The study also involves an overview of research on this topic done for other<br>sign languages.<br><br>Up to now I have already read studies on German Sign Language (DGS), Dutch<br>Sign Language (NGT) and previous research on VGT.<br>The BSL research is also on my reading list.<br><br>If any of you have any other study results on plural formation in another<br>sign language, please could you inform me?<br>I am specifically interested in what kind of methodology is used in order to<br>trigger plural formation.<br>Thank you in advance.<br>-- <br>Kind regards,<br><br>Isabelle Heyerick<br>Linguistic researcher VGTC vzw<br><br>www.vgtc.be<br>-------------- next part --------------<br>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br>URL:
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