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<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I'm not fluent enough in
ASL to have any intuitions on this myself. <br>
<br>
</font><font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">It may well be
that the claim (that VS order is impossible in ASL intransitive
clauses) was either wrong, or more likely, needs further
qualification to be accurate. </font><font face="Times New
Roman, Times, serif"> (This is an introductory textbook, so it is
to be expected that they may have omitted some of the details.) </font><font
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">That is, there may need to be
other factors that need to be controlled for, as Susan pointed
out. We'd need to know not just the glosses of the signs, but
also the nonmanuals and the presence of any pauses, so we could
tell what, if anything, was topicalized. Claims about word order
possibilities refer to the order of the elements in the "core"
clause after the topic. One possible way to test this would be to
add a topic that would tend to keep the other elements out of the
topic slot, e.g. <br>
topic_____<br>
RECENTLY, EAT-FINISH DADDY.<br>
If that's acceptable, then it would seem to be a counterexample to
the claim in Valli, Lucas and Mulrooney. I don't have that
edition of the book, but in the third edition (p. 133) there is
just one short paragraph describing the claim. This at least
makes it clear that they're talking only about noun subjects, not
pronouns, and about plain (non-agreeing) verbs--but not what other
factors may need to be controlled for, such as the discourse
contexts that Ben mentions. <br>
<br>
It may be that the example they use "*SILLY BOY" is bad, other
similar sentences in VS order might be okay, which would suggest
that perhaps the type of verb affects the possibilities, or the
presence of the FINISH aspectual suffix.<br>
<br>
Finally, there is always the possibility of dialect variation.<br>
</font>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Albert Bickford
SIL International (Mexico program and Signed Language Leadership Team)
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:albert_bickford@sil.org">albert_bickford@sil.org</a>
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<br>
On 2011/03/04 1:34 PM, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ben.karlin@yahoo.com">ben.karlin@yahoo.com</a> wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:19e91386-26c4-410c-a3c9-e59df07573fd@blur"
type="cite">
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<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 16px;"><span
style="font-size: 18px;"><font face="handsetCondensed">If
asked the question EAT-FINISH WHO? wouldn't EAT-FINISH JOHN
be a grammatical response? Or in conversation especially
with children a series like EAT-FINISH MOMMY. EAT-FINISH
DADDY. EAT-FINISH JOHN. could this not also be allowed? <br>
</font></span><span style="font-size: 18px;"><font
face="handsetCondensed"> That kind of stereotypical
structure is not unheard of with children or the elderly.
It also shows up in stories.<br>
</font></span><span style="font-size: 18px;"><font
face="handsetCondensed"><br>
</font></span><span style="font-size: 18px;"><font
face="handsetCondensed">This is my sense of how things work.
Have I got it wrong?<br>
</font></span><span style="font-size: 18px;"><font
face="handsetCondensed"><br>
</font></span><span style="font-size: 18px;"><font
face="handsetCondensed">Ben Karlin<br>
</font></span><span style="font-size: 18px;"><font
face="handsetCondensed">St Louis, MO</font></span></div>
<br>
<br>
-----Original message-----<br>
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margin-left: 5px; padding-left: 5px;">
<div style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><b>From:
</b>Albert Bickford <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:albert_bickford@SIL.ORG"><albert_bickford@SIL.ORG></a><b><br>
To: </b><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU">SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU</a><b><br>
Sent: </b>Fri, Mar 4, 2011 20:15:26 GMT+00:00<b><br>
Subject: </b>Re: a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar<br>
<br>
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<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff"> <font face="Times New
Roman, Times, serif">Another way to think about the
situation is that the claim that VS order is impossible in
intransitive clauses in ASL refers specifically to full
(not pronominal) subjects. So, *EAT-FINISH JOHN</font>
would be claimed to be bad. It is commonly the case that
pronouns in languages (especially unstressed pronouns) can
show up in places where nouns cannot, so claims about word
order possibilities have to make clear whether they are
talking about the possible positions of full NPs or also
pronouns.<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">Albert Bickford
SIL International (Mexico program and Signed Language Leadership Team)
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:albert_bickford@sil.org">albert_bickford@sil.org</a>
</pre>
<br>
On 2011/03/04 12:37 PM, Grushkin, Donald A wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:5193ECA5AB1D8A4B88577EECCBC9458B03AA665E48@sl8.saclink.csus.edu"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Thanks for the response, Susan.
If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that in "EAT-FINISH", the subject (me) is implied or "understood", so the PRO.1 is a copy of the implied subject?
________________________________________
From: linguists interested in signed languages [<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU">SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU</a>] On Behalf Of Fischer Susan [<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:susan.fischer@RIT.EDU">susan.fischer@RIT.EDU</a>]
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 10:13 AM
To: <a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU">SLLING-L@LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU</a>
Subject: Re: a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar
Sentences like that could be analyzed as an example of subject pronoun copy (discussed by Padden), since first person subject is often zero, and as far as I can tell, has no relation to the presence of FINISH. It would be restricted to unstressed pronouns (you couldn't substitute MYSELF for IX1, for example). I actually talked about a broader category of post-sentential tags in my very old paper on word order in ASL (Sign language and linguistic universals, recently reprinted in SLL), though I didn't call them that. They have to be unstressed. Note also that a language like Japanese, which is strictly verb-final and more generally head-final, permits postposed topics (without the topic marker wa) under the same circumstances, e.g.,
baka da nee, watasi (falling intonation, low stress)
dumb is right? me
I'm sure dumb, aren't I.
SDF
Susan D. Fischer
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Susan.Fischer@rit.edu">Susan.Fischer@rit.edu</a><a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:Susan.Fischer@rit.edu"><mailto:Susan.Fischer@rit.edu></a>
Center for Research on Language
UCSD
On Mar 4, 2011, at 9:39 AM, Grushkin, Donald A wrote:
Teaching ASL Linguistics again. In Linguistics of ASL (textbook by Valli, Lucas & Mulrooney), it says that in simple sentences with plain intransitive verbs, it is not possible to use VS (Verb Subject) structure. A couple of students pointed out that one can sign EAT-FINISH PRO.1, or RUN-FINISH PRO.1. On the face of it, these do seem to be Verb Subject structures. I hypothesized that the completive FINISH might be changing the structure of the sentence so the rule is not violated. However, I'd like to check with you, the real linguistics experts on this.
--Don Grushkin
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