28.3993, Diss: Semantics; Syntax; German Sign Language; American Sign Language: Cornelia Loos: ''The Syntax and Semantics of Resultative Constructions in Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) and American Sign Language (ASL)''

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-3993. Fri Sep 29 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.3993, Diss: Semantics; Syntax; German Sign Language; American Sign Language: Cornelia Loos: ''The Syntax and Semantics of Resultative Constructions in Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) and American Sign Language (ASL)''

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Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2017 10:39:22
From: Cornelia Loos [cornelia.loos at uni-goettingen.de]
Subject: The Syntax and Semantics of Resultative Constructions in Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) and American Sign Language (ASL)

 
Institution: University of Texas at Austin 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2017 

Author: Cornelia Loos

Dissertation Title: The Syntax and Semantics of Resultative Constructions in
Deutsche Gebärdensprache (DGS) and American Sign Language
(ASL) 

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics
                     Syntax

Subject Language(s): American Sign Language (ase)
                     German Sign Language (gsg)


Dissertation Director(s):
Richard P. Meier

Dissertation Abstract:

Complex cause-result events such as wiping a table off can be encoded
linguistically with a single verb (clean), a resultative (wipe the table
clean), or a multiclausal construction (wipe the table until it’s clean).
Languages differ markedly in the kinds of events that can be described in a
single clause; hence the present work explores whether Deutsche
Gebärdensprache (DGS) and American Sign Language (ASL) can encode both manner
of causation and result state within a single clause. Since an investigation
of clause-level constructions presupposes a thorough understanding of clause
boundaries, this dissertation starts by reviewing and adding to the existing
clausehood diagnostics in spoken and signed languages. Using these diagnostics
in combination with video elicitation tasks and grammaticality judgments, I
show that DGS has two monoclausal resultative constructions that differ in the
order of the causing and result predicates. The constructions both allow
Control and ECM resultatives and may take a stative or change-of-state
secondary predicate. Their semantics differ in that resultatives with [Result
Cause] word order exhibit event-to-scale homomorphy while those with [Cause
Result] word order do not. ASL has a single monoclausal resultative
construction that encodes at least Control resultatives but, in contrast to
English, does not exhibit homomorphic mappings. 

ASL shares a different aspect of resultative semantics with English:
directness of causation. The present work presents the first empirical
investigation of directness of causation and its effect on the acceptability
of resultatives in English and ASL. It finds that both English and ASL
resultatives are significantly less acceptable as descriptors of causative
scenarios in which there is a temporal delay between causing and result
events. This study further shows a significant decrease in acceptability of
English and ASL resultatives when an intermediate causer intervenes between
ultimate causer and result. Through controlled experiments on resultatives in
both languages, I show that temporal delays and intervening causers decrease
directness independently and to significantly different degrees. Lastly, this
study identifies subtle differences in the semantics of ASL resultatives and
their English counterparts. While the degree of indirectness of an intervening
causer is attenuated by the ultimate causer’s intentionality in English, no
such effect is found for ASL. 
In summary, the present work demonstrates that sign languages like DGS and ASL
have syntactic resources for packaging event-structural information densely.
These resources exhibit different constraints on usage than their German and
English counterparts and are well-integrated into the grammars of DGS and ASL.




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