32.701, Books: Iconicity as a mediator between verb semantics and morphosyntactic structure: Oomen

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-701. Thu Feb 25 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.701, Books: Iconicity as a mediator between verb semantics and morphosyntactic structure: Oomen

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Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 18:46:27
From: Janacy van Duijn Genet [lot at uva.nl]
Subject: Iconicity as a mediator between verb semantics and morphosyntactic structure: Oomen

 


Title: Iconicity as a mediator between verb semantics and
morphosyntactic structure 
Subtitle: A corpus-based study on verbs in German Sign Language 
Series Title: LOT Dissertation Series  

Publication Year: 2020 
Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
	   http://www.lotpublications.nl/
	

Book URL: https://www.lotpublications.nl/iconicity-as-a-mediator-between-verb-semantics-and-morphosyntactic-structure-a-corpus-based-study-on-verbs-in-german-sign-language 


Author: Marloes Oomen

Paperback: ISBN:  9789460933424 Pages: 421 Price: Europe EURO 40


Abstract:

In many sign languages around the world, some verbs can express grammatical
agreement with not just one but two arguments, while other verbs do not
express agreement at all. Moreover, and rather curiously, there is a
remarkable degree of semantic overlap across sign languages between verbs that
possess agreement properties. It has been suggested that iconicity has some
part to play in this: in sign languages, there is the potential for aspects of
verb meaning to be iconically represented in a verb’s form.

In this dissertation, I investigate how semantics and morphosyntactic
structure interact in constructions containing verbs with varying agreement
properties in German Sign Language (DGS), using naturalistic dialogues between
signers from the DGS Corpus as the primary data source.

I show that certain semantic properties – also known to govern transitivity
marking in spoken languages – are predictive of verb type in DGS, where indeed
systematic iconic mappings play a mediating role. The results enable the
formulation of cross-linguistic predictions about the interplay between verb
semantics and verb type in sign languages.

A subsequent analysis of a range of morphosyntactic properties of different
verb types leads up to the conclusion that even ‘plain’ verbs, in fact,
grammatically agree with their arguments. This in turn motivates a unified
syntactic analysis in terms of agreement of constructions with verbs that do
and do not overtly express it, thus presenting a novel solution to the
typological puzzle that supposedly only verbs of a (partially) semantically
definable subset agree in DGS and other sign languages.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Morphology
                     Semantics
                     Syntax

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


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=151893




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