Nouns & Verbs

[jmacfarl at UNM.EDU]

hello again,

On 18 Feb 99, at 14:10, Sonja Erlenkamp wrote:
> > Dear colleagues,
> >
> > I'm following your discussion about noun-verb-pairs. I'm very interested
> > in this issue because I'm doing my Ph.D. on it (noun-verb-distinction in
> > German Sign Language). Maybe I didn't get all your comments so let me
> > ask some questions:
> >
> > 1. What is your definition for the terms NOUN and VERB?
> >
> > In my opinion these are not selv understood categories.
> > They have different forms and functions in the languages of the world. What
 are we
> > thinking about when we're talking about nouns and verbs in sign
> > languages? Categories we know from english, german ...?
This is certainly a valid argument that you are making, Sherman
Wilcox is constantly reminding us (his students) not to fall in the trap
of trying to find categories in sign langauges just because we find
them in spoken languages. For the cases of Nouns and Verbs,
however, I think we may be able to find categories, and that they
may be self understood.
> >
> > 2. What are the parameters you'd like to analyse parts of speech in sign
> > languages with? Formal - functional - semantical - all together?
I actually DO feel that Nouns and Verbs can be analyzed quite
successfully with regard to their semantic characteristics (c.f.
Langacker 1987) or on the basis of their prototypical discourse
functions (c.f. Hopper and Thompson 1984).  It seems to me that
both of these studies do a pretty nice job of explaining parts of
speech cross-linguistically.  In addition, I think that it MIGHT be
possible to charcterize nouns and verbs FORMALLY.  That is, the
semantic criterion that Langacker discusses MAY be iconically
mapped onto actual instantiations of nouns and verbs in ASL.
> >
> > In my opinion are the categories noun and verb not necessarily important
> > categories in all languages. Broschart (1997) claims for example that
> > there is no noun-verb-distinction in Tongan (a language spoken in the
> > south pacific). (I propose that the same is true for German Sign
> > Language. In German Sign Language you have two verb classes but no noun
> > class (all items not being verbs are multifunctional))
Wow!  I'll put Broschart on my reading list.
> >
> > >>Adam Schembri wrote:
> > >My impression of the claims by Supalla & Newport is that the noun-verb
> > >distinction applies to only a subset of lexical items in the language.
> > >Their heading on p.99 of the article "How many seats in a chair? The
> > >derivation of nouns and verbs in American Sign Language" in Siple, 1978
> > >is: "Distinctions between concrete nouns and verbs in ASL". In a
> > >footnote on p.100, they explain that "...the regularities described
> > >here seem to apply primarily to CONCRETE nouns and verbs".
> >
> > My idea about this subset of lexical items is that Supalla$Newport
> > described the class of classifier verbs. With classifier verbs you
> > always have movement modification. But I'm not familiar enough with ASL.
> > What about all the non-concrete lexical items? Is there any movement
> > modification? Another phenomenon described by Supalla&Newport is that
> > movement specification is lost when the items are produced in a context.
> > May be the isolated forms they've described are more than isolated
> > forms?
> >
> > For example:
> >
> > Supalla&Newport described the difference between FLY and PLANE. But as
> > they mentioned is the lexical item FLY a description of a movement of
> > the PLANE. May be there is no lexical item FLY, but an item for
> > SOMETHING.LIKE.A.PLANE-IS.MOVING (a classifier verb)? And the item PLANE
> > is a description of a plane that is not moving? Than this is not the
> > problem of a noun-verb-distiction but of a
> > classifier-classifier.verb-distinction. This ist true for German Sign
> > Language, but - as already mentioned - I don't know how it looks like in
> > ASL.
If I understand you correctly you are saying that the classifier
handshape used to represent a PLANE is a type of verb -even when
its used to represent a stationary plane. Also, that what we might
want to call nouns in ASL and DGS are simply classifier
handshapes that are not showing any action.  (Please correct me if
I misunderstood.)

One argument against this line of thinking.  If we assume that nouns
and verbs can be defined notionally (as Langacker does), then
these classifiers that describe STATES (such as your example with
the airplane) would be considered NOUNS.  Regardless of whether
of not they are derived from the classifier predicate or not.  For me,
this is why the categories nouns and verbs are important, because if
we say something is a noun (or a specific type of noun) we know
that we concieve of it in a certain way.  The same can be said for
verbs.

Thanks,


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James MacFarlane
University of New Mexico
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