Fwd: Have and BE verbs

[Onno Crasborn]

>This question came up on the LINGUIST list:
>===================================================================
>Date:  Fri, 1 Feb 2002 14:07:01 +0100
>From:  "Pavol Stekauer" <stekpal at saris.unipo.sk>
>Subject:  request
>
>Dear colleagues:
>
>Do you know any language without the existential verbs TO BE and/or TO HAVE?
>
>Thank you very much in advance for your cooperation
>
>Yours sincerely
>
>Professor Pavol Stekauer
>Department of British and American Studies
>Presov University
>Slovakia
>===================================================================
>
>I sent the answer below to Prof. Stekauer, marshalling what little I
>know about a few sign languages (Western European ones, at that).
>I'm forwarding it to SLLING-L as well in the hope that others may be
>able to provide him with relevant information on their own sign
>languages (or even spoken Ls as the case may be -- why not?). As
>well, please scrutinise what I have to say on languages other than
>LSQ and point out where I may be misrepresenting the facts.
>
>=== Please send your replies directly to Pavol Stekpauer at:
>=== stekpal at saris.unipo.sk, (with cc to SLLING-L)
>=== but don't reply directly to me!
>
>Chris Miller
>
>=================================================================
>(My answer follows:)
>
>Numerous (natural*) sign languages lack a BE verb as such, while
>still possessing a HAVE-type verb. Before I proceed, though, I
>should temper this statement with two provisos. Firstly, there are
>slight differences between languages in the meaning and usage of BE-
>and HAVE-type verbs (naturally enough, given their status as
>different languages.) Secondly, from the descriptions I have seen in
>the literature available to me, what I have to say here should not
>be taken to necessarily reflect the general case among sign
>languages, but only those I mention here.
>
>American Sign Language (ASL) and Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) both
>have no BE verb as such: one occasionally sees claims in popular
>texts that the ASL sign TRUE is a copula verb in ASL, equivalent to
>the English "be". This is incorrect: TRUE is not used as a copula in
>normal ASL usage and is rather an element of one or another of the
>Signed English codes that have been put together from time to time
>in the second half of the 20th century. ASL and LSQ have no copula
>as such, whether in present or non-present tense contexts; the
>closest thing to a structural element with a copula-type function is
>a particular type of rapid head nodding co-occurring with a
>predicate, however this head nodding does not occur only with
>stative or adjectival predicates, but also with verbal predicates. A
>useful reference to this type of head nodding (and comparison with
>other types) is Scott Liddell's 1980 book, American Sign Language
>Syntax (Academic Press).
>
>As far as I know and I may well be mistaken, no other sign language
>I have seen descriptions of appears to have a BE verb as such.
>*However*, British Sign Language (BSL) and (at least the
>Northern/Groningen dialect of) the Sign Language of the Netherlands
>(SLN), possibly via borrowing from BSL, have a verb that can be
>glossed as BE-PRESENT with the meaning "be in a particular place" or
>"be here/there": the verb, an extended forearm with flat hand moving
>downward from the wrist, is accompanied by a mouthed "shhh"
>nonmanual behaviour in both languages, from performances I have seen
>from users of both BSL and SLN. However, this verb does not appear
>to function simply as a copula.
>
>Quebec Sign Language, which is closely related to American Sign
>Language, both having descended from the early ASL that came into
>being in the first decades of the 1800s, appears to differ from ASL
>in that the LSQ verb HAVE has an extra meaning unlike the ASL verb.
>Some background is in order here: although much of the divergence
>between ASL and LSQ is due to independent divergence during the
>course of each language's evolution, LSQ has also undergone some
>further divergence from ASL due to a period of influence on LSQ from
>French Sign Language (LSF) in the last half of the 1800s. The LSQ
>sign HAVE is in fact a direct borrowing from LSF and has a form
>rather distinct from the ASL sign. (LSF, like the other languages I
>have mentioned, has no copula verb as such.)
>
>Besides the difference in meaning, however, the LSQ sign has, as
>well as its central meaning of "possess", the additional meaning of
>"be present". (No idea whether this is the case for the LSF verb
>HAVE.) Thus in LSQ, unlike (to my knowledge) ASL, the following
>sentences are possible as means of expressing the meanings given in
>the English translations:
>
>MARIE HAVE TODAY?  "Is Marie here today?"
>YES, TODAY HAVE  "Yes, she's here today."
>NO, TODAY HAVE-neg  "No, she's not here today."
>(HAVE-neg is a suppletive negative counterpart of HAVE, unrelated in
>form the the affirmative verb form.)
>
>I find it interesting that (1) in (some) sign languages, although
>there is (apparently) no BE (copula) type verb, HAVE seems to be
>relatively well attested and (2) there is some verb form that has a
>meaning "be present".
>
>I am going to post your question together with this reply to
>SLLING-L, the sign language linguistics list, in hopes that
>researchers working on other sign languages may be able to
>contribute information on their own languages and also correct me
>where I am mistaken in my understanding of the facts. (The only
>language I feel entirely confident about describing to you is LSQ,
>on which I have worked for over a decade.)
>
>Best regards and good luck with your search for info,
>
>Chris Miller
>
>(*I use the term "natural" advisedly to distinguish signed languages
>from sign codes, which combine and even invent signs so as to
>faithfully reflect the structure of a spoken language as a means to
>teach that language.)
>
==================================================
Christopher Miller
Department of Linguistics
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg MB
R3T 2N2
Canada

+1 204 474-8343 (office)
+1 204 951-5002 (mobile phone)

millerc at ms.umanitoba.ca
==================================================