Have and BE verbs

[Ulrike Zeshan]

I would be very interested to see a confirmed case of a sign language that
does NOT have any existential particles because I have not found any among
the about-35 sign languages in my typological corpus. Conversely, I have
also not seen a confirmed case of a sign language copula. Why would the
existentials be so important and the copula so unimportant in sign
languages I wonder...?

Have you noticed that positive and negative existentials are very often
suppletive forms, that is, they look entirely different, like Turkish SL
signs VAR (EXIST) and YOK (NOT-EXIST), Lebanese signs FI (EXIST) and MA-FI
(NOT-EXIST). They also overwhelmingly express possession, as in

(from Lebanon)
MASARE MA-FI
money  not-exist
(I) have no money

(from Turkey)
SEN ARABA VAR?
you car   exist
Do you have a car?

I wonder how many of the signs usually transcribed HAVE should actually be
transcribed EXIST. The strong connection between existentials and
possessives is common in spoken languaes as well.

Ulrike Zeshan



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Dr. Ulrike Zeshan
Research Centre for Linguistic Typology
Institute for Advanced Study
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086, Australia
ph. +61-3-94673084
fax +61-3-94673053
u.zeshan at latrobe.edu.au
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