Have and BE verbs

[G Sapountzaki, Deaf Studies]

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GSL also does not have copula. As far as I am informed there is only one
idiom using the sign for BE. It is a 'frozen' expression, usually not
inflected and signed: 'THIS IS' that means, 'that's what it's all
about', rather as a discourse marker. However, the expression is not
used widely among all age & culture groups in the Deaf Community, and
the sign itself is probably traced back in hearing teachers' signing.

About the GSL for HAVE, it might be worth to add that in GSL (according
to anecdotal evidence from all signers that paricipated in my research)
the situation is similar to what happens in the rest of signed
languages in your corpus:

The sign for HAVE (quite similar to the BSL in formation) is more and
more commonly used as an existential rather than possessive, and it
also has the meaning of 'be-present':
eg: YANNIS, HAVE? = is Yannis around?
COMPUTER HERE HAVE? = is there a computer here?

Moreover, there is also evidence that suggests that the (irregular)
negative of HAVE has the meaning of 'there is no such thing possible'
This happens at least when articulated with both hands, and the
mouthing is usually a short form of 'not exist'.

eg: MAN PREGNANT, NOT-HAVE (or NOT-EXIST) = There is no possibility to
see a pregnant man (in the present world, at least).

To me this was interpreted as a modal with an alethic meaning, but if
anyone has a better suggestion, please let me know!

Hope that was helpful,
.... more news when I have analysed my present set of data!

Galini Sapountzaki


On Wed, 6 Feb 2002 10:13:28 +1100 Ulrike Zeshan
<u.zeshan at LATROBE.EDU.AU> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------
> 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
> ---------------------------------------
>

----------------------
G Sapountzaki, Deaf Studies
Galini.Sapountzaki at bristol.ac.uk