big, small, tall, short

[victoria nyst]

Thanks for your reaction-sorry for mine being late. Interesting to hear that
Auslan does have referent-independent or fixed signs to indicate such sizes.
I have checked with several deaf and hearing researchers here who are
working on SLN, but we could not find a sign for small that could be
combined both with, say, mouse and car (unless you are talking about a
miniature car for children to play with). It would definitely be interesting
to see how the distribution of reference-(in)dependent signs for size is
cross-sign-linguistically.
Bye, Victoria

>From: Des Power <d.power at MAILBOX.GU.EDU.AU>
>Reply-To: "For the discussion of linguistics and signed languages."
>      <SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA>
>To: SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA
>Subject: Re: big, small, tall, short
>Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 06:42:30 +1000
>
>An interesting issue :-) Yes Victoria, Auslan has both "referent-dependent
>size signs" (in passing, would these be a kind of classifier?) and "fixed"
>ones (BIG, LITTLE, THIN, FAT, etc.). I therefore presume that BSL does too.
>It would be interesting to do an analysis of which signs have fixed and
>referent-dependent versions and which are only referent-dependent  and see
>if it was systematic in any way (Adam, Trevor??)
>
>Des
>--
>Emeritus Professor Des Power
>Griffith University
>
>30 Pine Valley Drive
>ROBINA, QLD 4226
>Australia
>
>Telephone: (61) 7 55 78 78 84
>Fax:       (61) 7 55 78 78 84
>Email:     d.power at mailbox.gu.edu.au
>Website:  http://www.gu.edu.au/ppages/D_Power
>
>
>
>
>
> > Hello everybody,
> >
> > I am describing a Ghanaian SL, called Adamorobe SL, which appears to
>have
> > fixed, standard signs for BIG, SMALL, TALL and SHORT. That is, the form
>of
> > these signs do not dependent on the kind of object they refer to. E.g 'a
>big
> > cow' & 'a big bee' are signed:
> > 'COW BIG' and 'BEE BIG', where the sign for BIG is the same in both
> > sentences.
> >
> > In NGT (SL of the Netherlands), the signs for 'big', 'small', 'tall' and
> > 'short' change according  to their referent. No fixed signs for these
> > concepts seems to exist in NGT.
> >
> > I'm curious to find out how this works for other SLs. So, my question:
>does
> > 'your' SL have, apart from referent-dependent size signs, a set of fixed
> > signs expressing size?
> >
> > Thanks in advance,
> > Victoria Nyst
> >
> >
> > *********************************************
> > Drs. V.A.S. Nyst
> > Universiteit van Amsterdam
> > Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication
> > Spuistraat 210
> > 1012 VT Amsterdam
> > The Netherlands
> > ++31 20 525 3107
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Download MSN Explorer gratis van http://explorer.msn.nl/intl.asp.




*********************************************
Drs. V.A.S. Nyst
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication
Spuistraat 210
1012 VT Amsterdam
The Netherlands
++31 20 525 3107


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