q's about existentials in SLs

[Christopher Miller]

Hi,

As it turns out, SLLING-L had a discussion going on this topic for 
about a week, *exactly* nine months ago! The discussion was triggered 
by a question posted on the LINGUIST list (issue # 13.280) on February 
3rd and was followed by some 20 postings to SLLING-L. They were quite 
interesting and touched on a number of different points, and we had 
data from quite a variety of different languages to boot.

I don't know if SLLING-L has a digest like LINGUIST does. If not, (or 
even if so!) I could forward these messages which I have kept on disk; 
if people on the list express any interest in looking at the discussion 
again, I could actually forward them to the list itself.

Regards,

Chris Miller

On Sunday, November 3, 2002, at 06:41  am, E. Arik wrote:

> Dear list members,
>
> I have a couple of questions concerning 'existentials' in sign language
> research. First of all, is there any research done 'there is/exists'
> type of predicates on very much studied sign languages? Secondly, does
> any sign language have verb 'exist' in the lexicon? Then, if any, what
> is the function of this predicate? Does it have a function simply as
> that of 'have' in English? Another one, does this 'exist' predicate
> need locatives such as 'deixis' and/or 'locatives'? Finally, does an
> existential verb have any other syntactic function, say, in embedded
> sentences?
>
>
> Best,
> Engin Arik
> Universiteit van Amsterdam
> Sign Linguistics, MA
>
>
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Christopher Miller
Département de linguistique et de didactique des langues
Université du Québec à Montréal
C. P. 8888, Succursale « Centre-Ville  »
Montréal QC
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Canada

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