q's about existentials in SLs

[Ingvild Roald]

Not being a linguist, and writing about a sign languaguage that is *not*
much studied, it is my understanding that Norwegian sign langugage have
both an 'exist' sign and a 'dont-exist' sign. The 'exist' has a basic
meaning of 'is-there' and is articulated as a fast and emphasized movement
a short way downwards by the dominant hand, coming up again as an index -
or pointing hand. If one should put the question 'does God exist?' or 'is
there a God', the 'God' part would be first signed by pointing up, and
then the 'exist'-sign would also end by pointing up. -The same sign is
used for all sorts of 'is-there' or 'are-there' or 'will-be-there', for
instance 'TONIGHT MOVIE, WILL-BE-THERE YOU?'.  The 'don't-exist' has the
basic emaning of 'is-not-there', and is  articulated as fingers
forward,angeld, thumb against index, hand moved from side to side while
head is shaken and air is flowing from mouth (sorry for clumsy
explanations). Same sign is used to express 'John is not here' and 'trolls
don't exist'.

Hope I'm not misleading you, but this is how I've understoood these signs
in NSL,

Ingvild

SLLING-L at ADMIN.HUMBERC.ON.CA skriver:
>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