Word Order at the Workshop on Sign Linguistics, February 2004-second posting

[Myriam Vermeerbergen]

Dear all,

First I would like to clarify something. Lorraine and I are not
organising a workshop (on word order or any other topic) ourselves.
Instead Pamela Perniss and Roland Pfau are organising the "Sign
Languages: A cross-linguistic perspective" workshop and Lorraine and I
would like to prepare a joint contribution on the topic of word order
for this workshop.

I too agree that word order is a very complex matter and that studying
it in depth means dealing with many many aspects, looking at it from
many different angles, taking into consideration a number of different
issues, etc. But I also think there is nothing wrong with looking at
the ordering of consituents in declarative sentences, at least as long
as you are aware of the fact that your results say something on the
word order in (a limited set of) declarative sentences in Sign Language
A and should not be seen as THE answer to the question "How does word
order in Sign Language A looks like." For me the analysis of
declarative sentences elicited by the use of Volterra's drawings was a
first, small step on a way to a better understanding of word order
issues in Flemish Sign Language. I am aware of the fact that it is a
long way...

Our idea to prepare a joint contribution on word order from a cross
linguistic perspective and take the study of declarative sentences in
different sign languages as a starting point comes from the observation
that a number of linguists studying different sign languages have used
the same drawings/test to elicit the same three types of declarative
sentences. We thought it might be interesting to compare these studies
(not only compare the results but also the way different researchers
have dealt with the same elicitation material, what "labels" were used
to identify constituents, what elements of analysis, etc.) However, we
would prefer not to limit the contribution to the study of declarative
sentences only and would like to include the analysis of spontaneous
language data. Also, comparing the analysis of declarative sentences
elicited by the use of the same material is only an
idea/suggestion...we might as well deal with another aspect/other
aspects of word order if more people would prefer to do that. We do
however have to keep in mind that it is one contribution to a workshop
and not a whole conference on word order we are talking about...

Best,


Myriam Vermeerbergen