Word Order at the Workshop on Sign Linguistics, February 2004

Sun Jun 29 22:20:03 UTC 2003

I agree with Dan that it takes discourse studies as well as sentences, but I
think to truly understand a language's word order, it is also necessary to
understand (at minimum) the interaction with negation, modals, previously
established referents vs. out-of-the-blue referents, verb agreement, possibly
definiteness and/or animacy of argument(s), and question formation. And that's
without classifiers.

In addition, unless you know what is NOT grammatical, you can never be really
sure.

At 11:21 AM 06/24/2003 , you wrote: 
>
> This is a great idea--but I'd be cautious about the role of word order in
> signed languages--and in all languages where there is considerable
> flexibility in word order for pragmatic purposes.  Decontextualized picture
> descriptions are of limited use in studying this issue.  For example,
> although SOV is the preferred order for such descriptions in Turkish, less
> than half of utterances in discourse are SOV.  So it's good that you include
> discourse studies as well.  But, in regard to word order, most of the topics
> you suggest are not directly concerned with word order--unless you mean also
> to include any ordering of elements within constructions, in addition to the
> ordering of lexical items in utterances.  I also find it strange that a
> proposal to examine word oder makes no mention of subject/object,
> topic/comment, focus, etc.  The proposal needs more clarity in defining a
> specific topic that is precise enough to allow for comparable examination of
> several sign languages.
>
> Dan Slobin
> University of California, Berkeley
>
>
> At 04:42 PM 6/24/2003 +0200, Myriam Vermeerbergen wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear all, 
>>
>> We would like to try to form a group to prepare a joint contribution on the
>> topic of word order for the "Sign Languages: A cross-linguistic
>> perspective"-workshop (see Call for Abstracts below). Our objective would be
>> to compare as many as possible different studies where word order is
>> analysed both: 
>> -in declarative sentences elicited by the use of the drawings designed by
>> Volterra and her colleagues (1) AND 
>> -in spontaneous sign language data. 
>>
>> If you have been studying word order or would like to do so and would be
>> willing to co-operate, please let us know as soon as possible. Abstracts for
>> the workshop have to be submitted by the end of July so there is not that
>> much time. Thanks in advance. 
>>
>> Kind regards, 
>>
>> Lorraine Leeson and Myriam Vermeerbergen 
>>
>> (1) Italian Sign Language: The Order of Elements in the Declarative
>> Sentence. In: Loncke, F., Boyes-Braem, P. & Lebrun, Y. (Eds.) 1984. Recent
>> Research on European Sign Languages. Lisse: Swetz & Zeitlinger. p. 19-48. 
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Call for abstracts 
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> We hereby invite the submission of abstracts for a workshop on 
>>>
>>> “Sign Languages: A cross-linguistic perspective” 
>>
>>
>>>
>>> to be held at the Annual Meeting of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS)
>>> 2004. 
>>>
>>>
>>> Location: Mainz (Germany) 
>>> Date: February 25-27, 2004. 
>>> Organizers:     Pamela Perniss (MPI Nijmegen) 
>>>        Roland Pfau (University of Amsterdam) 
>>>
>>> Call deadline: July 31st, 2003 
>>>
>>>
>>> Goal of the workshop 
>>> The goal of the workshop is to bring together sign researchers who conduct
>>> comparative research on grammatical phenomena in different sign languages
>>> in order to investigate and discuss typological variation across sign
>>> languages. 
>>>
>>> Comparison of sign languages with spoken languages has yielded many
>>> fruitful results. On the one hand, it was shown that the grammatical
>>> structures are strikingly similar, on the other hand interesting modality
>>> effects have also been revealed. 
>>>
>>> We are convinced, however, that it is of crucial importance to compare sign
>>> languages with each other in order to gain better insights into the
>>> structures of sign languages in their own right. The expectation is that
>>> sign languages, just like spoken languages, are typologically different
>>> from each other. In this context, it is also worth investigating whether
>>> typological variation is observed along similar lines as in spoken
>>> languages and/or whether we find significantly different clusterings along
>>> a typological continuum. 
>>>
>>> Usually, in the literature, the similarities between sign languages are
>>> highlighted. The grammatical similarities are indeed striking (e.g.
>>> phonotactic constraints, realisation of agreement, wh-questions) and it has
>>> been claimed that they are due to the language modality. Recent research,
>>> however, also points to interesting differences (e.g. position of
>>> functional categories, negation, plural marking). 
>>>
>>> This workshop aims to bring together linguists who investigate the
>>> grammatical structure of various sign languages in order to ascertain and
>>> discuss further phonological, morphological, and syntactic similarities and
>>> differences.The results of such investigations have important implications
>>> for our understanding of the question of universals of language and
>>> cognition and of typological variation, in general. 
>>>
>>> We hope that the different theoretical backgrounds of the organizers will
>>> ensure a forum for discussion at the workshop that is balanced between
>>> various theoretical approaches to linguistics. 
>>>
>>>
>>> Structure of the workshop 
>>> Depending on the content of a given abstract and the clustering of topics,
>>> both 30 minutes and 60 minutes time slots will be available. 
>>>
>>> Note that the 60 minutes slots are designed to accommodate joint
>>> presentations by researchers working on similar topics in different sign
>>> languages. We thus encourage researchers to collaborate in advance of the
>>> conference. 
>>>
>>> Possible topics may include, but are not restricted to: 
>>>
>>> •     verb agreement 
>>> •     classifiers and classifier constructions 
>>> •     iconicity in lexicon and grammar 
>>> •     wh-questions 
>>> •     negation 
>>> •     number and quantification / plural-marking 
>>> •     narrative and information structure 
>>> •     discourse markers 
>>> •     use of non-manuals 
>>>
>>>
>>> Submission 
>>> All abstracts should be submitted by e-mail as attachments to both
>>> organizers (pamela.perniss at mpi.nl
>>> <<mailto:pamela.perniss at mpi.nl>mailto:pamela.perniss at mpi.nl> and
>>> r.pfau at uva.nl <<mailto:r.pfau at uva.nl>mailto:r.pfau at uva.nl>), specifying
>>> ‘abstract’ in the subject line. The following information should be
>>> contained in the body of the e-mail message: 
>>>
>>> - author’s name(s) 
>>> - title of abstract 
>>> - affiliation 
>>> - e-mail address 
>>> - postal address 
>>>
>>> Abstracts should be anonymous and be either in .doc or .pdf formats.
>>> Abstracts should not exceed two pages (font size 12) including examples,
>>> figures, and references. 
>>>
>>>
>>> Deadline for submission of abstracts is July 31st, 2003. 
>>> Notification of acceptance: August 31st, 2003 
>>>
>>>
>>> Information about the conference will be posted at: 
>>> www.uni-mainz.de/dgfs2004 
>>>
>>>
>>> We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts! 
>>>
>>> Pamela Perniss & Roland Pfau 
>>>
>>> ************************* 
>>> Pamela Perniss, Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik, 
>>> Wundtlaan 1, 6525 XD Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 
>>> pamela.perniss at mpi.nl 
>>>
>>> Roland Pfau, Dept. of Linguistics, University of Amsterdam, 
>>> Spuistraat 210, 1012 VT Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 
>>> r.pfau at uva.nl 
>>> ************************* 
>>
>> </blockquote></x-html> 
>
>
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Dan I. Slobin 
> Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor 
> in Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Studies 
>
> Department of Psychology 
> 3210 Tolman #1650 
> University of California 
> Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA 
>
> 1-510-642-7090 [office] / -5292 [Dept.] 
> 1-510-848-1769 [home] 
> slobin at socrates.berkeley.edu 
> fax: 1-510-642-5293 
> web page: http://ihd.berkeley.edu [Click on "Research"] 
> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>
>

Ronnie B. Wilbur, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Linguistics   
School of Liberal Arts
Purdue University 
500 Oval Drive 
West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038 
wilbur at omni.cc.purdue.edu 
ph: 765-494-3822; tty 765-494-9266
fax:765-494-0771
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