Plain verbs in signed languages
Adam C Schembri
a.schembri at ucl.ac.uk
Wed Jan 9 15:10:59 UTC 2008
This is an interesting finding, Robin. Were all your spatial verbs
'directional' (i.e., moving from point a to point b in space), or were
some of them displaced verbs of location (i.e., vehicle-is-located-at-
B)? I am just wondering if the eye gaze tends to co-occur with signs
that move from one location to another...
Adam
--
Adam C Schembri, PhD
Project Director, British Sign Language Corpus Project
Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Research Centre
University College London
49 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PD
United Kingdom
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal
On 9 Jan 2008, at 14:52, Robin Thompson wrote:
> For my dissertation work (with Karen Emmorey) we looked at eye gaze
> occurring with plain verbs as well as eye gaze with verbs that move
> in space to indicate location (spatial verbs) or person (agreeing
> verbs). We found that for plain verbs eye gaze was not directed
> toward locations associated with referents whereas for agreeing and
> spatial verbs it was.
> Crucially- this was true whether or not the plain verb was spatially
> modified-- This (at a minimum) suggests that the two types of
> movement/spatial displacement are not the same. If you want to think
> of it in terms of morphemes, Carol Padden suggested that plain verbs
> that indicated either the subject or object (e.g., WANT produced on
> the right could mean "She wants something" , or "Someone want that
> thing" -it is ambiguous ) were occurring with clitics.
>
> Overall- my recollection of the data we collected is that plain
> verbs which could be displaced in space (i.e., are not are produced
> on the body) ARE with (fairly) high frequency.
>
> Happy New Year to all!
> Robin
>
> Robin Thompson, Ph.D.
> Research Fellow
> Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre (DCAL)
> University College London
> 49 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD
> Web: www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk
> robin.thompson at ucl.ac.uk
>
>
>
> On 9 Jan 2008, at 13:56, Bencie Woll wrote:
>
>> In the following paper we discuss optionality in relation to
>> agreement in the input to children acquiring BSL as a first
>> language. Morgan G, Barrière I, & Woll B (2006) The influence of
>> typology and modality on the acquisition of language. First
>> Language 26: 19-43.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Bencie Woll, BA, MA, PhD
>> Chair of Sign Language and Deaf Studies
>> Director, UCL DCAL Research Centre
>> 49 Gordon Square
>> London WC1H 0PD
>> +44 20 7679 8670 (voice)
>> +44 20 7679 8691 (fax)
>> +44 20 7679 8693 (textphone/minicom) www.dcal.ucl.ac.uk
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> From: slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu [mailto:slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
>> ] On Behalf Of I.Zwitserlood
>> Sent: 09 January 2008 08:26
>> To: A list for linguists interested in signed languages
>> Subject: Re: [SLLING-L] Plain verbs in signed languages
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear Scholastica,
>>
>> Uou touch on an important issue here. It seems as if "plain verbs"
>> in a sign language are taken to be a fixed group of verbs that
>> never show any agreement, whereas "agreement verbs" do show
>> agreement and "spatial verbs" also show agreement, though in a
>> different way from agreement verbs. However, it is also observed
>> that verbs that are reported (e.g. in the literature or
>> dictionaries) to be "agreement verbs" are used without showing
>> agreement (viz. there is a lot of variability in the use of
>> agreement). E.g. In discourses in Sign Language of the Netherlands
>> (NGT) we sometimes see verbs that can show agreement, used without
>> agreement or only carrying a subset of the possible agreement
>> markers. Sometimes they are accompanied by an auxiliary carrying
>> the agreement marking, but not always. Also we see that verbs that
>> are reported to be "plain verbs" sometimes do show agreement. It is
>> by no means clear when, how and why the agreement marking varies,
>> no systematic studies have been done on NGT so far. During the
>> CISLR conference in Cologne last year Diane Lillo-Martin and Adam
>> Schembri also report unexpected agreement patterns in ASL
>> (children) and Auslan (adults), respectively.
>> I'm not sure whether this answers your question, but I think it is
>> important to notice that the issue of sign language agreement is by
>> no means clear yet and needs a lot more study. As you plan to do.
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Inge Zwitserlood
>> Radboud University Nijmegen
>>
>>
>> At 17:53 8-1-2008, you wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I think I need to rephrase my question. Sorry for any
>> misunderstandings caused.
>>
>> I tried to adopt Padden's (1983, 1988) verb classification for my
>> HKSL data. Yet I want to clarify the notion plain verbs. I wonder
>> if what have been called plain verbs may not be really "plain" in
>> terms of morphology (e.g. verb agreement, aspect, etc) when more
>> studies are done on ASL and other signed languages.
>>
>> Did anyone observe that the so-called plain verbs may actually be
>> marked with morphemes in signed languages?
>>
>> Scholastica
>>
>> "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>
>> "Scholastica" (Nini Hoiting?) wrote:
>>
>> #I am a research student who works on Hong Kong Sign Language. My
>> focus of
>>
>> #study is verbs. I would like to confirm if plain verbs are generally
>>
>> #unmarked for verb agreement and spatial locations.
>>
>> Dan Slobin answered:
>>
>> #By defnition, a "plain verb" is one that cannot move in space, and
>> so it
>>
>> #cannot mark agreement and spatial locations in itself. But in many
>> sign
>>
>> #languages (including Sign Language of the Netherlands, Taiwanese
>> Sign
>>
>> #Language, and others), there are "auxiliary" verbs that accompany
>> a "plain"
>>
>> #verb. Such accompanying verbs do move in space to indicate
>> relations such
>>
>> #as source-goal, agent-patient, and so forth.
>>
>> Denise Wetzler added:
>>
>> #In American Sign Language, verbs move. The movement itself
>> contains a great
>>
>> #amount of information. If want to show that I will go from my
>> house to the
>>
>> #bank and then to the library, these three locations are first
>> established in
>>
>> #the signing space. How I sign the verb 'go-to' then will show
>> where I
>>
>> #started from; went to; and where I ended up. [...]
>>
>>
>> It's essential to know what Scholastica means by "plain verb". Dan
>> is evidently
>>
>> assuming that S. has the same definition for it that he does.
>>
>> A sign that does not move in space can nevertheless mark agreement
>> with a
>>
>> spatial location, by its orientation and possibly its location as
>> well. Example:
>>
>> ASL PITY (open-8 handshape, palm toward object, middle finger
>> repeatedly
>>
>> bending).
>>
>> Clarification of Denise's answer: in ASL, *many* verbs move [in
>> space], but by
>>
>> no means all of them.
>>
>> -- Mark A. Mandel
>>
>> Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania
>>
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