modifiability of indicating verbs
Lou de B
luisitadb at optusnet.com.au
Thu Jan 10 02:40:30 UTC 2008
Hi Robin and all,
> 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.
Actually, as part of my post-doc into the use of space in Auslan, we (Trevor
Johnston, Adam Schembri, several research assistants and I) have annotated
and analysed about 70 texts in Elan. As Adam Schembri said, we defined these
verbs that could be located in space (but do not either move through space
or use a change of orientation meaningfully) as locatable indicating verbs
(such as the Auslan verb HAVE which is a clench of the fist, usually in
front of the body). We defined directional indicating verbs as those verbs
that have a beginning and ending location or orientation associated with
agent/source and patient/goal (such as the Auslan sign SAY/TELL a finger
from mouth to another location - or LOOK two fingers from next to the eye
to another location. And plain verbs were body anchored in some way and
unable to be either moved through space or located in space (such as the
sign for EAT in Auslan (hand to mouth), or LOVE (arms across body hugging
oneself). About a quarter of the data were plain verbs (body anchored in
some way and unable to be located in space), and a quarter were depicting
verbs (classifier signs, polycomponential signs etc etc), and half were
indicating verbs.
In an analysis of the first 50 texts (which included 8, 534 tokens or signs
and gestures (and about 40,000 individual annotations)), we found that 19 -
33% of locatable indicating verbs were actually located in space or modified
in some way (depending on different criteria for recognising a
modification). Also 53 to 70% of directional signs were actually modified.
So indeed, there were MANY instances of verbs which COULD be modified in
some way that were not. Further, approximately half of the examples of verbs
that were modified were just 10 frequently occurring verbs. So many
modifiable verbs modified hardly at all or never.
This is a fascinating area that obviously needs a lot more work on large
numbers of naturally occurring texts. We are still increasing the number of
annotated texts and looking at various factors which might influence the
spatial modification.
Louise
--
Dr Louise de Beuzeville BA(hons) GradDipEd MspecEd(Deafness) PhD
Signed Languages & Linguistics
___________________________________________________________
Department of Linguistics, C3B 401
Macquarie University, Sydney
NSW Australia 2109
phone: +61 (0)2 9850 8635
fax: +61 (0)2 9850 9199
mobile: +61 (0)433 704 794
email: louise.debeuzeville at ling.mq.edu.au
On 10/1/08 1:52 AM, "Robin Thompson" <robin.thompson at ucl.ac.uk> 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 <http://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
>> <http://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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