modifiability of indicating verbs

[Adam C Schembri]

While acknowledging that there's plenty of room for debate about how  
"parts of speech" apply to signed languages, I think there are  
grammatical aspects of "locatable" signs such as ASL WANT or BSL/ 
Auslan BUY that support their analysis as verbs in sentential  
contexts. For example, these signs can take arguments and thus enter  
into syntactic relationships with other signs in the same way as verbs  
in spoken languages.

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 12 Jan 2008, at 07:44, Ulrike Zeshan wrote:

> The ASL example of WANT mentioned earlier in this example caught my  
> interest, particularly the ambiguity in the meaning of adding a  
> location specification. If this is so, then what is the difference  
> between something like WANT and other signs like HALF, FRIEND,  
> SIBLING, colours or numbers (not necessarily in ASL, but other sign  
> languages) that can also add a location specification? On the one  
> hand, having a location specification is not itself something  
> "verbal", and on the other hand, in lots of spoken languages, items  
> like kinship terms are verbs. In other words, why are "plain verbs"  
> called "verbs" in the first place, and why are the other signs not  
> "verbs"?
> Ulrike
>
>
> Prof. Ulrike Zeshan
> Director, International Centre for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies
> Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
> Livesey House, LH212
> University of Central Lancashire
> Preston PR12HE, UK
> uzeshan at uclan.ac.uk
> Ph. +44-1772-893104
>
>>>> "Gaurav Mathur" <gaurav.mathur at gallaudet.edu> 11/01/08 4:18 PM >>>
>
> Christian Rathmann and I have been following the recent discussion
> with interest, because we have been interested in finding out under
> which conditions a verb can be modulated for person and number. In
> our work, we suggest that semantic factors (i.e. argument structure)
> predict which verbs are candidates for being modulated for agreement
> (i.e. selecting for two animate arguments), and that a number of
> further factors, including phonological phonetic, discourse-related
> and historical, determine whether this agreement is realized.
>
> So, instead of asking whether a verb is plain or agreeing, it may
> make better sense to ask whether they are *candidates* for being
> modulated for agreement (or for indicating entities) or not. This
> would be one way to get around saying that verb agreement is not
> obligatory (as has been suggested here) and therefore not directly
> comparable to agreement systems in spoken languages like Spanish or
> German.
>
> The ASL sign PITY that was given earlier as an example is a case in
> point. It is a candidate for agreement, because it selects for two
> animate arguments (a person who is doing the pitying and the person
> who is being pitied). It can be modulated for person and number by
> changing the orientation of the hands. In this case, the modulation
> does not necessarily mean that the hands move from one location to
> another.
>
> For more details, see our paper "Is verb agreement the same cross-
> modally" in Meier, Cormier and Quinto-Pozos
> (2002) as well as "Verb agreement as a linguistic innovation in
> signed languages" in Quer's volume based on TISLR8 (in press).
>
> Best,
> Gaurav
>
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