SLLING-L Digest, Vol 14, Issue 9

Sat Sep 27 00:47:58 UTC 2008

Just googling, I found a bunch.
Recent Perspectives on American Sign Language By Harlan Lane,  Francois Grosjean

(Portions of this are available on line, and I wish that its illustrations were in Sign Writing, they would be so much clearer.)

A sample page from American Sign Language University discussion.

http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/pluralization.htm

Question:  A researcher asks:
    I am aware of the fact that in most cases ASL noun plurals are     expressed by just putting a numeral or quantifier like MUCH or MANY     in front of the noun to be pluralised. I have also read (in Wilbur     1987 and Supalla & Newport 1978) that sometimes, plural can be     expressed directly on the noun, by repeating the noun sign a couple     of times, or in the case of two objects, using the "dual inflection"     where the noun sign is repeated once and the body shifts from one     side to the other. I suppose this way of plural marking isn't very     frequent, but do you have an intuition when it is more likely to     occur? Maybe there are contexts when it occurs more often than in     others, and to elicit these plural forms I could try to build up     such a context.

    I am not referring to dual or plural inflection on the VERB but to     pluralisation of the NOUN itself. By pluralisation I actually mean     all the different ways there are of marking a noun directly for     plural, i.e. not via quantifiers and numerals but through     duplicating the noun sign, duplicating it with a body shift, or     whatever other way of plural marking on nouns there is that I am not     aware of. Could you tell me about contexts where nouns can be     directly marked for plural in ASL?
    Answer: Bill replies:

    The ways of directly marking the noun would include:
    * Sweep: HE becomes THEY / IT becomes THOSE
    * Inflection of the movement: PERSON becomes PEOPLE
    * Reduplicate: ADOPT vs ADOPTIONS, TEACH vs TEACHINGS, CANCEL vs     CANCELATIONS
    * Reposition: CL:3 (vehicle) becomes "A car here, one here, and one     here" via repositioning.

    Reduplication in the same location tends to occur when you turn a     process into a pluralized noun.  TEACH is a process.      TEACHINGS are nouns. CANCEL is a process, CANCELATIONS are nouns.      This is certainly related to "noun/verb" pairing, but there is a     subtle difference. We do not reduplicate the sign "ADOPT" to mean     "ADOPTION." We either rely on context, we add some other sign such     as "PROCESS," and/or we add a mouth morpheme.
    Thus there are verbs that when     reduplicated become plural nouns.
    Note: You asked how to elicit     examples.
    To elicit examples of various noun usage I suggest you show your     language models videos of plural nouns and ask the models to     describe what they saw. For example you could show a video of a car     accident involving multiple cars and ask them to retell what they     saw.
Charles Butler

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Today's Topics:

   1. research on plural formation in SL (Isabelle Heyerick)

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Message: 1
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:55:48 +0200
From: "Isabelle Heyerick" 
Subject: [SLLING-L] research on plural formation in SL
To: slling-l at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
Message-ID:
 <536f47080809260755o48ab5a26q7b09861d37f35fc7 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Dear,

Currently I am working on a research project concerning plural formation in
Flemish Sign Language (VGT).
The study also involves an overview of research on this topic done for other
sign languages.

Up to now I have already read studies on German Sign Language (DGS), Dutch
Sign Language (NGT) and previous research on VGT.
The BSL research is also on my reading list.

If any of you have any other study results on plural formation in another
sign language, please could you inform me?
I am specifically interested in what kind of methodology is used in order to
trigger plural formation.
Thank you in advance.
-- 
Kind regards,

Isabelle Heyerick
Linguistic researcher VGTC vzw

www.vgtc.be
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