Research Leads for a Grad Paper?

[twflynn at aol.com]

I'm an ASL interpreter. I have an AA in Deaf Communications Studies, a BA in Linguistics, and an MA in Teaching of English.?I'm taking a grad-level Survey?of Linguistics course?as part of a graduate certificate program. I'd appreciate any help in tracking down research related to the following topic (lexical semantics).

My intuition is that English is noun-heavy whereas ASL is verb-heavy (perhaps because visual learners notice motion, but that is not part of the topic for this paper). In English, nouns can often be used as verbs (asphalt the back yard, tree a raccoon, head home, can vegetables), verbs as nouns (talk a walk, have a talk, I've made four parachute jumps), and adjectives as nouns (substantives - Only the strong survive the good , the bad, and the ugly). In other words, the major lexical categories of English (not counting adverbs) are very fluid - one word can belong to two or even three categories. 

In ASL, on the other hand, the major lexical categories are stable - a sign is EITHER a noun OR a verb OR an adjective, but very seldom do signs cross from one category to another?(most adverbs are incorporated into the verb production).?I?am aware of the noun-verb pairs (PUT-RING-ON-FINGER vs. RING, SIT-DOWN vs. SEAT). In those?cases, the verb has an endpoint and the conversion to noun-ness is achieved by reduplication. But I theorize that, in general, ASL verbs have no endpoint (other than the end of the arm) AND/OR that verbs move (other than 'wiggle'), AND/OR that verbs can be signed continuously/repeatedly (infinitely if necessary). Obviously there are exceptions to all of these,?which is why I'm speaking of?"in general". It?could be that a verb does two out of three? I do see cross-category membership in classifiers - that's about the only way a noun can become a verb, in my observation, and a classifier isn't the noun itself. I suppose it would be possible for a TABLE 
 to?'move' if describing telekinesis, or a TREE to 'move' if describing the Ents in the Hobbit trilogy, but that strikes me as more artistic and less ordinarily grammatical.?Even in those situations,?a signer would probably?substitute a classifer for the original?noun.?
?
I see my interpreting students struggling with this all the time. They will sign "I have no respect for that man" as THAT MAN? ME HAVE RESPECT NONE FOR index - as if RESPECT is an ASL noun; in fact, they should sign THAT MAN, ME RESPECT-headshake?-because RESPECT is a verb, according to my observation (no endpoint and can be repeated indefinitely). I think noun-verb?substitution from English-to-ASL may account for a fair amount of 'ungrammaticality' by interpreters. 

If you know of any research that has been done on lexical semantics, specifically the lexical?categories of ASL and overlap between them in ASL, I'd appreciate the publication data. 

A related topic would be compounding in ASL; is?compounding permitted in cases such as CAT-LADY, HISTORY-BOOK? If so, does the noun become an adjective in the compound word? 

Thanks in advance for any help.

Tom F. 


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