Directional Verbs

[Jonathan Udoff]

Sarah,

I believe you're confusing some of the terminology. "Indicating verbs" refer
to the class of both "agreeing" and "spatial verbs". "Depicting verbs" are
just classifiers. "Directional verbs", I believe, are the same thing as
agreeing verbs, but I would avoid that term as it is vague and could be
easily misconstrued. The same thing with "inflecting". Technically, both
agreeing and spatial verbs undergo some sort of inflection, though people
usually mean just agreeing verbs when they use the term inflecting.
"Agreeing verbs" inflect for subject and/or object.

So, in your two examples, the lexical sign THROW is a spatial verb, and
therefore an indicating verb. I do not think it is "directional" (i.e.
agreeing). For your cup example I'm not sure how the sentence is intended to
be signed. If your using a classifier in a C handshape to show the
displacement of the cup, then that would be a depicting verb. If, however,
the sentence were "CUP, aMOVEb" then MOVE again is a spatial verb.

Is that clear?

Jonathan Udoff
SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders

Laboratory for Language and Cognitive Neuroscience
6495 Alvarado Road, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92120
http://emmoreylab.sdsu.edu
Voice/VP: (619) 594-8067


2009/3/26 Sarah Hafer <charityh at comcast.net>

> I got a question about terminology used for directional verbs, indicating
> verbs, inflecting verbs, spatial verbs, and depicting verbs.
> To me, it appears that inflecting verbs and indicating verbs are used to
> specifically denote that these are not classifier predicates, which would
> fall under the spatial/depicting verb category. If that is so about
> indicating and inflecting verbs, i suppose directional verbs could apply to
> any type of verbs as long as they are directional. Say, if i signed a cup is
> being moved from point A to point B, that is both a directional verb and a
> depicting/spatial verb. Yet, if i signed that person A is throwing something
> (not using a classifier here but the THROW sign in ASL for general) to
> person B, that is considered an indicating verb and also a directional verb.
>
> Am i getting the terminology use right here?
>
> --
> Sarah
>
> _______________________________________________
> SLLING-L mailing list
> SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
> http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/slling-l/attachments/20090326/4a173678/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
SLLING-L mailing list
SLLING-L at majordomo.valenciacc.edu
http://majordomo.valenciacc.edu/mailman/listinfo/slling-l