Directional Verbs

Sat Mar 28 13:34:30 UTC 2009

I think that you are pointing out something that should be obvious:
Many linguists are ignorant about signed languages, and unable to assess their value or even their constituent parts and functions accurately because their preconceptions get in the way - and those preconceptions are based on linguistic models that developed under the myth that spoken languages comprise the whole and only body of "real" languages. 
The counterpoint in responses seems to be that many people on and off this list are working in various ways to
a) broaden the definition of languages in the minds of other linguists,
b) set up new assumptions about language by broadening taxonomies of language and linguistic structures to include signed languages and visual structural properties of language, 
c) repair the faulty underpinnings to general linguistic theory so that judgments about "real languages" or the "special nature of spoken language" stick out like a sore thumb, marking the linguist who hasn't really been keeping current,
d) build comparative terms that can handle those parts of language that cross modalities, and 
e) study signed languages on their own merits. 

The wording of your initial question might have steered responses in the direction of a-d, but I think that your primary concern is the last point, but also implies an additional effort that hasn't been mentioned as clearly: initiatives that begin from descriptive linguistic study of signed languages, and then transfers those insights to the study of spoken languages. 

To me it seems that some of the phonological systems proposed over the last 20 years are stretching in the directions you want linguistics to go, but that it hasn't been as conscious or as openly acknowledged as it could be.

I am not an active linguistics researcher, but I would say that the thinking I have been doing - based on experience with visual and spoken syntax and phonological problems - leads me in this direction, and (based on conversations with active researchers) that others are working in this direction as well - though perhaps they haven't been published just yet. 

To use my experience as an example, my (inexpert) knowledge of American Sign Language syntax leads me to conclude, not only that ASL syntax and Japanese Spoken Language syntax have important similarities (that helped me learn Japanese much faster!) but also that some of those similarities in syntax are tied to the critical importance of timing in the phonological structure and for learnability across signed and spoken languages. And *that*, coupled with the question "why is topic-comment structure so rare in spoken languages?" led me to rethink the structure of utterances. I now think that "incomplete or erroneous" utterances are in fact different kinds of constructions that frequently include gestures as indexes and counters, and that topic-comment structures are common in spoken languages. In other words, I think that face-to-face communication in real time favors structures that are more like topic-comment and more like the structures that have been identified thanks to si
 gned language research. I also think this is invisible in spoken language linguistics because so much of the theory is built on text-based data using "complete" (i.e. SVO) *written* sentences rather than real-time conversational data. 

I could be wrong about any/all of these assumptions and conclusions. Even so, it's an example of sign language linguistics as the basis of new thinking about all linguistics which then extends to new directions of inquiry about spoken languages. 

Carolyn Ostrander
Renée Crown University Honors Program
Syracuse University
clostran at syr.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu [mailto:slling-l-bounces at majordomo.valenciacc.edu] On Behalf Of Patricia Raswant
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 11:25 PM
To: A list for linguists interested in signed languages
Subject: Re: [SLLING-L] Directional Verbs

Thank you for explaining, Dan.  First, please understand that I'm not
discussing about the innateness hypothesis, far from it.  I would like
to know why linguists don't analyze signed languages for what they
are, without comparing them to spoken languages.  Moreover, unless I'm
mistaken, I don't think I've read any articles where linguists compare
a spoken language to another spoken language, except they would point
out the differences among them, and that is it.  In fact, they
celebrate and embrace the uniqueness of their spoken languages while
linguists are attempting to make a case how much the semantics of
signed languages are similar to spoken languages.  I believe that
comparing signed languages to spoken languages are like comparing
apples to oranges.  Since you quote Liddell, I am sure that even you
agree that the functions of signed languages and spoken languages are
very different--I wonder how is it possible for linguists to compare
signed languages to spoken languages?

2009/3/27 Dan I. Slobin <slobin at berkeley.edu>:
> Many of us who have spent our careers investigating child language
> development--in both speech and sign--don't buy into the innateness
> hypothesis.  Neither do most of the linguists I know around the world.  The
> obvious fact that language requires brain mechanisms does not mean that the
> brain is pre-wired for language universals.  Everything we do, think, and
> feel is based on brain mechanisms, so you can't get very far with that
> argument.  And current cognitive neurology hasn't found a "language center,"
> but rather many different interacting systems that are involved in language
> one way or another.
>
> Much work in the fields of grammaticalization, functional linguistics,
> cognitive linguistics, and typological linguistics has provided a deeper
> understanding of the many cognitive, communicative, and social interactional
> factors that, together, work to establish the forms and functions of
> language.  To be sure, there are linguistic universals.  And maybe, at the
> end of the day, some of them will turn out to be irreducible to other
> explanatory factors.  But first we have to explore all factors that seem to
> be relevant for accounting for the forms and functions of language--both
> those that are universal and those that are not.  The same sorts of factors
> work to determine the forms and functions of both signed and spoken
> languages, with special linguistic characteristics determined by the
> modality of communication.
>
> Signed languages are "real" languages for the same reasons that spoken
> languages are: duality of patterning, ability to create endless new lexical
> items and meaningful utterances, semantic displacement, encoding of
> propositions and a range of devices to modulate propositional meanings, etc.
> etc.  The linguistic investigation of signed languages is important in
> linguistics generally, and it is developing rapidly in many countries.
> Comparisons between languages is very useful, and reveals ways in which
> groups of languages function in similar ways.  So, for example, it is
> insightful to compare ASL morphology with the simultaneous morphology of
> Semitic languages like Arabic and Hebrew.
>
> Sincerely,
> Dan Slobin, psycholinguist
>
> At 10:55 AM 3/27/2009, Nassira Nicola wrote:
>
> On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 7:09 AM, Patricia Raswant <
> patricia.raswant at gallaudet.edu> wrote:
> I have a question.  Why do linguists compare ASL and other signed languages
> to spoken languages?
>
> ---
>
> In addition to the other answers given, I'd offer the following (sorry if
> it's review - I've been explaining this to my students all quarter, so I'm
> just starting from the same amount of background that they have):
>
> A great deal (not all, but a significant amount) of modern work in
> linguistics in based on the assumption that language is at least partly
> innate.  Obviously, it's not *all* programmed into a baby's brain to start
> with (the vocabulary of a specific language, for instance, is definitely
> learned) but the idea is that babies figure out so much on their own,
> without ever being exposed to it, that some fundamental parts of language
> have to be based in the brain, somewhere.
>
> So, a lot of linguistics nowadays revolves around figuring out what
> characteristics all languages share underneath the surface, so we can then
> figure out what the brain's "language center" contributes.
>
> What this means for signed languages is this: if all humans have basically
> the same brain structure, and if the brain is what creates the basic
> characteristics of language, then all languages should have the same basic
> characteristics.  If signed languages *don't* act like every other human
> language, as other people have pointed out, then people who believe in the
> innateness hypothesis start to get suspicious about whether they actually
> *are* real languages.
>
> Plus, if you're committed to the idea that learning things about one
> language can help explain another (because they come from the same source,
> and resemble each other on some level), then it's important not to ignore
> languages that might teach you something interesting.  Some of the work I've
> been doing on semantics in LSQ was inspired by work my adviser did in Greek;
> I've had some great conversations with a semanticist friend who works on
> French, helping her understand weird things she's noticed in her work by
> comparing them to CL:55-> in ASL; it's not unusual to draw (limited)
> comparisons between ASL noun/verb pairs and certain structures in Hebrew and
> Arabic; etc.  There's a lot of useful work to be done in linguistics in
> general that signed languages have a role in.
>
> Of course, if you're the type of linguist that works on how long a [b] has
> to be voiced before it stops being perceived as a [p], well, signed
> languages may not tell you much.  But most linguistic questions end up
> having very little to do with modality - language is language, mostly, no
> matter what body parts you use to express it.
>
>
> Is an answer to the question you were asking?
>
> Nassira
>
>
>
>
> Nassira Nicola
> University of Chicago
> Department of Linguistics
> http://home.uchicago.edu/~nnicola
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
> Dan I. Slobin, Professor of the Graduate School
> Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Linguistics
>
> Department of Psychology        email: slobin at berkeley.edu
> 3210 Tolman #1650                 phone (Dept):  1-510-642-5292
> University of California             phone (home): 1-510-848-1769
> Berkeley, CA 94720-1650         fax: 1-510-642-5293
> USA                                      http://ihd.berkeley.edu/Slobin.htm
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
>
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