a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar

Sat Mar 5 23:47:25 UTC 2011

I'm not fluent enough in ASL to have any intuitions on this myself.

It may well be that the claim (that VS order is impossible in ASL 
intransitive clauses) was either wrong, or more likely, needs further 
qualification to be accurate. (This is an introductory textbook, so it 
is to be expected that they may have omitted some of the details.) That 
is, there may need to be other factors that need to be controlled for, 
as Susan pointed out.  We'd need to know not just the glosses of the 
signs, but also the nonmanuals and the presence of any pauses, so we 
could tell what, if anything, was topicalized.  Claims about word order 
possibilities refer to the order of the elements in the "core" clause 
after the topic.  One possible way to test this would be to add a topic 
that would tend to keep the other elements out of the topic slot, e.g.
     topic_____
     RECENTLY, EAT-FINISH DADDY.
If that's acceptable, then it would seem to be a counterexample to the 
claim in Valli, Lucas and Mulrooney.  I don't have that edition of the 
book, but in the third edition (p. 133) there is just one short 
paragraph describing the claim.  This at least makes it clear that 
they're talking only about noun subjects, not pronouns, and about plain 
(non-agreeing) verbs--but not what other factors may need to be 
controlled for, such as the discourse contexts that Ben mentions.

It may be that the example they use "*SILLY BOY" is bad, other similar 
sentences in VS order might be okay, which would suggest that perhaps 
the type of verb affects the possibilities, or the presence of the 
FINISH aspectual suffix.

Finally, there is always the possibility of dialect variation.

Albert Bickford
SIL International (Mexico program and Signed Language Leadership Team)
albert_bickford at sil.org

On 2011/03/04 1:34 PM, ben.karlin at yahoo.com wrote:
> If asked the question EAT-FINISH WHO? wouldn't EAT-FINISH JOHN be a 
> grammatical response?  Or in conversation especially with children a 
> series like EAT-FINISH MOMMY. EAT-FINISH DADDY. EAT-FINISH JOHN. could 
> this not also be allowed?
>    That kind of stereotypical structure is not unheard of with 
> children or the elderly.  It also shows up in stories.
>
> This is my sense of how things work. Have I got it wrong?
>
> Ben Karlin
> St Louis, MO
>
>
> -----Original message-----
>
>     *From: *Albert Bickford <albert_bickford at SIL.ORG>*
>     To: *SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU*
>     Sent: *Fri, Mar 4, 2011 20:15:26 GMT+00:00*
>     Subject: *Re: a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar
>
>     Another way to think about the situation is that the claim that VS
>     order is impossible in intransitive clauses in ASL refers
>     specifically to full (not pronominal) subjects.  So, *EAT-FINISH
>     JOHN would be claimed to be bad.  It is commonly the case that
>     pronouns in languages (especially unstressed pronouns) can show up
>     in places where nouns cannot, so claims about word order
>     possibilities have to make clear whether they are talking about
>     the possible positions of full NPs or also pronouns.
>
>     Albert Bickford
>     SIL International (Mexico program and Signed Language Leadership Team)
>     albert_bickford at sil.org
>
>
>     On 2011/03/04 12:37 PM, Grushkin, Donald A wrote:
>>     Thanks for the response, Susan.
>>
>>     If I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that in "EAT-FINISH", the subject (me) is implied or "understood", so the PRO.1 is a copy of the implied subject?
>>     ________________________________________
>>     From: linguists interested in signed languages [SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU] On Behalf Of Fischer Susan [susan.fischer at RIT.EDU]
>>     Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 10:13 AM
>>     To:SLLING-L at LISTSERV.VALENCIACC.EDU
>>     Subject: Re: a Linguistics of ASL question -- grammar
>>
>>     Sentences like that could be analyzed as an example of subject pronoun copy (discussed by Padden), since first person subject is often zero, and as far as I can tell, has no relation to the presence of FINISH.   It would be restricted to unstressed pronouns (you couldn't substitute MYSELF for IX1, for example).  I actually talked about a broader category of post-sentential tags in my very old paper on word order in ASL (Sign language and linguistic universals, recently reprinted in SLL), though I didn't call them that.  They have to be unstressed.  Note also that a language like Japanese, which is strictly verb-final and more generally head-final, permits postposed topics (without the topic marker wa) under the same circumstances, e.g.,
>>
>>     baka    da nee,      watasi  (falling intonation, low stress)
>>     dumb   is  right?   me
>>     I'm sure dumb, aren't I.
>>
>>     SDF
>>
>>     Susan D. Fischer
>>     Susan.Fischer at rit.edu<mailto:Susan.Fischer at rit.edu>
>>
>>     Center for Research on Language
>>     UCSD
>>
>>
>>
>>     On Mar 4, 2011, at 9:39 AM, Grushkin, Donald A wrote:
>>
>>     Teaching ASL Linguistics again.  In Linguistics of ASL (textbook by Valli, Lucas&  Mulrooney), it says that in simple sentences with plain intransitive verbs, it is not possible to use VS (Verb Subject) structure.  A couple of students pointed out that one can sign EAT-FINISH PRO.1, or RUN-FINISH PRO.1.  On the face of it, these do seem to be Verb Subject structures.  I hypothesized that the completive FINISH might be changing the structure of the sentence so the rule is not violated.  However, I'd like to check with you, the real linguistics experts on this.
>>
>>     --Don Grushkin
>>
>>
>
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