Article published in:
Signs and Structures: Formal Approaches to Sign Language SyntaxEdited by Paweł Rutkowski
[Benjamins Current Topics 71] 2015
► pp. 71–101
PERSON climbing up a tree
(and other adventures in sign language grammaticalization)
Roland Pfau | University of Amsterdam
Markus Steinbach | University of Göttingen
Studies on sign language grammaticalization have demonstrated that most of the attested diachronic changes from lexical to functional elements parallel those previously described for spoken languages. To date, most of these studies are either descriptive in nature or embedded within functional-cognitive theories. In contrast, we take a generative perspective on sign language grammaticalization, adopting ideas by Roberts & Roussou (2003), who suggest that grammaticalization can be characterized as “reanalysis ‘upwards’ along the functional structure”. Following an overview of some of the attested modality-independent pathways, we zoom in on the grammaticalization of two types of agreement auxiliaries, the lexical sources of which are the verb GIVE and the noun PERSON. We argue that the grammaticalization of GIVE-AUX (in Greek Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language) follows directly from Roberts & Roussou’s model because a lexical verb is reanalyzed as an element which is merged in a structurally higher functional position (little v). The same is true for PERSON, but this change has an additional modality-specific flavor. In spoken languages, agreement affixes typically enter the functional domain of V via cliticization. In contrast, in German Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language, PERSON, after having been reanalyzed as a determiner-like element, ‘jumps’ directly from D into AgrO — most probably because it has the relevant spatial properties necessary to express agreement. Thus, grammaticalization in sign languages, while being structurally similar, allows for types of reanalysis that are not attested in spoken languages.
Published online: 17 September 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.71.04pfa
https://doi.org/10.1075/bct.71.04pfa
References
Arends, Jacques
Aronoff, Mark, Irit Meir & Wendy Sandler
Barberà, Gemma
2012 The meaning of space in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): Reference, specificity and structure in signed discourse. PhD dissertation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.
Battison, Robbin
Bertone, Carmela
2007 La struttura del sintagma determinante nella Lingua dei Segni Italiana (LIS). PhD dissertation, University of Venice.
Bos, Heleen
Brunelli, Michele
Bybee, Joan L. & Östen Dahl
Bybee, Joan L., Revere D. Perkins & William Pagliuca
Crasborn, Onno, Els van der Kooij, Dafydd Waters, Bencie Woll & Johanna Mesch
Diessel, Holger
Egerland, Verner
Emmorey, Karen
Fischer, Susan
Fischer, Susan & Bonnie Gough
Frishberg, Nancy
Giusti, Giuliana
Harley, Heidi
1995 Subjects, events, and licensing. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Heine, Bernd
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva
Hopper, Paul J. & Elisabeth C. Traugott
Janis, Wynne D
Janzen, Terry & Barbara Shaffer
Johnston, Trevor
Kuteva, Tania
Ladewig, Silva
2011 Syntactic and semantic integration of gestures into speech — structural, cognitive, and conceptual aspects. PhD dissertation, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).
Lillo-Martin, Diane & Richard P. Meier
Loon, Esther van
2012 What’s in the palm of your hands? Discourse functions of palm-up in Sign Language of the Netherlands. MA thesis, University of Amsterdam.
Loon, Esther van, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach
2014 The grammaticalization of gestures in sign languages. In Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill & Sedinha Tessendorf (eds.), Body — language — communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction, 2133–2149. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Marsaja, I. Gede
Murmann, Christina, Peter Indefrey, Thomas Weskott & Markus Steinbach
2013 Why forget needs help but help does not. An experimental study on the influence of animacy/agreement on the distribution of pam. Poster presented at TISLR 11, July 10–12, London.
McKee, Rachel L. & Sophia Wallingford
Müller, Cornelia, Silva Ladewig & Jana Bressem
2013 Gestures and speech from a linguistic perspective: A new field and its history. In Cornelia Müller, Alan Cienki, Ellen Fricke, Silva H. Ladewig, David McNeill & Sedinha Teßendorf (eds.), Body — language — communication: An international handbook on multimodality in human interaction, 55–81. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Narrog, Heiko & Bernd Heine
Neidle, Carol, Judy Kegl, Dawn MacLaughlin, Benjamin Bahan & Robert G. Lee
Neidle, Carol & Joan Nash
Nevins, Andrew
Norde, Muriel
Padden, Carol
Pfau, Roland
Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann & Markus Steinbach
2010 Sign language agreement is syntactic: The importance of auxiliaries. Paper presented at Taalkunde in Nederland (TIN dag), Utrecht, February 2010.
Pfau, Roland & Markus Steinbach
Pollock, Jean-Yves
Quadros, Ronice M. de & Josep Quer
2010 The proper characterization of agreement in sign languages. Manuscript, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina & ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Quer, Josep & Santiago Frigola
2006 Crosslinguistic research and particular grammars: A case study on auxiliary predicates in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). Paper presented at Workshop on Cross-linguistic Sign Language Research, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, January 2006.
Quinto-Pozos, David
Rathmann, Christian
2000 The optionality of agreement phrase: Evidence from signed languages. Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
Rathmann, Christian & Gaurav Mathur
Ringe, Don
Rizzi, Luigi
Roberts, Ian & Anna Roussou
Sapountzaki, Galini
2005 Free functional elements of tense, aspect, modality and agreement as possible auxiliaries in Greek Sign Language. PhD dissertation, University of Bristol.
Sandler, Wendy
Schermer, Trude
Simpson, Andrew
Smith, Wayne H
Steele, Susan M
Steinbach, Markus & Roland Pfau
Supalla, Ted
Wilcox, Phyllis
Wilcox, Sherman
Wilcox, Sherman, Paolo Rossini & Elena A. Pizzuto
Wilcox, Sherman & Phyllis Wilcox
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 31 july 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.