Article published in:
Signs and Structures: Formal Approaches to Sign Language Syntax
Edited by Paweł Rutkowski
[Benjamins Current Topics 71] 2015
► pp. 71–101

PERSON climbing up a tree

(and other adventures in sign language grammaticalization)

| University of Amsterdam
| 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
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Wehrmeyer, Ella
2019.  In English in Multilingual South Africa, ► pp. 371 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 july 2021. 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.

References
Arends, Jacques
1986 Genesis and development of the equative copula in Sranan. In Pieter Muysken & Norval Smith (eds.), Substrata versus universals in Creole genesis, 103–127. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, Mark, Irit Meir & Wendy Sandler
2005 The paradox of sign language morphology. Language 81(2). 301–344. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
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
1978 Lexical borrowing in American Sign Language. Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press.Google Scholar
Bertone, Carmela
2007 La struttura del sintagma determinante nella Lingua dei Segni Italiana (LIS). PhD dissertation, University of Venice.
Borer, Hagit
2005 In name only (Structuring sense, Volume I). Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bos, Heleen
1994 An auxiliary verb in Sign Language of the Netherlands. In Inger Ahlgren, Brita Bergman & Mary Brennan (eds.), Perspectives on sign language structure, 37–53. Durham: ISLA.Google Scholar
Brunelli, Michele
2011 Antisymmetry and sign languages: A comparison between NGT and LIS. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan L. & Östen Dahl
1989 The creation of tense and aspect systems in the languages of the world. Studies in Language 13. 51–103. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan L., Revere D. Perkins & William Pagliuca
1994 The evolution of grammar: Tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam
1986 Knowledge of language. Its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
1995 The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
2000 Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Roger Martin, David Michaels & Juan Uriagereka (eds.), Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honour of Howard Lasnik, 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Crasborn, Onno, Els van der Kooij, Dafydd Waters, Bencie Woll & Johanna Mesch
2008 Frequency distribution and spreading behavior of different types of mouth actions in three sign languages. Sign Language & Linguistics 11(1). 45–67. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Diessel, Holger
1999 Demonstratives: Form, function, and grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Egerland, Verner
2010 On Old Italian uomo and the classification of indefinite expressions. In Roberta d’Alessandro, Adam Ledgeway & Ian Roberts (eds.), Syntactic variation: The syntax of Italian dialects, 71–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Emmorey, Karen
1999 Do signers gesture? In Lynn S. Messing & Ruth Campbell (eds.), Gesture, speech, and sign, 133–159. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Susan
1975 Influences on word order change in ASL. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Word order and word order change, 1–25. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, Susan & Bonnie Gough
1972/1999 Some unfinished thoughts on finish. Sign Language & Linguistics 2(1). 67–77. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Frishberg, Nancy
1975 Arbitrariness and iconicity: Historical change in American Sign Language. Language 51, 696–719. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van
2004 Grammaticalization as economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2011a Grammaticalization and generative grammar: A difficult liaison. In Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization, 43–55. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2011b The linguistic cycle. Language change and the language faculty. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Giusti, Giuliana
2001 The birth of a functional category: from Latin ille to the Romance article and personal pronoun. In Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Current studies in Italian Syntax: Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 157–171. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi
1995 Subjects, events, and licensing. PhD dissertation, MIT.
Haspelmath, Martin
1997 Indefinite pronouns. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd
1993 Auxiliaries. Cognitive forces and grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva
2002a On the evolution of grammatical forms. In Alison Wray (ed.), The transition to language. Studies in the evolution of language, 376–397. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2002b World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Elisabeth C. Traugott
1993 Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Janis, Wynne D.
1995 A crosslinguistic perspective on ASL verb agreement. In Karen Emmorey & Judy Reilly (eds.), Language, gesture, and space, 195–223. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry
1999 The grammaticization of topics in ASL. Studies in Language 23(2). 271–306. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Lexicalization and grammaticalization. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook, 816–841. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Janzen, Terry & Barbara Shaffer
2002 Gesture as the substrate in the process of ASL grammaticization. In Richard P. Meier, Kearsy A. Cormier & David G. Quinto-Pozos (eds.), Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages, 199–223. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Trevor
2003 Language standardization and signed language dictionaries. Sign Language Studies 3(4). 431–468. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keller, Jörg
1998 Aspekte der Raumnutzung in der Deutschen Gebärdensprache. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Kuteva, Tania
2001 Auxiliation. An enquiry into the nature of grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ladewig, Silva
2011 Syntactic and semantic integration of gestures into speech — structural, cognitive, and conceptual aspects. PhD dissertation, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).
Lehmann, Christian
1995 Thoughts on grammaticalization. Munich: LINCOM.Google Scholar
Lillo-Martin, Diane & Richard P. Meier
2011 On the linguistic status of ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Theoretical Linguistics 37(3/4). 95–141.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Marsaja, I. Gede
2008 Desa Kolok — A deaf village and its sign language in Bali, Indonesia. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.Google Scholar
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
2011 ‘So, well, whatever’: Discourse functions of palm-up in New Zealand Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 14(2). 213–247. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit
1999 A perfect marker in Israeli Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 2. 43–62. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2002 A cross-modality perspective on verb agreement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20. 413–450. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Narrog, Heiko & Bernd Heine
(eds.) 2011 The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Neidle, Carol, Judy Kegl, Dawn MacLaughlin, Benjamin Bahan & Robert G. Lee
2000 The syntax of American Sign Language. Functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT PressGoogle Scholar
Neidle, Carol & Joan Nash
2012 The noun phrase. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook, 265–292. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nevins, Andrew
2011 Prospects and challenges for a clitic analysis of (A)SL agreement. Theoretical Linguistics 37(3/4). 173–187. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Newman, John
(ed.) 1998 The linguistics of giving. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Norde, Muriel
2011 Degrammaticalization. In Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization, 475–487. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Padden, Carol
1988 Interaction of morphology and syntax in American Sign Language. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland
2008 The grammar of headshake: A typological perspective on German Sign Language negation. Linguistics in Amsterdam 2008(1). 37–74.Google Scholar
2011 A point well taken: On the typology and diachrony of pointing. In Donna Jo Napoli & Gaurav Mathur (eds.), Deaf around the world, 144–163. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
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
2003 Optimal reciprocals in German Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 6(1). 3–42. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2006 Modality-independent and modality-specific aspects of grammaticalization in sign languages (Linguistics in Potsdam 24). Potsdam: Universitäts-Verlag.Google Scholar
2011 Grammaticalization in sign languages. In Heiko Narrog & Bernd Heine (eds.), The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization, 683–695. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves
1989 Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20(3). 365–424.Google Scholar
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
(ed.) 2007 Sign languages in contact. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Ramat, Paolo
1992 Thoughts on degrammaticalization. Linguistics 30. 549–560. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rathmann, Christian
2000 The optionality of agreement phrase: Evidence from signed languages. Master’s thesis, University of Texas at Austin.
Rathmann, Christian & Gaurav Mathur
2002 Is verb agreement the same crossmodally? In Richard P. Meier, Kearsy A. Cormier & David G. Quinto-Pozos (eds.), Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages, 370–404. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ringe, Don
2003 Internal reconstruction. In Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 244–261. Oxford: Blackwell. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rizzi, Luigi
2001 On the position “Int(errogative)” in the left periphery of the clause. In Guglielmo Cinque & Giampaolo Salvi (eds.), Current studies in Italian Syntax: Essays offered to Lorenzo Renzi, 287–296. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian & Anna Roussou
2003 Syntactic change. A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sapountzaki, Galini
2005 Free functional elements of tense, aspect, modality and agreement as possible auxiliaries in Greek Sign Language. PhD dissertation, University of Bristol.
2012 Agreement auxiliaries. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook, 204–227. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy
1999 Cliticization and prosodic words in a sign language. In Tracy A. Hall & Ursula Kleinhenz (eds.), Studies on the phonological word, 223–254. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Schermer, Trude
2003 From variant to standard: An overview of the standardization process of the lexicon of Sign Language of the Netherlands over two decades. Sign Language Studies 3. 469–486. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 Language planning. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook, 889–908. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sexton, Amy L.
1999 Grammaticalization in American Sign Language. Language Sciences 21. 105–141. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, Andrew
2005 Classifiers and DP structure in Southeast Asia. In Guglielmo Cinque & Richard Kayne (eds.), The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax, 806–838. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Wayne H.
1990 Evidence for auxiliaries in Taiwan Sign Language. In Susan D. Fischer & Patricia Siple (eds.), Theoretical issues in sign language research. Vol. 1: Linguistics, 211–228. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Steele, Susan M.
1978 The category AUX as a language universal. In Joseph J. Greenberg (ed.), Universals of human language. Vol. 3: Word structure, 7–45. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Steinbach, Markus & Roland Pfau
2007 Grammaticalization of auxiliaries in sign languages. In Pamela M. Perniss, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach (eds.), Visible variation: Cross-linguistic studies on sign language structure, 303–339. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Supalla, Ted
2001 Making historical sign language materials accessible: A prototype database of early ASL. Sign Language & Linguistics 4. 285–297. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, Phyllis
1998 give: Acts of giving in American Sign Language. In John Newman (ed.), The linguistics of giving, 175–207. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, Sherman
2004 Gesture and language. Cross-linguistic and historical data from signed languages. Gesture 4. 43–73. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2007 Routes from gesture to language. In Elena A. Pizzuto, Paola Pietrandrea & Raffaele Simone (eds.), Verbal and signed languages. Comparing structures, constructs, and methodologies, 107–131. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wilcox, Sherman, Paolo Rossini & Elena A. Pizzuto
2010 Grammaticalization in sign languages. In Diane Brentari (ed.), Sign languages, 332–354. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wilcox, Sherman & Phyllis Wilcox
1995 The gestural expression of modality in ASL. In Joan Bybee & Suzanne Fleischmann (eds.), Modality in grammar and discourse, 135–162. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Woll, Bencie
1987 Historical and comparative aspects of British Sign Language. In Jim Kyle (ed.), Sign and school: Using signs in deaf children’s development, 12–34. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.Google Scholar