Cover not available
Part of
Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Aspects of Ethiopian Languages
Edited by Derib Ado, Almaz Wasse Gelagay and Janne Bondi Johannessen †
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 48] 2021
► pp. 367–388

The linguistic nature of expression of aspect in Ethiopian sign language

| Addis Ababa University
Research findings on the aspectual marking system in sign languages points towards diverse thinking. At first it was claimed that aspect marking is inflectional morphology. This, however, has been questioned on the grounds that it does not meet the basic criteria for inflectional status, and is in fact derivational or belonging to a highly iconic class of ideophonic morphology. It also has been argued that the system is neither inflectional nor derivational, but gestural. These different analytical perspectives are still a subject of discussion. This paper is a part of wider research on forms, meanings of the aspect marking system in Ethiopian Sign Language (EthSL) and examines the nature of the aspect marking system observed in EthSL in light of the ongoing discussions. Seven deaf language consultants of differing ages and genders were involved. McCarthy’s prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology was used as a theoretical framework for the analysis of the data. The analysed data refutes the gestural nature of the aspect marking system and points to the direction of inflectional morphology.
Keywords: aspect, sign language, Ethiopian Sign Language, EthSL, inflectional morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The linguistic nature of aspect marking in the literature
  • 3.Theoretical framework and methodology
    • 3.1Theoretical framework
    • 3.2Application of the theory in sign languages analysis
    • 3.3The reason for choosing this theory
    • 3.4Sampling
    • 3.5Data collection tools and techniques
    • 3.6Data analysis procedure
  • 4.Morphological vis-à-vis gestural
    • 4.1Degree of uniformity in the marking of aspect in EthSL
    • 4.2Internal structure and decomposability of the morphemes
      • 4.2.1Continuative
      • 4.2.2Iterative
      • 4.2.3Inceptive
  • 5.Inflectional vis-à-vis derivational
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • Keys to conventions abbreviated words
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 23 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.48.15abe
References (31)
References
Armstrong, David, Stokoe, William & Wilcox, Sherman. 1995. Gesture and the Nature of Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bergman, Brita. 1983. Verbs and adjectives: Morphological processes in Swedish Sign Language. In Language in Sign: An International Perspective on Sign Language, James Kyle & Bencie Woll (eds), 3–9. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Bergman, Brita & Dahl, Osten. 1994. Ideophones in sign language? The place of reduplication in the tense aspect system of Swedish sign language. In Tense, Aspect and Action-empirical and Theoretical Contributions to Language Typology, Carl Bache, Hans Basbøll & Carl-Erik Lindberg (eds), 397–422. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Booij, Geert. 1996. Inherent versus contextual inflection and the split morphology hypothesis. Yearbook of Morphology 1995: 1–16.Google Scholar
. 2007. The Grammar of Words. An Introduction to Morphology. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Brennan, Mary. 1983. Marking time in British sign language. In Language in Sign: An International Perspective on Sign Language, James Kyle & Bencie Woll (eds), 10–31. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Bybee, John. 1985. Morphology. The Relation between Form and Meaning. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Casey, Shannon. 2003. Relationships between gestures and signed languages: Indicating participants in action. In Cross-linguistic Perspective in Sign Language Research: Selected Papers from TISLR 2000, Anne Baker, Beppie van den Bogaerde & Onno Crasborn (eds), 95–118. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Chao, Yuen Ren. 1968. A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. Los Angeles CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. 1993. Space in Danish Sign Language: The Semantics and Morphosyntax of the Use of Space in a Visual Language. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Gray, Michael. 2012. Aspect Marking in Australian Sign Language: A Process of Gestural Verb Modification. PhD dissertation, Macquarie University.Google Scholar
Harris, Randy. 1980. The Linguistics Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2002. Understanding Morphology. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin & Sims, Andrea. 2010. Understanding Morphology (2nd edition). UK: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kendon, Adam. 2004. Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klima, Edward & Bellugi, Ursula. 1979. The Signs of Language. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Liddell, Scott. 2003. Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maroney, Elisa. 2004. Aspect in American Sign Language. PhD dissertation. University of New Mexico at Albuquerque.Google Scholar
McCarthy, John. 1979. Formal Problems in Semitic Phonology and Morphology, Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Cambridge. Massachusetts.Google Scholar
. 1981. A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology. Linguistic Inquiry 12: 373–418.Google Scholar
Metlay, Donald & Supalla, Ted. 1995. Morpho-syntactic structure of aspect and number inflections in ASL. In Language, Gesture, and Space, Karen Emmorey & Judy Reilly (eds), 255–286. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Rathmann, Christian. 2005. Event Structure in American Sign Language. PhD dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy. 1989. Phonological Representation of the sign: Linearity and Non-linearity in American Sign Language. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1990. Temporal aspect and American Sign Language. In Theoretical Issues in Sign Languages Research, Susan Fischer & Patricia Siple (eds), 103–129. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
. 1996. Phonological features and feature classes: The case of movements in sign language. Lingua 98: 197–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy & Lillo-Martin, Diane. 2005. Sign Language and Linguistic Universals. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Schembri, Adam, Jones, Caroline & Burnham, Denis. 2005. Comparing action gestures and classifier verbs of motion: Evidence from Australian Sign Language, Taiwan Sign Language and nonsigners’ gestures without speech. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 10(3): 272–290. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Carlota. 1997. The Parameter of Aspect, 2nd edn. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stokoe, William. (1960). Sign language structure: An outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf. Studies in Linguistics Occasional Papers 8. Buffalo NY: University of Buffalo Press.Google Scholar
Sutton-Spence, Rachel & Woll, Bencie. 1999. The Linguistics of British Sign Language. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar