Donna Jo Napoli
List of John Benjamins publications for which Donna Jo Napoli plays a role.
2024 An approach to path movement in the diachronic study of sign languages: Biomechanics and nonarbitrariness Thematic issue: Historical Linguistics of Sign Languages, pp. 203–250 | Article
Sign languages seem not to be amenable to traditional historical reconstruction via the comparative method, making it difficult to replicate the successes achieved in the diachronic study of spoken languages. We propose to alleviate this difficulty with an alternative approach that draws upon… read more
2024 Torso articulation in sign languages Sign Language & Linguistics 27:1, pp. 1–34 | Article
Torso articulation in sign languages is mentioned variably in the linguistic analysis of sign languages but is often ignored. The prevailing idea seems to be that detailed study of movement of the parts of the torso will yield little insight into linguistic matters – so mentions can be general… read more
2016 A cross-linguistic preference for torso stability in the lexicon: Evidence from 24 sign languages Sign Language & Linguistics 19:2, pp. 197–231 | Article
When the arms move in certain ways, they can cause the torso to twist or rock. Such extraneous torso movement is undesirable, especially during sign language communication, when torso position may carry linguistic significance, so we expend effort to resist it when it is not intended. This… read more
2015 Review of Arık (2013): Current Directions in Turkish Sign Language Research Sign Language & Linguistics 18:1, pp. 135–141 | Review
2013 How much can classifiers be analogous to their referents? Gesture 13:1, pp. 1–27 | Article
Sign Language poetry is especially valued for its presentation of strong visual images. Here, we explore the highly visual signs that British Sign Language and American Sign Language poets create as part of the ‘classifier system’ of their languages. Signed languages, as they create… read more
2009 The grammatical versatility of taboo terms Studies in Language 33:3, pp. 612–643 | Article
Taboo terms in certain English expressions and constructions are intensifiers, which have spread as a unit over time to various syntactic positions (Hoeksema & Napoli 2008). Here we look at the pragmatic coherence that has allowed such semantically disparate terms to be grammaticalized as a unit.… read more
2003 Morpheme structure constraints on two-handed signs in American Sign Language: Notions of symmetry Sign Language & Linguistics 6:2, pp. 123–205 | Article
In ASL, two-handed signs fall into three major sets. In one set the hands have different shapes and either only the dominant hand moves or the hands move as a unit. Battison’s Dominance Condition was intended to account for the fact that the non-dominant hand typically assumes an unmarked shape… read more
2000 Exploitation of morphological possibilities in signed languages: Comparison of American Sign Language with English Sign Language & Linguistics 3:1, pp. 3–58 | Article
American Sign Language shares with spoken languages derivational and inflectional morphological processes, including compounding, reduplication, incorporation, and, arguably, templates. Like spoken languages, ASL also has an extensive nonderivational, noninflectional morphology involving… read more
1995 The verbal component in Italian compounds Contemporary Research in Romance Linguistics: Papers from the XXII Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, El Paso/Juárez, February 22–24, 1992, Amastae, Jon, Grant Goodall, M. Montalbetti and M. Phinney (eds.), pp. 367–381 | Article
