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Part of
Advances in Sign Language Corpus Linguistics
Edited by Ella Wehrmeyer
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 108] 2023
► pp. 123–154

Chapter 5
A corpus-based analysis of coordinate structures in Libras

| Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
| Universidade Federal de Alagoas
| Universidade Federal de Ceará

This chapter describes coordination processes in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) based on data from the Libras Corpus <https://​corpuslibras​.ufsc​.br/>. Similar to other sign languages (e.g., Tang & Lau 2012; Zorzi 2018), coordinate structures in Libras are organized by juxtaposing one to the other, either marked only by nonmanual markers, or through connectors such as but, or, is (with a value of “that is”), also, or a combination of manual and nonmanual markers. After annotating the data for each sign for both hands, we annotated the syntactic units and then identified the coordinated sentences using ELAN. We find that use of nonmanual markers is especially prevalent, in both conjunctive and disjunctive structures, establishing prosodic boundaries and clauses limits. In adversative coordinate clauses, manual connectors such as mas (“but”) are used, and we attest to a small number of occurrences of nonmanual markers with adversatives.

Keywords: Libras, Libras syntax, coordinate structures, parataxis, Libras Corpus
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Syntactic articulation between clauses
    • 2.1Parataxis in sign languages
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Data annotation
    • 3.2Research participants
    • 3.3Data analysis
  • 4.Qualitative analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Paratactic structures with manual markers
      • 4.1.1Conjunctives with manual markers
      • 4.1.2Adversatives with manual markers
      • 4.1.3Disjunctives with manual markers
    • 4.2Paratactic structures with nonmanual markers
      • 4.2.1Conjunctive paratactic structures with nonmanual markers
      • 4.2.2Adversative clauses with nonmanual markers
      • 4.2.3Nonmanual marking of disjunctive clauses
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 3 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.108.05qua
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