Cover not available
Article published In:
Sign Language & Linguistics
Vol. 25:2 (2022) ► pp.135–162

ASL negative incorporation as negative suppletion

 | York University
While there are several analyses of negation in American Sign Language (ASL), the phenomenon of negative incorporation has been overlooked in the generative literature, except for Sandler’s (1999) phonological analysis. The phonological approach makes several useful generalizations but is not without its drawbacks. We, therefore, situate our analysis in the Distributed Morphology framework and argue that negative incorporation is best analyzed as a case of negative suppletion. We motivate our approach based on the observations that (i) negative incorporation is sentential negation, (ii) negative incorporation blocks the occurrence of the canonical negation strategy for the affected verbs, and (iii) there is no verb-to-Neg movement in ASL. When taken together, these factors indicate that negative incorporation cannot be affixation. Suppletion, however, alleviates the problematic aspects of the phonological analysis while maintaining the relevant phonological generalizations.
Keywords: American Sign Language, negation, negative incorporation, Distributed Morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Negation in ASL
  • 3.Negative incorporation as affixation
  • 4.A closer look at negative incorporation
    • 4.1Negative incorporation is clausal negation
    • 4.2A blocking effect
  • 5.No movement to Neg0
  • 6.Distributed morphology
    • 6.1Spanning
  • 7.Negative incorporation is negative suppletion
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 23 June 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.20012.bem
References (61)
References
Aarons, Debra. 1994. Aspects of the syntax of American Sign Language. Boston, MA: Boston University PhD dissertation.
Aarons, Debra, Benjamin J. Bahan, Judy Kegl & Carol Neidle. 1995. Lexical tense markers in American Sign Language. In Karen Emmorey & Judy S. Reilly (eds.), Language, gesture, and space, 225–253. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Anderson, Diane E. & Judy S. Reilly. 1997. The puzzle of negation: How children move from communicative to grammatical negation in ASL. Applied Psycholinguistics 181. 411–429. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, Mark, & Kirsten Fudeman. 2011. What is morphology? Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark. 1976. Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Mark. 1985. The mirror principle and morphosyntactic explanation. Linguistic Inquiry 161. 373–415.Google Scholar
Bembridge, Gavin. 2016. Negation in American Sign Language: The view from the interface. Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 36(1). [URL]
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. 2013. The Spanish lexicon stores stems with theme vowels, not roots with inflectional class features. Probus 251. 3–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Braze, David. 2004. Aspectual inflection, verb raising and object fronting in American Sign Language. Lingua 1141. 29–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brentari, Diane. 1998. A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bruening, Benjamin. 2019. Doing away with post-syntactic operations: No need for lowering or local dislocation in a Minimal morphosyntax. Manuscript, University of Delaware.Google Scholar
Clements, George N. & Samuel J. Keyser. 1983. CV phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Corina, David. 1989. Recognition of affective and non-canonical linguistic facial expressions in Deaf and hearing subjects. Brain and Cognition 91. 227–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cowper, Elizabeth & Daniel Currie Hall. 2019. Scope variation in contrastive hierarchies of morphosyntactic features. In David W. Lightfoot & Jonathan Havenhill (eds.), Variable properties in language: Their nature and acquisition, 27–41. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 2010. Typology of negation. In Laurence R. Horn (ed.), The expression of negation, 9–38. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Clercq, Karen. 2013. A unified syntax of negation. Ghent: Universiteit Gent PhD dissertation.
Deuchar, Margaret. 1987. Negative incorporation in three sign languages. In Jim Kyle (ed.), Sign and school: Using signs in Deaf children’s development, 35–43. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Dresher, B. Elan. 2009. The contrastive hierarchy in phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Durrleman-Tame, Stephanie. 2008. The syntax of Jamaican Creole: A cartographic perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embick, David. 2015. The morpheme: A theoretical introduction. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embick, David & Morris Halle. 2005. On the status of stems in morphological theory. In Twan Geerts, Ivo van Ginneken & Haike Jacobs (eds), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2003, 37–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Embick, David & Rolf Noyer. 2001. Movement operations after syntax. Linguistic Inquiry 321. 555–595. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Emonds, Joseph. 1978. The verbal complex V’ –V in French. Linguistic Inquiry 91. 151–175.Google Scholar
Fischer, Susan. D. 2006. Questions and negation in American Sign Language. In Ulrike Zeshan (ed.), Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages, 167–197. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.Google Scholar
Goldsmith, John A. 1990. Autosegmental and metrical phonology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris. 1997. Distributed Morphology: Impoverishment and fission. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 301. 425–449.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Ken Hale & Samuel. J. Keyser (eds.). The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in honour of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hankamer, Jorge & Line Mikkelsen. 2005. When movement must be blocked: A reply to Embick and Noyer. Linguistic Inquiry 361. 85–125. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harley, Heidi & Rolf Noyer. 1999. Distributed Morphology. Glot International 41. 3–9.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi & Elizabeth Ritter. 2002. Person and number in pronouns: A feature geometric analysis. Language 781. 482–526. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Harley, Heidi & Mercedes Tubino Blanco. 2013. Cycles, vocabulary items, and stem forms in Hiaki. In Ora Matushansky & Alec Marantz (eds.), Distributed Morphology today: Morphemes for Morris Halle, 117–134. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugen, Jason D. 2016. Readjustment: rejected? In Daniel Siddiqi & Heidi Harley (eds.), Morphological metatheory, 303–342. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haugen, Jason D. & Daniel Siddiqi. 2013. Roots and the derivation. Linguistic Inquiry 441. 493–517. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. Towards a restricted realization theory: Multimorphemic monolistemicity, portmanteaux, and post-linearization spanning. In Daniel Siddiqi & Heidi Harley (eds.), Morphological metatheory, 343–386. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ivana, Adrian & Hiromu Sakai. 2007. Honorification and light verbs in Japanese. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 161. 171–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddell, Scott K. 1984. think and believe: Sequentiality in American Sign Language. Language 601. 372–399. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1980. American Sign Language syntax. The Hague: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liskova, Elena I. 2012. Negation of know, want, like, have, and good in American Sign Language. Austin, TX: The University of Texas at Austin MA Thesis.
Marantz, Alec. 1997. Stem suppletion, or the arbitrariness of the sign. Paper presented at the Université de Paris VIII.
Merchant, Jason. 2015. How much context is enough? Two cases of span-conditioned stem allomorphy. Linguistic Inquiry 461. 273–303. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Müller, Gereon. 2007. Extended exponence by enrichment: Argument encoding in German, Archi, and Timucua. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 131. 253–266.Google Scholar
Neidle, Carol, Judy Kegl, Dawn MacLaughlin, Benjamin J. Bahan & Robert G. Lee. 2000. The syntax of American Sign Language: Functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland. 2008. The grammar of headshake: A typological perspective on German Sign Language negation. Linguistics in Amsterdam 11. 37–74.Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer. 2002. V-to-Neg raising and negative concord in three sign languages. Rivista di Grammatica Generativa 271. 73–86.Google Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 201, 365–424.Google Scholar
Poser, William J. 1992. Blocking of phrasal constructions by lexical items. In Ivan Sag & Anna Szabolcsi (eds.), Lexical matters, 111–130. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Quer, Josep. 2002. Negative operators in Catalan Sign Language. Manuscript, ICREA & Universitat de Barcelona.Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy. 1999. Cliticization and prosodic words in a sign language. In Tracy Hall & Ursula Kleinhenz (eds.), Studies on the phonological word, 223–255. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siddiqi, Daniel. 2006. Minimize exponence: Economy effects on a model of the morphosyntactic component of the grammar. Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona PhD dissertation.
. 2021. On the taxonomy of root suppletion. Paper presented at the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL), The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
Svenonius, Peter. 2012. Spanning. Manuscript, CASTL, University of Tromsø. [URL]
. 2016. Spans and words. In Daniel Siddiqi & Heidi Harley (eds.), Morphological metatheory, 199–220. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valli, Clayton & Ceil Lucas. 1992. Linguistics of American Sign Language: A resource text for ASL users; instructor’s manual. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar
Veinberg, Silvana C. & Ronnie B. Wilbur. 1990. A linguistic analysis of the negative headshake in American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 681. 217–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Volpe, Mark. 2009. A Distributed Morphology-based analysis of Japanese verbal honorifics. Manuscript, LingBuzz/000520.Google Scholar
Woodward, James & Susan DeSantis. 1977. Negative incorporation in French and American Sign Language. Language in Society 61. 379–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1997. Negation and clausal structure. A comparative study of Romance languages. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Zeijlstra, Hedde. 2016. Negation and negative dependencies. Annual Review of Linguistics 21. 233–254. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zeshan, Ulrike. 2004. Hand, head and face: Negative constructions in sign languages. Linguistic Typology 81. 1–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2006. Negative and interrogative constructions in sign languages: A case study in sign language typology. In Ulrike Zeshan (ed.), Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages, 28–69. Nijmegen: Ishara Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar