Iconicity and Verb Agreement: A Corpus-Based Syntactic Analysis of German Sign Language

by Marloes Oomen

Overview

In many sign languages around the world, some verbs express grammatical agreement, while many others do not. Curiously, there is a remarkable degree of semantic overlap across sign languages between verbs that do and do not possess agreement properties.
This book scrutinizes the interaction between semantic and morphosyntactic structure in verb constructions in German Sign Language (DGS). Naturalistic dialogues from the DGS Corpus form the primary data source. It is shown that certain semantic properties, also known to govern transitivity marking in spoken languages, are predictive of verb type in DGS, where systematic iconic mappings play a mediating role. The results enable the formulation of cross-linguistic predictions about the interplay between verb semantics and verb type in sign languages. An analysis of the morphosyntactic properties of different verb types leads up to the conclusion that even ‘plain’ verbs agree with their arguments, where iconicity again plays a crucial role.
The findings motivate a unified syntactic analysis in terms of agreement of constructions with verbs of all types, thus offering a novel solution to the typological puzzle that supposedly only a subset of verbs agree in DGS and other sign languages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110742848
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	12/06/2021
Series:	Sign Languages and Deaf Communities [SLDC] , #15
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	346
File size:	18 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marloes Oomen, Institute Jean Nicod, CNRS-ENS-EHESS, Universität Paris Sciences&Lettres, Paris, France.
Marloes Oomen, Institute Jean Nicod, CNRS-ENS-EHESS, PSL University, Paris, France.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Notation conventions xiii

List of sign languages xvii

Part I Background

1 Introduction 3

1.1 Verbs and arguments in sign languages 4

1.1.1 General properties of sign language structure 5

1.1.2 Person marking 7

1.1.3 Verb classification 8

1.1.4 Agreement auxiliaries 13

1.1.5 Null arguments 14

1.1.6 Agent-backgrounding 16

1.2 Iconicity 17

1.3 German Sign Language 20

1.4 The value of corpus-based research 22

1.5 Goats 23

1.6 How to read this book 24

2 Methodology 27

2.1 The DGS Corpus 27

2.2 The ValPaL list 30

2.3 The annotation procedure 31

2.3.1 Verb form 33

2.3.2 Constituent order 34

2.3.3 Verb type 39

2.3.4 Agreement marking 41

2.3.5 Subject properties 44

2.3.6 Argument-structure alternations 44

2.3.7 Comments 45

2.4 Methodological challenges 45

2.4.1 Determining clause boundaries 45

2.4.2 Lexical verbs and classifier predicates 46

2.4.3 Labeling constituents 47

2.4.4 Non-overt arguments and subject demotion 49

2.4.5 (Lack of) negative evidence 50

2.5 Data elicitation: informants and procedure 51

2.6 Summary 52

Part II Verb semantics and iconic mappings

3 Verb types and semantic maps 57

3.1 Verb semantics, verb type, and transitivity 58

3.2 Some quantitative results 61

3.3 A semantic map approach 63

3.4 A semantic map for transitivity splits 65

3.5 DGS verbs on the semantic map 69

3.5.1 Procedure 70

3.5.2 Body-anchored verbs 71

3.5.3 Neutral verbs 76

3.5.4 Agreement verbs 78

3.5.5 Hybrid verbs 80

3.5.6 Summary 85

3.6 Discussion 85

3.7 Conclusion 88

4 Iconic mapping patterns 90

4.1 Iconic mappings 90

4.2 Methodological procedure 92

4.3 Body-anchored verb forms 95

4.3.1 I: Instrument 96

4.3.2 II: Hand(s): holding 97

4.3.3 III: Hand(s): moving 98

4.3.4 IV: Body part: external expression 100

4.3.5 V: Body part: perception 101

4.3.6 VI: Body part: internal experience 102

4.3.7 VII: No body-to-body mapping 103

4.4 Neutral verb forms 104

4.4.1 I: Instrument 104

4.4.2 II: Hand(s): holding 106

4.4.3 III: Body part/whole entity (human) 107

4.4.4 IV: Whole entity (object) 108

4.4.5 V: Iconic movement 109

4.5 Agreement and spatial verb forms 110

4.5.1 I: Hand(s): holding 110

4.5.2 II: Hand(s): moving 112

4.5.3 III: Body part: perception 114

4.5.4 IV: Whole entity (human) 115

4.5.5 V: Iconic movement 116

4.6 Conclusion 117

5 Synthesis: verb semantics 119

5.1 Degree vs. dimension of transitivity 119

5.2 Back to the semantic map 120

5.2.1 Body-anchored verbs 120

5.2.2 Neutral verbs 122

5.2.3 Agreement and spatial verbs 126

5.3 Conclusion 128

Part III Morphosyntactic properties of verb forms

6 Body-anchored verbs 131

6.1 Background 131

6.1.1 Body as subject 132

6.1.2 Psych-verbs in NGT 134

6.2 Constituent order patterns 136

6.3 Valency patterns 141

6.4 Subject-drop patterns 146

6.5 Summary 150

7 Neutral verbs 151

7.1 Background 151

7.1.1 Localization is not agreement 151

7.1.2 Localization is agreement 152

7.2 Constituent order patterns 156

7.3 Valency patterns 159

7.4 Localization properties 166

7.4.1 Internal arguments and localization 167

7.4.2 External arguments and localization 178

7.5 Subject-drop patterns 181

7.6 Summary 183

8 Agreement verbs and spatial verbs 185

8.1 Background 185

8.1.1 Different kinds of agreement verbs 186

8.1.2 Theoretical approaches toward agreement verbs 189

8.2 Constituent order patterns 196

8.2.1 Agreement verbs 196

8.2.2 Spatial verbs 199

8.3 Valency patterns 201

8.3.1 Agreement verbs 201

8.3.2 Spatial verbs 203

8.4 Agreement properties 204

8.4.1 Agreement verbs 208

8.4.2 Spatial verbs 211

8.5 Subject-drop patterns 215

8.5.1 Agreement verbs 215

8.5.2 Spatial verbs 218

8.6 Summary 219

9 Synthesis: morphosyntactic properties 221

9.1 Presence and position of arguments 221

9.2 Valency 226

9.3 Locus alignment 226

9.4 Subject drop 230

Part IV Theoretical analysis and implications

10 Spatial verbs are demonstration verbs 237

10.1 Properties of spatial verbs 238

10.2 Spatial verbs are demonstration verbs 243

10.3 A demonstration continuum 247

10.4 Conclusion 249

11 A unified analysis in terms of agreement 251

11.1 An agreement analysis of body-anchored verbs 252

11.1.1 Toward an agreement analysis 252

11.1.2 Person vs. referent 256

11.1.3 Inherent and interpretable features 258

11.1.4 Feature (mis)match 260

11.1.5 Structural representations 263

11.1.6 Transitive constructions with body-anchored verbs 266

11.1.7 Second person 267

11.1.8 Role shift 268

11.1.9 Interim conclusions 269

11.2 Accounting for agreement verbs 271

11.2.1 Backward verbs 273

11.2.2 From body-anchored to agreement verbs 274

11.3 Accounting for neutral verbs 275

11.4 Outstanding issues 278

11.4.1 Movement and constituent order 279

11.4.2 Person agreement marker 283

11.4.3 Object drop in body-anchored verb constructions 285

11.4.4 Optionality of the localization of neutral verbs 286

11.4.5 A note on impersonal constructions 288

11.5 Conclusions 291

12 Concluding remarks 294

12.1 Outcomes 294

12.1.1 German Sign Language 295

12.1.2 Implications for other sign languages 298

12.1.3 Implications for language in general 301

12.2 Methodology - a reflection 302

12.3 Future research topics 306

A Verb meanings and lexical signs 308

Bibliography 311

Index 326