No abstract

Adjectives are often identified via notional or even translational criteria in sign language research, which reflects a lack of formal criteria for identifying this part of speech in the field. This paper presents the results of a guided production task investigating the conservative hypothesis that ASL has a small, closed adjective class consisting only of terms for dimension, age, value, and color. Evidence from the syntactic distribution of these core properties compared to non-core properties will be presented to refute the initial hypothesis and show that ASL has an open adjective class. Its members are characterized by their ability to occur as prenominal modifiers without function-indicating morphosyntax. The semantic distinction between core and peripheral adjectives is nonetheless reflected in a significant preference for core adjectives to be used as modifiers rather than as sentential predicates. Postnominal property signs are analyzed as (in most cases) reduced relative clauses. I further suggest that prototypically verbal signs can be used as prenominal modifiers when they are embedded in reduced relative clauses.

Investigating the syntactic structure of utterances with multiple predicates in sign languages requires a clear understanding of how many finite and infinitival clauses they contain and which syntactic dependencies exist between them. Since the sign language literature currently lacks a standardized methodology for identifying clause boundaries, this paper discusses syntacticosemantic diagnostics of clausehood and clause size and analyzes their applicability to American Sign Language (ASL) and German Sign Language (DGS). First, I discuss tests that distinguish coordinated clauses from dependent clause structures; specifically negation, A'-movement, and subject pronoun copy. Limitations of whand topic fronting as clausehood diagnostics are identified and a modified subject pronoun copy test is proposed. Determining whether a given utterance contains coordinated or dependent clauses is only half the battle, however; we also want to know the approximate "size" of the constituent an embedded predicate projects. The present study takes a first pass at filling this gap by introducing rightward wh-movement and confirming center-embedding as diagnostics that can discriminate between finite and infinitival clauses in signed languages. Based on acceptability judgments from 13 native signers of DGS and ASL, I show that wh-subjects can move across infinitival control complements and the secondary predicates of resultative constructions, but they cannot cross a finite complement clause. The diagnostic thus provides empirical evidence for the existence of various types of embedded clauses in signed languages that differ in their functional structure.

Taboo terms offer a playground for linguistic creativity in language after language, and sign languages form no exception. The present paper offers the first investigation of taboo terms in sign languages from a cognitive linguistic perspective. We analyze the linguistic mechanisms that introduce offense, focusing on the combined effects of cognitive metonymy and iconicity. Using the Think Aloud Protocol, we elicited offensive or crass signs and dysphemisms from nine signers. We find that German Sign Language uses a variety of linguistic means to introduce and enhance offense, many of which rely on iconic properties of the taboo sign. In conjunction with cross-linguistically common metonymic word-formation strategies, the degree of visual explicitness of a sign increases its potential to offend. Semantically similar taboo signs based on the same metonymic anchor but differing in their degree of iconicity also differ in offensiveness. This allows for creating dysphemisms and euphemisms via phonological changes to a sign. We further show that embodiment creates modality-enhanced ‘vicarious embarrassment’ in the viewer that results in the respective signs being judged obscene or offensive. Further, lexical blending and non-manual enhancement play a role in the creation of dysphemisms in DGS. Lastly, we propose that iconicity as a cognitive structuring principle of linguistic expressions constrains the possible semantic extensions of iconic taboo terms.

The visual-gestural modality affords its users simultaneous movement of several independent articulators and thus lends itself to simultaneous encoding of information. Much research has focused on the fact that sign languages coordinate two manual articulators in addition to a range of non-manual articulators to present different types of linguistic information simultaneously, from phonological contrasts to inflection, spatial relations, and information structure. Children and adults acquiring a signed language arguably thus need to comprehend and produce simultaneous structures to a greater extent than individuals acquiring a spoken language. In this paper, we discuss the simultaneous encoding that is found in emerging and established sign languages; we also discuss places where sign languages are unexpectedly sequential. We explore potential constraints on simultaneity in cognition and motor coordination that might impact the acquisition and use of simultaneous structures.