Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages

This article investigates what strategies are used for defocusing the agent in two-participant clauses in FinSL. The question is approached by analyzing a set of data that consists of videotaped informational texts. Several strategies for agent defocusing were found. First, the agent can simply be omitted. Second, the agent can be expressed with a pronominal pointing sign used non-referentially. Pronominal pointing signs that can be used non-referentially include at least the non-first person plural pronominal pointing sign and the first person singular pointing sign, possibly also the first person plural pointing sign. This study also suggests that constructed action is an additional, optional strategy through which the signer can tell the event either from the patient's or the agent's perspective. No special passive marking was found, and the form of clauses defocusing the agent does not seem to differ from that of corresponding clauses including a referential agent. The non-referential reading comes from the fact that there is no antecedent to which a zero, an indicating verb or a non-first person pronominal pointing sign could refer, and with first person pronominal pointing signs the interpretation is made based on the context.

Section: Features Relevant For Agent Defocusing In Finnish Sign Languagementioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Features Relevant For Agent Defocusing In Finnish Sign Languagementioning

confidence: 99%

Agent defocusing in two-participant clauses in Finnish Sign Language

Nordlund

2019

“…Orientation of the head and face, direction of gaze, and direction of manually produced enactment/description together indicate spatial relations between referents (e.g. Hodge & Ferrara 2014;Schembri et al 2018). Head movements indicating referents are discussed in more detail in the next section (3.2.2).…”

Section: Indexicality Of Head Movements In Enactment and Visualized Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Firstly, the direction of the eye gaze is used for pointing at present or imaginary referents or placing imaginary referents to the attention of interlocutors (e.g. Wilbur 2000;Schembri et al 2018). Secondly, eye-brow movements and eye aperture may parse and emphasize elements, such as old and new information, or the lack of information (see e.g.…”

Section: Signification With the Head And Other Parts Of A Signer's Bomentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards understanding nonmanuality: A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements

Puupponen

2019

This article discusses a certain type of nonmanual action, signers' head movements, from a semiotic perspective. It presents a typology of head movements and their iconic, indexical and symbolic features based on Peircean and post-Peircean semiotics. The paper argues for the view that (i) indexical strategies are very prominent in head movements, (ii) iconic features are most evident in enacting, while non-enacting description is less common, (iii) symbolic types for tokens are infrequent, although some movements-such as nodding and shaking the head-may become more conventional or schematized, and (iv) different types of head movements involve different proportions of iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity as well as different degrees of control in their production and interpretation. The treatment of head movements is extended to a discussion of semiotic versatility in the signification of actions of a signer's body, as well as to the treatment of nonmanuals in the theoretical description of sign languages. Finally, the paper presents a perspective on nonmanuals in which different nonmanual cues are examples of how signification, and human cognition in general, are closely connected to the embodied experience of existing and navigating in the physical and social world around us.

“…In these glossed representations, and in the varying English free translations, there is variation in the word order and argument structure for each construction. The verbal signs bring-in and take-to are also directed to varied regions of signing space around the signer in each example, as they participate in discourse-level argument-structure constructions (see Janzen O'Dea & Shaffer 2001;Meir 2012;Hou & Meier 2018;Pfau, Salzmann & Steinbach 2018;Schembri, Cormier & Fenlon 2018). In 1aand 1c, the sign bring-in moves from the signer's right to the space in front of the signer's body (as in Figure 2b), coding a third party as the agent of the verb.…”

Section: Multiword Expressionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A usage-based alternative to “lexicalization” in sign language linguistics

Lepic

2019

The usage-based framework considers linguistic structure to be emergent from how human languages are used, and shaped by domain-general cognitive processes. This paper appeals to the cognitive processes of chunking, entrenchment, and routinization to explore a usage-based alternative to the structuralist notion of lexicalization, as it has traditionally been used in sign language linguistics. This exploration shows that chunking, entrenchment, and routinization are useful for re-contextualizing three "lexicalization" phenomena sign language linguistics: multiword expressions, fingerspelled words, and morphologically complex signs. An advantage of the usage-based approach for linguistic theory and description is that it anticipates the existence of linguistic constructions that exhibit analyzable internal structure and holistic properties simultaneously. This alternate framing alleviates the burden for sign language linguists to determine whether or not linguistic constructions have become "lexicalized", and instead directs analysts to focus on the degree to which linguistic constructs are established in any language user's mental representation of their language.