On word order in Greek Sign Language

Abstract

This study explores word order in Greek Sign Language (GSL), a fundamental aspect of the syntax of GSL, which has thus far not been tackled, and provides preliminary findings from a hitherto understudied sign language. I investigate the relative order of subject, object and verb in simple declarative sentences and in wh-questions with respect to factors that have been known to influence basic word order in sign languages, such as verb class and argument reversibility by using a picture elicitation task that contains relevant stimuli. After evaluating the data using the chi-square statistical test, it is argued that in GSL, SOV is the order preferred for all categories, except for sentences with plain effective verbs in which SVO is preffered, while OSV appears systematically in sentences with regular locative verbs. Our findings suggest that word order in GSL is critically dependent on the verb type and in particular on the feature of effectiveness rather than argument reversibility.

The impact of verb type on word order in German Sign Language

“…The path movement or finger-or hand orientation of agreement verbs, however, can be modified in order to show agreement with locations in the signing space associated with the subject and/or (indirect) object. Spatial verbs also modify path movement to show agreement, but they agree with locations in the signing space This pattern was observed for ASL (Kegl 2004), Croatian Sign Language (HZJ) (Milković, Bradarić-Jončić & Wilbur 2006), Libras (de Quadros 1999), Jordanian Sign Langue (LIU) (Hendriks 2008), Russian Sign Language (RSL) (Kimmelman 2012), Polish Sign Language (PJM) (Rutkowski & Łozińska 2016) and Greek Sign Language (GSL) (Koraka 2021).…”