interation of morphology and syntax in american sign language

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITION: SYNTAX Volume 18 INTERACTION OF MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX IN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE INTERACTION OF MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX IN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE CAROL A PADDEN First published in 1988 by Garland Publishing, Inc This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1988 Carol A Padden All rights reserved No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: 978-1-138-21859-8 978-1-315-43729-3 978-1-138-21289-3 978-1-315-44968-5 (Set) (Set) (ebk) (Volume 18) (hbk) (Volume 18) (ebk) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace Interaction of Morphology and Syntax in American Sign Language Carol A Padden Garland Publishing, Inc • New York & London 1988 Copyright @ 1988 Carol A Padden All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Padden, Carol Interaction of morphology and syntax in American sign language I Carol A Padden p em -(Outstanding dissertations in linguistics) Thesis (Ph.D.) Bibliography: p ISBN 0-8240-5194-7 Sign language English language-Syntax EnglishMorphology I Title II Series HV2474.P34 1988 88-16413 419 dc19 Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper Manufactured in the United States of America Preface I have elected to include here the text of my dissertation in its original form with minor copy corrections In the five years since its completion, there have been, not surprisingly, a number of significant proposals concerning American Sign Language structure which in some cases improve on those I have offered here As tempting as it might be to to try to recast my descriptions and conclusions in a more modem light, the task would involve much too drastic a change to the dissertation itself Instead, I have opted to retain the original text with letter footnotes directing the reader to more recent discussions I this as a means of highlighting the sometimes slow, occasionally circuitous, but significant progress made over the last twenty-five years toward the description of signed languages One significant set of new proposals concerns the description of the morphophonology of verbal affixes Although Chapter describes in considerable detail the different verb classes and the categories of affixes which attach to verbs, it is purposely vague about the form of the affixes themselves: are they prefixes, suffixes, or in what manner to they attach to roots? Such omissions would be atypical in oral languages, but in a field with such recent history, these gaps are painfully necessary The descriptions in Chapter suffer from a failing common to descriptions of its time: signs are described minimally in terms of their segmental structure We now know that internal structure of signs contains at least one segmental tier to which a complex array of other tiers are attached, each tier consisting of a unique set of features (Liddell 1984, Liddell & Johnson 1986, Sandler 1986a,b, Perlmutter 1986, Perlmutter 1987) While details about the number of tiers and their composition have yet to be worked out, it is clear that any description of verbal morphology needs to at least acknowledge the ongoing discussion of the form of roots and affixes in ASL Another recent proposal tackles a descriptive problem perhaps unusual to signed languages, the visible spatial dimension that signs exploit (LilloMartin & Klima 1986) The standard treatment for describing pronominal forms and agreement affixes in ASL, repeated here in Chapter 2, is to enter in the lexicon an infinite number of possible forms Pronouns and agreement affixes in ASL reference different points in space: third-person pronouns, for example, involve "pointing" in conceivably any direction around the signer's body Lillo-Martin & Klima have proposed a modification, briefly explained in a letter footnote in Chapter 2, which attempts to overcome this apparently unusual feature of ASL One impact of this modification is that unlike previous treatments, the lexicon does not contain first, second, or third person agreement markers or pronouns Another indicator of the ongoing descriptive issues in signed languages can be seen in the notational system used in this text The notational system used here is an adaptation of ones used in earlier work by others; the conventions also reflect earlier assumptions: the notation records a distinction between first, second and third person agreement markers and pronouns (See Lillo-Martin 1986 for a recent modification of these conventions.) Additionally, although the notational system suggests a segmental treatment of roots and affixes (agreement markers appear in sequence before and after the root), the treatment is not structurally accurate for the reason that the conventions are not based on a language-independent system, instead on English glosses For obvious reasons, segmental and other structural information should not be inferred from the conventions used to represent ASL morphology since at best, they can only suggest, not represent These cumbersome conventions, some of which continue to appear more recent work by others, will need to serve until such a time when a writing system for signed languages is developed The fact that there are several serious projects at present to develop a writing system testifies to the work that has been completed and the work which yet remains This dissertation and its treatment of morphology and syntax in ASL is one step in this sequence 234 i') are indeed predicates Like indices, classifier verbs of location mark some locus position, i We would expect that in cases where indices bear a predicate relation, for example, in complements of THINK, the classifier verb may be substituted for the index (109-llla,b) provide examples of this: (109a) tiNDEX THINK CAR iiNDEX 'I thought the car was over there.' (109b) I INDEX THINK CAR iCL:3 'I think the car is parked there.' (llOa) WOMAN THINK FRIEND iiNDEX 'The woman thought her friend was over there.' (llOb) WOMAN THINK FRIEND iCL:V 'The woman thought her friend was standing there.' (llla) tiNDEX THINK SISTER iiNDEX 'I thought his sister was there.' (lllb) tiNDEX THINK SISTER iCL:V 'I thought his sister was sitting there.' 235 But there are cases where substitution of a classifier verb for an index results in ungrammatical sentences, as in the following examples: (112a) 1INDEX BUY CAR iiNDEX 'I bought that car.' (112b) *tiNDEX BUY CAR iCL:3 (113a) SISTER SUCCEED MEET FRIEND ilNDEX YESTERDAY 'My sister finally met my friend yesterday.' (113b) *SISTER SUCCEED MEET FRIEND iCL:V YESTERDAY (114a) BROTHER DECIDE SELL CAR ilNDEX 'My brother decided to sell that car.' (114b) *BROTHER DECIDE SELL CAR iCL:3 Classifier verbs head only P-ares Since the indices in ( 109-111) also head P-ares, substitution of the index with the classifier is allowed But if the indices not head P-ares, as in (112-114), then classifier verbs cannot be substituted for them We turn now to the question of what status indices bear in sentences like (95-97), repeated below: (95) BOY iiNDEX, GIRL jiNDEX, iKICKJ 'The boy kicked the girl.' 236 (96) GIRL iiNDEX, BOY jiNDEX, iKICKj'The boy kicked the girl.' (97) iKICKj BOY iiNDEX, GIRL jiNDEX 'The boy kicked the girl.' If the indices in the above sentences not head P-ares, then classifier verbs cannot be substituted for them But, as ( 115-117) show, classifier verbs may be substituted for the indices: (115) BOY iCL:V, GIRL jCL:V, iKICKj'The boy kicked the girl.' (116) GIRL iCL:V, BOY jCL:V, iKICKj'The boy kicked the girl.' ( 117) iKICKj BOY iCL: V, GIRL jCL: V 'The boy kicked the girl.' On the basis of the above facts, I propose the following multi- clausal analysis for sentences like (95-97) in which the indices bear the predicate relation to the clause: (95) [BOY iiNDEX]t [GIRL jiNDEX]2 [iKICKj]3 'The boy is here; the girl is there; he kicked her.' 237 (115) [BOY iCL:V]1 [GIRL jCL:Y]2 [iKICKj]3 'The boy was standing here; the girl standing there; he kicked her.' 4.3 Sign order On the basis of the above data, I propose that no special condition on sign order is needed for clauses containing Inflecting verbs, but that sign order is, as previously stated: ( 118) Si~ro Order Order of constituents in ASL is: Final - Predicate ~ - Nonterms Sentences like (95-97) not present counter-examples to the above constraint; I have argued that the sequences of Noun + Index in those sentences are not nominals, but clauses, and within the clauses themselves, order is constrained according to (118) ( 118) predicts that in sentences like ( 119) below which not violate the sign order rule, indices may either be predicates or determiners In some sentences, we find that classifier verbs cannot be substituted for indices, as in ( 120), but if the sequence is multi-clausal, and a clear boundary pause or marker (the sentence adverbial, D:WRONG[ +idiomatic] 'suddenly') 238 'suddenly') appears between clauses, then classifier verbs can be substitutedfor indices, as in (121) ( 119) BOY ilNDEX iKICKj GIRL jiNDEX 'The boy kicked the girl.' (120) ?*BOY iCL:V iKICKj GIRL jCL:V 'The boy kicked the girl.' (121) BOY iCL:V, D:WRONG[+idiomatic], iKICKj, GIRL jCL:V INNOCENT The boy was standing there then suddenly he kicked her The girl was just standing there.' In ASL grammar, the status of indices has been problematic Previous analyses have suggested that they are either determiners or some type of specifier I presented data here showing that at least some sequences of Noun+ Index cannot be analyzed as nominals, but must be clauses In complex sequences containing several indices, such as (95-97), it is not clear from the sentence itself whether the indices are determiners or predicates If some indices are predicates, then substitution of similar predicates should be possible, and the fact that such substitutions are allowed supports the analysis Further, in cases where indices are not predicates, then substitution should be disallowed This is also supported 239 The test of substitution provides a means of distinguishing between indices which bear the predicate relation and those which not As a consequence, facts about sign order could be re-examined, once the clause structure of sentences containing indices is established I propose that no special condition is needed to account for sign order in clauses containing Inflecting verbs, but that a general sign order rule applies across different sub-classes of verbs This chapter has examined a little-studied area: the syntactic structure of sentences containing classifier verbs and indices Using facts about 1hood and predicatehood established in Chapters and 5, various tests were applied to sentences containing classifier verbs and indices I have argued that, on the basis of these tests, the position that certain complex sequences containing classifiers and indices are monoclausal cannot be supported If these sentences are reanalyzed as multi-clausal sequences, then facts about sign order within the clause can be stated more generally, across different verb classes FootnOteS lsentences (5-7) not contain topic marking and are unambiguous in meaning 240 If the former is the case, the individual clause nodes would head arcs with a superordinate node as tail, i.e the structure below: (i) a In his description of classifier roots, Supalla ( 1982) distinguishes between "stative" and "contact" (location) roots In this chapter, the following classifier forms: CL:V, CL:3, CL:V, CL:l, CL:A contain contact roots Another argument for subjecthood, antecedents for SELF pronouns, cannot be used with these sequences for the reason that the pronouns, 'to by oneself cannot be used with statives, e.g (i) *DOOR SELF DOOR-CLOSED 'The door was closed by itself.' (ii) *WOMAN SELF HAPPY 'The woman was happy by herself.' (iii) *CAR SELF iCL:3 'The car was parked on its own.' While structures with topjcalized obliques are ruled out, as shown in (6368), structures with left dislocation are allowed: -t (i) iiNDEX H-0-T-E-L, tiNDEX SLEEP iiNDEX 'As for that hotel, I slept there.' 241 The gloss: INDEX encompasses at least two distinct index forms: those which involve a short directional and contact movement, and those which not It appears that typically indices which bear the predicate relation involve the directional and contact movement, while determiners not In free conversation, however, the distinction is often neutralized For this reason, this chapter examines evidence for distinction among indices other than differences in form 242 Appendix A Examples of Inflecting Verbs ASK BAWL-OUT BEAT BEG BID BITE BLAME *BORROW BOfliER GIFf GIVE CAPTURE CATCH COMMAND CONTACT CONVINCE *COPY CRITICIZE DEFEAT *EXTRACT FEED FINGERSPELL FLAITER FORCE HATE HELP IGNORE INFLUENCE INFORM INSULT *INVITE KISS (* Backwards verbs) LOCK-HORNS LOSE-CONTACT MOCK *MOOCH OFFER OKAY/APPROVE OWE PAY1 PAY2 PERSUADE PICK-ON PITY TO-QUESTION REJECT SAY-NO SCOLD SELL SEND1 SEND2 SHOW STAB *STEAL *TAKE *TAKE-ADVANTAGE-OF TEACH TEASE TELL TESf THROW-TO TO-TIT-TO/TELEGRAPH WARN 243 AppendixB Examples ofPlain Verbs ACCEPT ACQUIESCE ANNOUNCE APPLY ASHAMED BATHE BE-CAREFUL BORED BRUSH-TEETH BUILD CELEBRATE COMB DON'T-CARE OOUBT1 OOUBT2 DROP EAT ENCOURAGE ENJOY EXERCISE FORGET GUESS HIDE HOPE INTERPRET JUOOE LAUGH LIKE LIPREAD UVE LOVE MEMOR1ZE PROMOTE REQUEST SERVE SET-UP SIGN SING STOP SUGGEST SUPERVISE SUSPECT TEMPT THANK THINK THROW-AWAY varn WALK WANT WASH WONDER WORK YAWN YElL 244 AppendixC Examples of Spatial Verbs BRING/CARRY CARRY-BY-HAND EAT-UP/CORRODE EXAMINE GO-AWAY GO/COME INSERT MOVE MOVE-AWAY POINT-TO SCRUB TRACE WRITE Examples of Classifier Verbs (Location only) jQ:A jO ,:C iCL:CC jO ,:L iCL:LL jO ,:V jO ,:V jCL:VV jQ:VV iCL:3 'stationary, inanimate object' 'round object' 'larger round object' 'shallow round object' 'shallow larger round object' 'two-legged animate' 'two-legged crouched animate' 'four-legged animate' 'four-legged crouched animate' 'land-locked vehicle' 245 References Aissen, Judith 1979 Possessor Ascension in Tzotzil In L Martin (ed.) Papers jn Mayan Lin~PJistics Columbia, MO: Lucas Aissen, Judith 1983 Indirect Object Advancement in Tzotzil In D Perlmutter (ed.) Studies in Relational Grammar Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press Allen, Barbara J and Donald Frantz 1983 Advancements and Verb Agreement in Southern Tiwa In D Perlmutter (ed.) Studies in Relational Grammar Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press Battison, Robbin 1978 Lexical Borrowing in American Sign Language Silver Spring, MD: Linstok Press Chung, Sandra 1976 An Object-Creating Rule in Bahasa Indonesian Linguistic InQJ.Iit:y 7.41-87 Coulter, Geoffrey 1979 American Sign Language Typology Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego Crain, Catherine 1979 Advancement and Ascension in Chamorro Linguistics Notes from La Jolla 6.3-32 Fillmore, Charles J 1968 The Case for Case Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed by Emmon Bach and Robert T Harms New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston Fillmore, Charles J 1971 Some Problems for Case Grammar Georgetown Monograph Series in Lan&Uage and Linguistics 24 ed by Richard J O'Brien Washington: Georgetown University Press Fischer, Susan 1975 Influences on Word Order Change in ASL Word Order and Word Order Chan~e ed by C Li Austin, TX: University of Texas Press Fischer, Susan and Bonnie Gough 1978 Verbs in American Sign Language Sign Language Studies 18.17-48 Friedman, Lynn 1975 Space, Time, and Person Reference in American Sign Language Language 51.940-961 246 Friedman, Lynn 1976 The Manifestation of Subject, Object, and Topic in American Sign Language Subject and Topic, ed by C Li New York: Academic Press Gruber, Jeffrey 1976 North-Holland Ling;uistic Series 25: Lexical Structures in Syntax and Semantics Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company J ackendoff, Ray S 1972 Semantic Interpretation jn Generative Grammar Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Kegl, Judy 1976 Relational Grammar and American Sign Language Unpublished paper Kegl, Judy 1978a Indexing and pronominalization in ASL Unpublished paper Kegl, Judy 1978b ASL agreement Unpublished paper Klima, Edward and Ursula Bellugi 1979 The Sig;ns of Lang;uag;e Cambridge; MA: Harvard University Press Kuno, Susumu 1973 The Structure of the Japanese Lang;uage, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Lacy, Richard 1974 Putting Some of the Syntax Back into Semantics Paper presented at the Linguistics Society of America Annual Meeting, New York Liddell, Scott 1978 An Introduction to Relative Clauses in ASL Understanding Language Throug;h Sign Languag;e Research, ed by Patrica Siple New York: Academic Press Liddell, Scott 1977 An Investigation into the Syntactic Structure of American Sign Language Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego Mcintire, Marina 1980 Locatives in ASL Unpublished doctoral disseration, University of California, Los Angeles Meier, Richard 1982 Icons, Analogues and Morphemes: The Acquisition of Verb Agreement in ASL Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego Newport, Elissa 1981 Constraints on structure: Evidence from American Sign Language and language learning, ed by W.A Collins Minnesota 247 Symposia on Child Psycholo~y 14 Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Perlmutter, David M 1979 'Predicate': Linguistics Notes from La Jolla A Grammatical Relation Perlmutter, David M 1980 Relational Grammar Syntax and Semantics 13: Current Approaches to Syntax, ed by Edith Moravcsik and Jessica Wirth New York: Academic Press Perlmutter, David M and Paul M Postal1983 Some Proposed Laws of Basic Clause Structure Studies in Relational Grammar 1, ed by David M Perlmutter University of Chicago Press Perlmutter, David M to appear Syntactic Representation, Syntactic Levels, and the Notion of Subject The Nature of Syntactic Representation, ed by Pauline Jacobson and Geoffrey Pullum Boston: Reidel Ross, John R 1967 Constraints on Variables in Syntax Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club Supalla, Ted 1982 Acquisition of Verbs of Motion and Location in ASL Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego Supalla, Ted and Elissa Newport 1978 How Many Seats in a Chair? The Derivation of Nouns and Verbs in American Sign Language Understandin~ Language Through Si~n Lan~ua&e Research, ed by Patrica Siple New York: Academic Press Wilbur, Ronnie B 1979 American Sign Lan&Ua&e and Sign Systems Baltimore, MD: University Park Press Woodward, James 1973 Inter-rule Implication in American Sign Language Sign Language Studies 3.47-56 248 Additional References Liddell, Scott 1984 THINK and BELIEVE: Sequentiality in American Sign Language," Language 60, 372-399 Liddell, Scott and Robert Johnson 1986 ASL Compound Formation Processes, Lexicalization and Phonological Remnants Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4, 445-513 Lillo-Martin, Diane 1986 Parameter Setting: Evidence from Use, Acquisition, and Breakdown in ASL Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego Lillo-Martin, Diane and Edward Klima 1986 Pointing out Differences: ASL Pronouns in Syntactic Theory Paper presented at the Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, Rochester, New York Padden, Carol to appear Grammatical Theory and Signed Languages In F Newmeyer (ed.) Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Perlmutter, David M 1986 The Inadequacy of WYSIWYG Representations in ASL Phonology Paper presented at the Conference on Theoretical Issues In Sign Language Research, Rochester, New York Perlmutter, David M 1987 Prosodic Properties of Lexical and Surface Representations in ASL Phonology Paper presented at the UCLA Symposium on The Structure of Phonological Units, Los Angeles, CA Sandler, Wendy 1986a Aspectual Inflections and the Hand Tier Model of ASL Phonology Paper presented at the Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, Rochester, New York Sandler, Wendy 1986b The Spreading Hand Autosegment of American Sign Language Si~m Lan~a~e Studies 50 ... EDITION: SYNTAX Volume 18 INTERACTION OF MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX IN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE INTERACTION OF MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX IN AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE CAROL A PADDEN First published in 1988 by Garland... of Congress Cataloging -in- Publication Data Padden, Carol Interaction of morphology and syntax in American sign language I Carol A Padden p em -(Outstanding dissertations in linguistics) Thesis... trace Interaction of Morphology and Syntax in American Sign Language Carol A Padden Garland Publishing, Inc • New York & London 1988 Copyright @ 1988 Carol A Padden All Rights Reserved Library of