ǂThe ǂparameters that set word order in Slovenian Sign Language

Abstract

The field of word order (WO) research in oral languages was opened with Greenberg (1963), who discovered that possible WOs are not evenly distributed in his sample of 30 languages. Linguists have ever since struggled to find out how do prevalent WOs emerge in the human brain (for the overview see Kemmerer 2012), how they are derived (for the overview see Dryer and Haspelmath 2013) and acquired (for the overview see Franck et al. 2013). According to Generative Grammar, basic WO is an output of the Head parameter (Chomsky 1981) and the Binarity principle (Kayne 1984). It reflects most transparently in the pragmatically unmarked surface order of subject, object and verb. The research on WO in sign languages (for the overview see Leeson and Saeed 2012) focused on exceptions, that may be triggered by modality specific factors: spacial verb-argument agreement, semantic reversibility and iconicity. In this paper I provide the first description of Slovenian Sign Language (SZJ) arguing that its basic WO is SVO. I examine overt agreement and semantic reversibility and conclude, that these phenomena do not affect WO in SZJ. In the second part, I discuss non-basic SZJ WO that appears in role-shifting and classffer constructions due to the presence of verb-incorporated object classffers. All examples are from SZJ, elicited from L1 SZJ signers by Picture Description Task (see Volterra et al. 1984).

Keywords

slovenski znakovni jezik;besedni red;Slovenian Sign Language;word order;

Data

Language:	English
Year of publishing:	2014
Typology:	1.12 - Published Scientific Conference Contribution Abstract
Organization:	UNG - University of Nova Gorica
UDC:	811.163.6'221.24
COBISS:	39055149
Views:	3975
Downloads:	0
Average score:	0 (0 votes)
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Other data

URN:	URN:SI:UNG
Type (COBISS):	Not categorized
Pages:	Str. 47-49
ID:	10876887