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Language and Modality: Effects of the Use of Space in the Agreement System of Lengua De Signos Española (Spanish Sign Language)

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Language and Modality: Effects of the Use of Space in the Agreement System of Lengua De Signos Española (Spanish Sign Language) Language and modality: Effects of the use of space in the agreement system of lengua de signos española (Spanish Sign Language) LANGUAGE AND MODALITY: EFFECTS OF THE USE OF SPACE IN THE AGREEMENT SYSTEM OF LENGUA DE SIGNOS ESPAÑOLA (SPANISH SIGN LANGUAGE) ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op vrijdag 29 januari 2016, te 10:00 uur door BRENDAN DENIS NICHOLAS COSTELLO geboren te Manchester, Verenigd Koninkrijk (cc)2016)BRENDAN DENIS NICHOLAS (cc by-nc-sa 4.0) Promotiecommissie: Promotor: prof. dr. A.E. Baker Universiteit van Amsterdam Copromotores: dr. R. Pfau Universiteit van Amsterdam dr. M. A. Landa Arevalillo Universidad del País Vasco/ Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea Overige leden: prof. dr. P.C. Hengeveld Universiteit van Amsterdam prof. dr. E.O. Aboh Universiteit van Amsterdam prof. dr. J. Quer Villanueva Universitat Pompeu Fabra prof. dr. M. Steinbach Georg-August-Universität Göttingen dr. V. Kimmelman Universiteit van Amsterdam Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen This doctoral thesis was carried out in cotutelle between the University of Amsterdam and the University of the Basque Country. The research of this doctoral thesis received financial assistance from a doctoral scholarship from the Basque Government (ref. BFI05.149). Do m'athair, do mo mháthair, do mo dheirfiúr. I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful. Louise Borgeois Table of contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XI ABBREVIATIONS OF SIGN LANGUAGE NAMES XVII NOTATION CONVENTIONS XIX 1. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. LANGUAGE AND MODALITY 2 1.1.1. Simultaneity in sign languages 4 1.1.2. Iconicity in sign languages 10 1.2. THE USE OF SPACE IN SIGN LANGUAGES 17 1.3. THE STUDY OF VERBAL AGREEMENT IN SIGN LANGUAGES 23 1.4. LENGUA DE SIGNOS ESPAÑOLA (LSE) 25 1.4.1. LSE: historical background 27 1.4.2. LSE: sociolinguistic setting 29 1.4.3. Previous research on LSE 31 1.4.4. The LSE in this study 32 1.5. THE GOALS OF THIS THESIS 33 1.6. THE STRUCTURE OF THIS THESIS 34 2. THEORIES OF AGREEMENT 37 2.1. TWO APPROACHES TO AGREEMENT 38 2.2. TYPOLOGICAL APPROACH 42 2.2.1. Terminology 42 2.2.2. Controllers 43 2.2.3. Targets 45 2.2.4. Domains 56 2.2.5. Features and values 62 2.2.6. Conditions 72 2.2.7. Canonicity 74 2.2.8. Summary 77 2.3. THE MINIMALIST PROGRAM 78 2.3.1. Generativism: issues and developments 79 2.3.2. The architecture of the language faculty 85 2.3.3. Agreement and Agree 88 2.4. SUMMARY 94 3. AGREEMENT IN SIGN LANGUAGES 97 3.1. PRONOMINAL REFERENCE 98 3.1.1. Location assignment 99 3.1.2. Role shift 101 3.1.3. R-locus and space 103 3.2. AGREEING VERBS 107 3.2.1. Prototypical agreeing verbs 109 3.2.2. Backwards agreeing verbs 119 3.2.3. Single argument agreement 127 3.2.4. Summary 129 3.3. AGREEMENT AUXILIARIES 130 3.3.1. AUX 131 3.3.2. Auxiliaries derived from lexical verbs 134 3.3.3. PAM 137 3.3.4. Issue arising: what agreement auxiliaries tell us about agreement 140 3.4. NON-MANUAL AGREEMENT 142 3.4.1. Head tilt and eye gaze as markers of subject and object agreement 143 3.4.2. Non-manual agreement in role shift 147 3.4.3. Summary 149 3.5. DP-INTERNAL AGREEMENT 150 3.6. SUMMARY 153 4. METHODOLOGY 157 4.1. METHODOLOGICAL CHALLENGES: THE ELUSIVE NATIVE SIGNER 157 4.2. INFORMANTS 160 4.3. DATA COLLECTION AND MATERIALS 163 4.4. TRANSCRIPTION 165 4.5. DATA ANALYSIS 167 4.6. SUMMARY 167 5. AGREEMENT PHENOMENA IN LSE 169 5.1. PRONOMINAL REFERENCE 170 5.1.1. Location assignment in LSE 170 5.1.2. Role shift in LSE 175 5.2. AGREEING VERBS 179 5.2.1. Prototypical agreeing verbs 180 5.2.2. Backward agreeing verbs 183 5.2.3. Single argument agreement 184 5.3. AGREEMENT AUXILIARIES 189 5.3.1. AUX 190 5.3.2. Auxiliaries derived from lexical verbs: GIVE-AUX and BEAT-AUX 194 5.3.3. PERS 197 5.3.4. Summary 200 5.4. CONSTRAINTS ON VERBAL AGREEMENT 200 5.4.1. Semantic constraints on agreeing verbs 201 5.4.2. Phonological constraints on agreeing verbs 203 5.5. NON-MANUAL AGREEMENT 210 5.6. DP-INTERNAL AGREEMENT 213 5.7. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 221 6. LSE AGREEMENT FROM A CROSS-MODAL TYPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 227 6.1. CONTROLLERS 228 6.2. TARGETS 229 6.2.1. Verbs and auxiliaries 229 6.2.2. Other targets of agreement 231 6.2.3. Means of exponence 231 6.2.4. Multiple exponence 238 6.2.5. Summary 238 6.3. DOMAINS 239 6.3.1. Clause-internal agreement 239 6.3.2. Agreement beyond the clause 241 6.4. FEATURES AND VALUES 242 6.4.1. Gender 243 6.4.2. Number 243 6.4.3. Person 247 6.4.4. Other features: respect and case 253 6.4.5. Summary 255 6.5. CONDITIONS 256 6.6. CANONICITY 259 6.6.1. Applying Corbett’s criteria to spatial agreement in LSE 261 6.6.2. Applying Corbett’s general principles to spatial agreement in LSE 267 6.6.3. Other evaluations of the canonicity of sign language agreement 270 6.6.4. Summary 271 6.7. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 272 7. FORMAL ANALYSES OF AGREEMENT IN LSE 277 7.1. LOCATION, IDENTITY AND LOCATING IDENTITY 278 7.1.1. The location of ϕ-features 280 7.1.2. The location of the identity feature 282 7.1.3. Optionality of the use of space 286 7.2. ACCOUNTING FOR SPATIAL AGREEMENT IN LSE 287 7.2.1. Location assignment 287 7.2.2. Verbal agreement 289 7.2.3. Pragmatic agreement 294 7.2.4. Summary 298 7.3. “DEFECTIVE” AGREEING VERBS IN LSE: AN OT ACCOUNT 300 7.3.1. “Defective” agreeing verbs in LSE 301 7.3.2. OT constraints 302 7.3.3. Applying the constraints 303 7.3.4. Extending the analysis to ISL data 308 7.4. ISSUES ARISING 309 7.4.1. Optionality (revisited) 309 7.4.2. Locative versus locus 310 7.4.3. Linearity 312 7.5. CONCLUSIONS 314 8. CLOSING REMARKS 317 8.1. WHAT THIS STUDY TELLS US… 318 8.1.1. …about LSE 318 8.1.2. …about sign languages in general 320 8.1.3. …about language 325 8.2. WHAT THIS STUDY DOES NOT TELL US 327 8.3. FUTURE DIRECTIONS 329 REFERENCES 333 LANGUAGE AND MODALITY: EFFECTS OF THE USE OF SPACE IN THE AGREEMENT SYSTEM OF LENGUA DE SIGNOS ESPAÑOLA (SPANISH SIGN LANGUAGE) (SUMMARY) 371 TAAL EN MODALITEIT: EFFECTEN VAN HET GEBRUIK VAN RUIMTE BINNEN HET CONGRUENTIESYSTEEM VAN LENGUA DE SIGNOS ESPAÑOLA (SPAANSE GEBARENTAAL) (SAMENVATTING) 377 LENGUAJE Y MODALIDAD: EFECTOS DEL USO DEL ESPACIO EN EL SISTEMA DE CONCORDANCIA DE LA LENGUA DE SIGNOS ESPAÑOLA (RESUMEN) 383 HIZKUNTZA ETA MODALITATEA: LENGUA DE SIGNOS ESPAÑOLA (ZEINU HIZKUNTZA ESPAINIARRA)-REN KONMUZTADURA SISTEMAK ESPAZIOAREN ERABILERAN DITUEN EFEKTUAK (LABURPENA) 389 Acknowledgements Several years ago, I cadged a lift from Juan Uriagereka down to Bilbao from Vitoria after a seminar of his. When Juan asked me how I’d got into linguistics, I said it was a long story. “Yeah, it usually is,” came Juan’s judicious reply. This thesis has been no less of a long story, and there are many people that have played their part in contributing to this project and whom I’d like to thank. Here’s the story. I first started working on linguistics and sign language when I was studying for an MA in Applied Linguistics in 1998. A couple of excellent teachers on that course, Max Wheeler and Melanie Green, not only gave me a solid foundation in and an appetite for Linguistics, but were also instrumental in encouraging me to continue in research. At this time I made my first inroads into the Deaf Community and had the good fortune to meet and befriend Simon Hesselberg, whose interest in my work and support (from lending books to putting me in touch with colleagues) was a privilege. Moving to Bilbao in the Basque Country put a slight hold on my plans to research sign language but it wasn’t long before I found someone who was interested in the linguistics of sign language. I met Jon Ortiz de Urbina at sign language classes at the Deaf People’s Association of Bilbao and Biscay. A formal linguist of great standing and an all-round great guy, Jon was my fall on the road to Damascus. Jon soon organized an informal group and managed to get funding to make contacts with other research groups. Jon put me in touch with Alazne Landa, eventually to be one of my supervisors for this thesis. At our first meeting, Alazne patiently and bemusedly listened to me ramble on about how fascinating sign language was and mouth off about how dreadful the Spanish bureaucracy was at recognizing my foreign qualifications. Most people would have been mildly disturbed by such candour, but Alazne took on the mantle of advocate of sign language in the University of the Basque Country. For five years, a Sign Language Week was held every year at the University of the Basque Country and this would never have happened without her drive and initiative.
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