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Chapter 8 Pronominal Reference Chapter 8 Pronominal reference The use of space is a unique characteristic of the pronominal system of sign languages. The spatial nature of the pronominal system is largely assumed to be a “modality effect”, i.e. a structure existing due to the properties of the visual-gestural modality, in which sign language are transmitted (Lillo- Martin, 2002; Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006). Previous linguistic research indicates that all signed languages similarly use the space around the signer to convey pronominal reference (McBurney, 2004). Below I demonstrate, however, that not all sign languages conceptualize space in a similar way to encode pronominal reference (see 8.4.6 for the investigation of pronominal reference in YSL). This chapter offers an overview of how the pronominal system is struc- tured in sign languages by comparing it to pronouns in spoken languages. It shows that space is used uniformly across DCSLs, which constitutes impor- tant background information for section 8.4. 8.1. Pronouns in spoken languages The term ‘personal pronoun’ traditionally includes forms such as I, you, he, she or we in English and their equivalents in other spoken languages, which are used to establish reference to speech act participants in discourse (Helmbrecht, 2004). All languages are generally assumed to have personal pronouns. Typological studies on pronominal systems in spoken languages (Bhat, 2004; Helmbrecht, 2004) identify that these are organized into para- digms associated with the following grammatical categories: (1) Person (first, second, third), (2) Number (singular, plural, dual, paucal, quadral), (3) Gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), (4) Case (nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental), (5) Clusivity (inclusive, exclusive), and (6) Politeness (familiar, honorific, super-honorific). 128 Pronominal reference Spoken languages vary with respect to which grammatical categories are marked and which are not. Moreover, some categories (e.g. person and number) seem to be more significant for the referential properties of personal pronouns than the others (e.g. gender and politeness) are (Helmbrecht, 2004, p. 51). In many European languages, pronouns are marked in the categories (1)–(4). Cross-linguistic studies suggest that all spoken languages have a system of grammatical person that distin- guish between first, second and third person (Meier, 1990). In English, for example, three persons can be distinguished: first, second and third, in both singular and plural. Even though second person pronoun you in both singular and plural is the same. With regard to case, English personal pronouns are inflected in nominative, oblique, genitive and reflexive case. The category (5), clusivity, is not found in any European language and thus seems to be very exotic from a Eurocentric point of view. The clusivity refers by definition to including or excluding the person spoken to. The inclusive/exclusive distinction in pronouns is regularly attested in Australian, Austronesian and northeast Asian languages (Cysouw, 2011b). In Mandarin Chinese, for instance, the difference is made between two first person plural pronouns which are both to be translated as we in English: the exclusive pronoun 我们 wǒmen means ‘I and others’ (excluding the addressee) and the inclusive pronoun 咋们 zámen means ‘you and I’ (including the addressee). The last category (6), politeness, is a type of social distinctions between the speaker and the referent determined by the pragmatic rules (Helmbrecht, 2004). Russian, for instance, has two pronouns for the second person reference, ты ty and Вы Vy. The latter one is used to refer to older people, strangers or colleagues, whereas the former presupposes some degree of familiarity. Thus far, it has been briefly shown that spoken languages diverge greatly as to which grammatical categories are marked in the pronominal system. 8.2. Pronouns in sign languages Turning to signed languages, I will consider whether the same grammat- ical categories are encoded in their pronominal systems by reviewing the available literature. I first start with the pointing signs towards physically present referents. Then I continue in 8.2.1 with the notion of “R-loci” and the strategy of “metaphorical” pointing employed by many sign languages to localize referents onto the neutral signing space, which are associated with (physically absent) referents in order to pick out those referents. Pronouns in sign languages 129 Similar to spoken languages, sign languages possess linguistic forms that refer to individual participants in conversation: sender, addressee, and non-addressee (someone else who is or is not present at the time of conver- sation (cf. Figure 56 for an example of ASL personal pronominal signs). Pronominal reference in sign languages is, however, strongly associated with the use of space. Hence, the reference to the sender, i.e. the signer, is usually established by pointing towards signer’s chest (ix1 in Figure 56). In some languages (e.g. in many Asian sign languages and PROVISL) the pointing is done to the nose of the signer similarly to the pointing gestures of non- signers in those cultures (McBurney, 2002; Farnell, 1995). ix1 ix2 (you) ix3a (s/he) Figure 56. ASL personal pronominals (singular)92 The reference to the addressee or the non-addressee during a signed discourse is signaled by pointing toward that individual without making physical contact with him or her as shown in Figure 56. The articulation of pronomi- nals by pointing to the referents is largely indexic, i.e. pointing signs and has been found in all sign languages of the world (Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006). However, a loss of indexicality is observed when the reference is made to non-singular referents (Cormier, 2002, 2007), in particular in case of the first person plural pronouns as depicted in Figure 57. a) ASL we b) BSL we Figure 57. Personal pronoun we in ASL and BSL93 130 Pronominal reference This holds true only for some pronouns in some sign languages. Engberg- Pedersen (1993) does not find a similar non-indexic plural pronoun in Danish Sign Language. The reference to the third person plural in ASL and BSL are also indexic, i.e. they point to the location of a group of referents. Some languages have also dual, trial and quadruple forms as well (e.g. BSL, DSL, Auslan) (McBurney, 2002, p. 339). These pronominals are also indexic in that they point to the two referents as in the case of the dual form shown Figure 58. Figure 58. BSL pronominal sign two-of-us94 Given the indexic nature of pronominal signs, the question arose in the literature whether the category of grammatical person is encoded in sign language pronominal systems. In connection with the issue of person, there are three entirely different approaches. The three approaches can be roughly divided into three camps which differentiate between i) no person, ii) three way person and iii) two way person distinction (first vs. non-first) in sign language pronominal systems. Traditionally, sign language researchers trying to find parallels with spoken language pronouns proposed a three-way division (Friedman, 1975; Klima & Bellugi, 1979). Pointing to the signer’s chest was counted as the first person singular, pointing to the addressee as the second person singular, and pointing to the non-addressee – as the third person singular. However, this analysis turned out to be problematic. Given the indexic nature of pronominal signs, any location in space can be used for a referent, which makes a non-finite number of location and thus non-finite number of referential indices. To avoid this listability issue of all non-first pronominal forms, some scholars (Ahlgren, 1990; Janis, 1995; Liddell, 2000; McBurney, 2002, 2004) argue that sign language pronouns do not have a grammatical category of person per se. Following their line of argumentation, loci in space cannot be Pronouns in sign languages 131 part of the sign language lexicon, because they are not phonologically speci- fied and thus not lexically contrastive. Liddell (2003) treats these points as deictic, gestural and thus nonlinguistic. According to McBurney (2004), sign languages do not possess the grammatical category of person, but rather use “spatial deictics” such as demonstratives. Slobin (in press) should also be affiliated with this camp as in his view there are no person distictions in sign language grammar. He rather characterizes the loci as pronominal affixes, because they do not “exist except when indexed in an utterance”. Another kind of argument comes from Meier (1990) who proposes a two-person distinction – first vs. non-first person. By analyzing the instances known as ‘role shift’, Meier argues for a distinct first person category and against the distinction of the second and the third person given their identical phonological form. I find Meier’s arguments convincing. One must state that the literature is notable for the widespread acceptance of a two-person view in sign languages (Engberg-Pedersen, 1993; Rathmann & Mathur, 2002; Neidle et al., 2000; Lillo-Martin & Meier, 2011; Cormier, 2012). Another group of researchers sticks to the traditional view of three- person system (Berenz, 2002; Alibašic Ciciliani & Wilbur, 2006; Wilbur, 2012) by assuming that the alignment of hand orientation, eye gaze and the head distinguish the second person from the third in sign languages. Berenz (2002) based her analysis on the findings from Brazilian Sign Language (LSB) and Alibašic Ciciliani & Wilbur (2006) on Croatian Sign Language (HZJ). According to their ‘body coordinates model’, alignment of eye gaze and hand orientation indicates second person, while no alignment denotes third person. Along this line of argumentation, sign languages encode a three person system: the first person – pointing to the signer’s chest or nose, the second person – manual pointing aligns with nonmanual markers (eye gaze, head) and the third person – non-alignment of pointing and eye gaze. One often cited point of critisism against this view of three-person system is an eye-tracking study conducted by Thompson (2006) which shows no system- atic gaze distinction occuring with ASL pronouns.
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