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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) UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Language and modality: Effects of the use of space in the agreement system of lengua de signos española (Spanish Sign Language) Costello, B.D.N. Publication date 2016 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Costello, B. D. N. (2016). Language and modality: Effects of the use of space in the agreement system of lengua de signos española (Spanish Sign Language). LOT. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). 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UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:03 Oct 2021 415220 Brendan Costello Brendan Costello Brendan Costello Language and modality Language and modality Effects of the use of space in the agreement Effects of the use of space in the system of lengua de signos española (Spanish agreement system of lengua de Sign Language) signos española (Spanish Sign Language) This thesis examines agreement in Spanish Sign Language (lengua de signos española – LSE) and provides a comprehensive description of the agreement mechanisms available to the language based on data collected from LSE signers from the Basque Country. This description makes it possible to compare agreement in LSE with what has been described for other sign languages, and also to offer a cross-modal comparison of the phenomenon, that is, to compare agreement in a signed language to agreement in spoken languages. Underlying this comparison is the issue of whether what we call agreement in sign languages is the same Language and modality thing as what is called agreement in spoken languages. The study provides a strong case that this spatial mechanism in LSE (i) is a type of agreement that is similar to what has been described for other sign languages, (ii) is comparable to agreement processes in spoken languages, and (iii) can be accounted for in syntactic terms. The thesis includes discussion of what the findings tell us about LSE, sign languages, and natural languages in general. ISBN 978-94-6093-197-0 Language and modality: Effects of the use of space in the agreement system of lengua de signos española (Spanish Sign Language) Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6111 Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: original illustration by Patri from Creatiba (Bilbao) for the poster of the I Semana de Lengua de Signos held at the UPV/EHU. ISBN: 978-94-6093-197-0 NUR 616 Copyright © 2015: Brendan D.N. Costello. All rights reserved. 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 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.
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