Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Why different, why the same? Explaining effects and non-effects of modality upon linguistic structure in sign and speech
- Part I Phonological structure in signed languages
- Part II Gesture and iconicity in sign and speech
- Part III Syntax in sign: Few or no effects of modality
- 10 Where are all the modality effects?
- 11 Applying morphosyntactic and phonological readjustment rules in natural language negation
- 12 Nominal expressions in Hong Kong Sign Language: Does modality make a difference?
- Part IV Using space and describing space: Pronouns, classifiers, and verb agreement
- Index
- References
11 - Applying morphosyntactic and phonological readjustment rules in natural language negation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
By
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Why different, why the same? Explaining effects and non-effects of modality upon linguistic structure in sign and speech
- Part I Phonological structure in signed languages
- Part II Gesture and iconicity in sign and speech
- Part III Syntax in sign: Few or no effects of modality
- 10 Where are all the modality effects?
- 11 Applying morphosyntactic and phonological readjustment rules in natural language negation
- 12 Nominal expressions in Hong Kong Sign Language: Does modality make a difference?
- Part IV Using space and describing space: Pronouns, classifiers, and verb agreement
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
As is well known, negation in natural languages comes in many different forms. Crosslinguistically, we observe differences concerning the morphological character of the Neg (negation) element as well as concerning its structural position within a sentence. For instance, while many languages make use of an independent Neg particle (e.g. English and German), in others, the Neg element is affixal in nature and attaches to the verb (e.g. Turkish and French). Moreover, a Neg particle may appear in sentence-initial position, preverbally, postverbally, or in sentence-final position (for comprehensive typological surveys of negation, see Dahl 1979; 1993; Payne 1985).
In this chapter I am concerned with morphosyntactic and phonological properties of sentential negation in some spoken languages as well as in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache or DGS) and American Sign Language (ASL). Sentential negation in DGS (as well as in other sign languages) is particularly interesting because it involves a manual and a nonmanual element, namely the manual Neg sign NICHT ‘not’ and a headshake that is associated with the predicate. Despite this peculiarity, I show that on the morphosyntactic side of the Neg construction, we do not need to refer to any modality-specific structures and principles. Rather, the same structures and principles that allow for the derivation of negated sentences in spoken languages are also capable of accounting for the sign language data.
On the phonological side, however, we do of course observe modality-specific differences; those are due to the different articulators used.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Modality and Structure in Signed and Spoken Languages , pp. 263 - 295Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002
References
Ablorh-Odjidja, J. R. 1968. Ga for beginners. Accra: Waterville Publishing
Baumbach, E. J. M. 1987. Analytical Tsonga grammar. Pretoria: University of South Africa
Becker-Donner, Etta. 1965. Die Sprache der Mano (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Sitzungsbericht 245 (5)). Wien: Böhlaus
Bergman, Brita. 1995. Manual and nonmanual expression of negation in Swedish Sign Language. In Sign language research 1994: Proceedings of the Fourth European Congress on Sign Language Research, ed. Heleen Bos and Trude Schermer, 85–103. Hamburg: Signum
Boyes Braem, Penny. 1995. Einführung in die Gebärdensprache und ihre Erforschung. Hamburg: Signum
Brauner, Siegmund. 1995. A grammatical sketch of Shona. Köln: Köppe
Brentari, Diane. 1998. A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Capell, A. and H. E. Hinch. 1970. Maung grammar, texts and vocabulary. The Hague: Mouton
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Coerts, Jane. 1990. The analysis of interrogatives and negations in Sign Language of the Netherlands. In Current trends in European Sign Language research: Proceedings of the3rdEuropean Congress on Sign Language Research, ed. Siegmund Prillwitz and Tomas Vollhaber, 265–277. Hamburg: Signum
Coulter, Geoffrey R. 1982. On the nature of ASL as a monosyllabic language. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, San Diego, CA
Creissels, D. 1998. Expansion and retraction of high tone domains in Setswana. In Theoretical aspects of Bantu tone, ed. Larry M. Hyman and Charles W. Kisseberth, 133–194. Stanford: CSLI
Dahl, Östen. 1993. Negation. In Syntax: An international handbook of contemporary research, ed. Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld and Theo Vennemann, 914–923. Berlin: de Gruyter
Deuchar, M. 1984. British Sign Language. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
Frajzyngier, Zygmunt. 1993. A grammar of Mupun. Berlin: Reimer
Glück, Susanne and Roland Pfau. 1999. A Distributed Morphology account of verbal inflection in German Sign Language. In Proceedings of ConSOLE 7, ed. Tina Cambier-Langeveld, Anikó Lipták, Michael Redford and Eric Jan van der Torre, 65–80. Leiden: SOLE
Goldsmith, John. 1979. Autosegmental phonology. New York: Garland
Goldsmith, John. 1990. Autosegmental and metrical phonology. Oxford: Blackwell
Haegeman, Liliane. 1995. The syntax of negation. Oxford: Cambridge University Press
and . 1991. Negative heads and the Neg-criterion. The Linguistic Review 8:233–251CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halle, Morris. 1990. An approach to morphology. In Proceedings of NELS 20, 150–185. GLSA, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Halle, Morris. 1994. The Russian declension. An illustration of the theory of Distributed Morphology. In Perspectives in phonology, ed. Jennifer Cole and Charles W. Kisseberth, 29–60. Stanford: CSLI
Halle, Morris. 1997. Distributed Morphology: Impoverishment and fission. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 30, 425–449. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, MA
Halle, Morris and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In The view from building 20. Essays in linguistics in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, ed. Ken Hale and Samuel J. Keyser, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Halle, Morris and Alec Marantz. 1994. Some key features of Distributed Morphology. In MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 21, 275–288. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, Cambridge, MA
Hartmann, Katharina. 1999. Doppelte Negation im Háusá. Paper presented at Generative Grammatik des Südens (GGS 1999). Universität Stuttgart, May 1999
Hyman, Larry M. 1990. Boundary tonology and the prosodic hierarchy. In The phonology-syntax connection, ed. Sharon Inkelas and Draga Zec, 109–125. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
Hyman, Larry M. and J. T. Mathangwane. 1998. Tonal domains and depressor consonants in Ikalanga. In Theoretical aspects of Bantu tone, ed. Larry M. Hyman and Charles W. Kisseberth, 195–229. Stanford: CSLI
Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Kenstowicz, Michael. 1994. Phonology in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell
Liddell, Scott. 1980. American Sign Language syntax. The Hague: Mouton
Lyovin, Anatole V. 1997. An introduction to the languages of the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Myers, Scott. 1987. Tone and the structure of words in Shona. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. (Published by Garland Press, New York. 1990.)
, , , , and . 1998. Realizations of syntactic agreement in American Sign Language: Similarities between the clause and the noun phrase. Studia Linguistica 52:191–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neidle, Carol, Judy Kegl, Dawn MacLaughlin, Benjamin Bahan, and Robert G. Lee. 2000. The syntax of American Sign Language: Functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Noyer, Rolf. 1998. Impoverishment theory and morphosyntactic markedness. In Morphology and its relation to phonology and syntax, ed. S. G. Lapointe, D. K. Brentari and P. M. Farrell, 264–285. Stanford: CSLI
Odden, David. 1995. Tone: African languages. In The handbook of phonological theory, ed. John A. Goldsmith, 444–475. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell
. 1990. Negation, relativized minimality and the aspectual status of auxiliaries. The Linguistic Review 7:183–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Overdulve, C. M. 1975. Apprendre la langue rwanda. The Hague: Mouton
Payne, John R. 1985. Negation. In Language typology and syntactic description, Vol. 1: Clause structure, ed. Timothy Shopen, 197–242. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
1992. Sonority and syllable structure in American Sign Language. Linguistic Inquiry 23:407–442Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland. 2001. Typologische und strukturelle Aspekte der Negation in Deutscher Gebärdensprache. In Gebärdensprachlinguistik 2000: Theorie und Anwendung, ed. Helen Leuninger and Karin Wempe, 13–31. Hamburg: Signum
Pfau, Roland and Susanne Glück. 1999. The pseudo-simultaneous nature of complex verb forms in German Sign Language. In Proceeding of the 28thWestern Conference on Linguistics, ed. Nancy M. Antrim, Grant Goodall, Martha Schulte-Nafeh and Vida Samiian, 428–442. Fresno, CA: CSU
Pfau, Roland and Susanne Glück. 2000. Negative heads in German Sign Language and American Sign Language. Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 2000). Universiteit van Amsterdam, July
Pilleux, Mauricio. 1991. Negation in Chilean Sign Language. Signpost Winter 1991: 25–28
. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20:365–424Google Scholar
Poulos, George. 1990. A linguistic analysis of Venda. Pretoria: Via Afrika Ltd
Rathmann, Christian. 2000. Does the presence of person agreement marker predict word order in signed languages? Paper presented at 7th International Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 2000). Universiteit van Amsterdam, July
Rathmann, Christian. 2001. The optionality of Agreement Phrase: Evidence from signed languages. Paper presented at Conference of the Texas Linguistic Society (TLS 2001). University of Texas at Austin, March 2001
Redden, J. E. and N. Owusu. 1963. Twi: Basic course. Washington, DC: Foreign Service Institute
Rondal, J.-A., F. Henrot, and M. Charlier. 1997. Le langage des signes. Aspects psycholinguistiques et éducatifs. Sprimont: Mardaga
Tuldava, J. 1994. Estonian textbook: Grammar, exercises, conversation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Research Institute for Inner Asian Studies
1993. Nonmanual negation and assertion in Argentine Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 79:95–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, and . 1990. A linguistic analysis of the negative headshake in American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 68:217–244CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogt-Svendsen, Marit. 2000. Negation in Norwegian Sign Language and in contrast to some features in German Sign Language. Poster presented at 7th International Conference on Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research (TISLR 2000). Universiteit van Amsterdam, July
Wilbur, Ronnie B. 1990. Why syllables? What the notion means for ASL research. In Theoretical issues in sign language research, Vol. 1: Linguistics, ed. Susan Fisher and Peter Siple, 81–108. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press
Wilbur, Ronnie B. 2000. Phonological and prosodic layering of nonmanuals in American Sign Language. In The signs of language revisited: An anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, ed. Karen Emmorey and Harlan Lane, 215–244. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
and . 1998. Body leans and the marking of contrast in American Sign Language. Journal of Pragmatics 30:275–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wood, Sandra K. 1999. Semantic and syntactic aspects of negation in ASL. MA thesis, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
Zanuttini, Raffaella. 1991. Syntactic properties of sentential negation. A comparative study of Romance languages. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania
. 1997. “Sprache der Hände?”: Nichtmanuelle Phänomene und Nutzung des Raums in der Pakistanischen Gebärdensprache. Das Zeichen 39:90–105Google Scholar
- 29
- Cited by