Parts of speech and iconicity in German Sign Language (DGS)

在过去的几十年里，语言类型学一直在质疑诸如名词和动词之类的词性是否在不同的语言中是通用的（例如，Haspelmath，2001; Evans & Levinson，2009）。类似地，在理论语言学和心理语言学中，关于诸如名词和动词的（主要）类别是否（i）构成词汇基元，（ii）由组合句法过程产生，或（iii）仅在语言使用的背景下出现（Halle & Marantz，1993; Vigliocco et al.，2011年）。我们的项目开始于观察，词类共性，如名词和动词并不总是明确区分手语。在这里，我们把德国手语（DGS）作为一个实证的测试场。类似于口语，例如，在英语（the book vs. to book）中，DGS中的许多符号似乎是模糊的，因为它们的词汇状态取决于它们产生的（句法）上下文。然而，对手语的初步研究已经观察到，手语表现出一种倾向，即通过手动标记名词和动词，也可能通过根的非手动音位修饰（例如，Supalla &纽波特，1978年）。我们的项目使用不同的语言学和神经科学方法研究DGS中主要词类之间的区别，重点是语言产生以及单个符号和句子处理。此外，在DGS中的名动词区别的公开实现的分析，我们调查的语言和认知的相关性的词性和象似性对手语的影响。因此，我们的目标有三个：（1）我们想超越以往对口语的研究，检验名-动-别的假定普遍性。我们将探索DGS中两个词汇类别的分布差异，DGS是一种视觉空间模态的语言，使用语言学，行为学和神经科学实验。(ii)我们希望深入了解DGS的图标属性，以及聋人和听力正常的人如何感知这些属性，从而确定不一定是语言的趋势，但可能-由于其图标性质-以非语言认知为基础。这将使用定性以及数据驱动的方法，将探讨在DGS的标志的象似性属性和动机，以及象似性是如何连接到显着实现的名词，动词的区别。(iii)我们希望我们的研究与最近的正式和功能分析的词性词汇或句法类别，从而有助于更好地理解词性和词性的影响，情态的实证研究结果相匹配。

Linguistic typology in the past decades has questioned whether parts of speech such as nouns and verbs are universal across different languages (e.g., Haspelmath, 2001; Evans & Levinson, 2009). Similarly, there is an ongoing debate in theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics as to whether (major) categories such as noun and verb (i) constitute lexical primitives, (ii) result from a combinatorial syntactic process, or (iii) emerge only in the context of language use (Halle & Marantz, 1993; Vigliocco et al., 2011). Our project starts from the observation that word class universals like noun and verb are not always clearly distinguished in sign language. Here we take German Sign Language (DGS) as an empirical testing ground. Similar to spoken languages, e.g., English (the book vs. to book), many signs in DGS seem to be ambiguous insofar as their lexical status depends on the (syntactic) context in which they are produced. Preliminary studies on sign languages, however, have observed that sign languages exhibit a tendency to mark nouns and verbs by manual and probably also by nonmanual phonological modifications of the root (e.g., Supalla & Newport, 1978). Our project investigates the distinction between major word classes in DGS using different linguistic and neuroscientific methods focusing on language production as well as single sign and sentence processing. Furthermore, within the analysis of the overt realisation of the noun-verb-distinction in DGS, we investigate the linguistic and cognitive relevance of parts of speech and the impact of iconicity on sign languages. Our aim is therefore threefold: (i) We want to test the supposed universality of the noun-verb-distinction, by going beyond previous work done on spoken languages. We will explore differences in the distribution of the two lexical categories in DGS, a language in the visuo-spatial modality, using linguistic, behavioral, and neuroscientific experiments. (ii) We want to provide insights into the iconic properties of DGS and how these are perceived by deaf and hearing people, thereby identifying tendencies that are not necessarily linguistic but could – due to their iconic nature – be grounded in non-linguistic cognition. This will be explored using qualitative as well as data-driven approaches that will investigate iconic properties and motivations of signs in DGS and how iconicity is linked to the overt realisation of the noun-verb-distinction. (iii) We want to match the empirical findings of our studies with recent formal and functional analyses of parts of speech as lexical or syntactic categories thereby contributing to a better theoretical understanding of parts of speech and the impact of modality on parts of speech.