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

德国手语 (DGS) 中的词性和象似性

• 批准号: 501984557
• 负责人: Dr. Nina-Kristin Pendzich
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Seminar für Deutsche Philologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Priority Programmes
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/501984557?language=en
• 关键词: Parts; speech; iconicity; German; Sign

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.

过去几十年的语言类型学一直质疑名词和动词等词类是否在不同语言中具有通用性（例如，Haspelmath，2001；Evans & Levinson，2009）。同样，关于名词和动词等（主要）类别是否（i）构成词汇原语，（ii）来自组合句法过程的结果，或（iii）仅在语言使用的上下文中出现，理论语言学和心理语言学界一直存在争论（Halle＆Marantz，1993；Vigliocco等人，2011）。我们的项目始于观察到名词和动词等词类共性在手语中并不总是清晰地区分。这里我们以德国手语（DGS）作为实证试验场。与口语类似，例如英语（the book vs. to book），DGS 中的许多符号似乎是不明确的，因为它们的词汇状态取决于它们产生的（句法）上下文。然而，对手语的初步研究发现，手语表现出通过手动标记名词和动词的倾向，也可能通过对词根的非手动语音修饰来标记名词和动词（例如，Supalla & Newport，1978）。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，重点关注语言生成以及单个符号和句子处理。此外，在分析 DGS 中名词-动词区别的明显实现过程中，我们研究了词类的语言和认知相关性以及象似性对手语的影响。因此，我们的目标有三个：（i）我们希望通过超越以前在口语方面所做的工作来测试名词-动词区别的假定普遍性。我们将利用语言、行为和神经科学实验来探索 DGS（一种视觉空间模态语言）中两个词汇类别分布的差异。 (ii) 我们希望深入了解 DGS 的标志性属性，以及聋人和听力正常的人如何感知这些属性，从而识别不一定是语言性的倾向，但由于其标志性性质，可以基于非语言认知。我们将使用定性和数据驱动的方法来探索这一问题，这些方法将研究 DGS 中标志的标志性属性和动机，以及标志性如何与名词-动词区别的明显实现联系起来。 （iii）我们希望将我们研究的实证结果与最近对词性作为词汇或句法类别的形式和功能分析相匹配，从而有助于更好地理论理解词性以及情态对词性的影响。