Discourse Referents in Space - Anaphora Resolution in German Sign Language

自然语言有两种形态，口语的口头-听觉形态和手语的视觉-手势形态。尽管这两种模式在交际信号的产生和感知上明显不同，但两种模式的潜在语言结构和认知过程似乎非常相似。然而，手语保留了一些特定于情态的属性，这些属性可能会影响手语交流感知和产生的语言和认知过程。在这个项目中，我们关注的是手语的一个特征，它与三维手语空间中形态句法、语义和语用类别的情态特定实现直接相关：手语积极地利用手语空间的几何特性来建立话语指涉，并以一种与口头听觉语言不同的方式消除回指关系。本研究的目的是建立一个基于经验和实验数据的手语语言结构和回指关系和话语指称的认知加工理论。一方面，这将有助于以视觉-手势的方式理解尚未被研究的语言。另一方面，它也将拓宽我们对人类语言能力的认识，并将为情态对语言结构的影响提供新的见解。

Natural languages come in two modalities, the oral-auditory modality of spoken languages and the visual-gestural modality of sign languages. Although the two modalities clearly differ in the production and perception of communicative signals, the underlying linguistic structures and cognitive processes seem to be very similar across both modalities. Nevertheless, sign languages retain some modality-specific properties that may impact the linguistic and cognitive processes underlying the perception and production of signed communication. In this project, we focus on a characteristic of sign languages which is directly linked to the modality-specific realization of morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic categories in the three-dimensional signing space: Sign languages actively use the geometrical properties of the signing space to establish discourse referents and disambiguate anaphoric relationships in a way which is alien to oral-auditory languages. The objective of the proposed research project is a theory of the linguistic structure and cognitive processing of anaphoric relations and discourse referents in sign language that is based on empirical and experimental data. On the one hand, this will contribute to the understanding of an under-studied language in the visual-gestural modality. On the other hand, it will also broaden our knowledge of the human language faculty in general and will provide new insights into the influence of modality on linguistic structure.