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名词和动词等词性在不同语言中是否具有普遍性(例如，Haspelath，2001；Evans&Levinson，2009)。同样，在理论语言学和心理语言学中，关于(主要)范畴，如名词和动词，是否(I)构成词汇原语，(Ii)是组合句法过程的结果，还是(Iii)仅出现在语言使用的语境中(Halle&Marantz，1993；Vigliocco等人，2011)，理论语言学和心理语言学中一直存在着争论。我们的项目始于观察到，像名词和动词这样的词类共性在手语中并不总是被清楚地区分开来。在这里，我们以德语手语(DGS)为实证试验场。与英语等口语相似，DGS中的许多符号似乎是模棱两可的，因为它们的词汇地位取决于它们产生的(句法)语境。然而，对手语的初步研究已经观察到，手语表现出一种通过人工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(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来研究DGS中主要词类之间的区别，重点是语言产生以及单一手势和句子处理。此外，我们还通过对DGS中名词-动词区分的显性实现的分析，考察了词性的语言关联性和认知关联性以及象似性对手语的影响。因此，我们的目标有三个：(I)我们想通过超越以前在口语上所做的工作，来测试名词-动词-区别的假设的普遍性。我们将使用语言学、行为学和神经科学的实验，探索这两个词汇类别在视觉空间情态语言DGS中的分布差异。(Ii)我们想深入了解DGS的象征性特征，以及聋人和聋人如何感知这些特征，从而确定不一定是语言的，但由于其象征性的性质，可能植根于非语言认知的倾向。我们将使用定性和数据驱动的方法来探索这一点，这些方法将调查DGS中符号的象征性特征和理据，以及象似性如何与名词-动词-区别的公开实现联系在一起。(Iii)我们希望将我们的实证研究结果与最近对词类作为词汇或句法类别的词性的形式和功能分析相结合，从而有助于从理论上更好地理解词性和情态对词性的影响。

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.