Hostname: page-component-6b989bf9dc-pmhlf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T04:21:18.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Body as subject1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2007

IRIT MEIR ,
CAROL A. PADDEN ,
MARK ARONOFF  and
WENDY SANDLER
IRIT MEIR*
Affiliation:
Department of Hebrew Language and Department of Communication Disorders, The University of Haifa
CAROL A. PADDEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, University of California at San Diego
MARK ARONOFF*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Stony Brook University
WENDY SANDLER*
Affiliation:
Department of English Language and Literature, The University of Haifa
*
Authors' addresses: Department of Hebrew Language and Department of Communication Disorders, The University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa31905, Israel. E-mail: imeir@univ.haifa.ac.il
Department of Communication, University of Californiaat San Diego, La Jolla, CA92093-0503, U.S.A. E-mail: cpadden@ucsd.edu
Department of Linguistics, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY11794-4376, U.S.A. E-mail: mark.aronoff@sunysb.edu
Department of English Language and Literature, The University of Haifa, Mt. Carmel, Haifa31905, Israel. E-mail: wsandler@research.haifa.ac.il
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The notion of subject in human language has a privileged status relative to other arguments. This special status is manifested in the behavior of subjects at the morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse levels. Here we present evidence that subjects have a privileged status at the lexical level as well, by analyzing lexicalization patterns of verbs in three different sign languages. Our analysis shows that the sub-lexical structure of iconic signs denoting states of affairs in these languages manifests an inherent pattern of form–meaning correspondence: the signer's body consistently represents one argument of the verb, the subject. The hands, moving in relation to the body, represent all other components of the event – including all other arguments. This analysis shows that sign languages provide novel evidence in support of the centrality of the notion of subject in human language. It also solves a typological puzzle about the apparent primacy of object in sign language verb agreement, a primacy not usually found in spoken languages, in which subject agreement generally ranks higher. Our analysis suggests that the subject argument is represented by the body and is part of the lexical structure of the verb. Because it is always inherently represented in the structure of the sign, the subject is more basic than the object, and tolerates the omission of agreement morphology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 531 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Al-Fityani, Kinda. 2007. Arab sign languages: A lexical comparison. Technical report. Center for Research in Language Newsletter, 19(1). http://crl.ucsd.edu/newsletter/current/TechReports/articles.html (10 May 2007).Google Scholar
Armstrong, David F., William, C. Stokoe & Sherman, E. Wilcox. 1995. Gesture and the nature of language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aronoff, Mark, Irit, Meir, Carol, A. Padden & Wendy, Sandler. 2004. Morphological universals and the sign language type. In Geert, Booij & Jaap, van Marle (eds.) Yearbook of morphology 2004, 19–39. Dordrecht & Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.Google Scholar
Aronoff, Mark, Irit, Meir & Wendy, Sandler. 2005. The paradox of sign language morphology. Language 81(2), 301–344.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bahan, Benjamin. 1996. Non-manual realization of agreement in American Sign Language. Ph.D. dissertation, Applied Linguistics, Boston University.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard & Edward, L. Keenan. 1979. Noun phrase accessibility revisited. Language 55, 649–664.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth. 1993. Space in Danish Sign Language. Hamburg: Signum-Verlag.Google Scholar
Falk, Yehuda N. 2006. Subjects and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The case for case. In Emmon, Bach & Robert, Harms (eds.) Universals in linguistic theory, 1–88. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. Language universals (Janua Linguarum Series Minor 59). The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hockett, Charles F. 1960. The origins of speech. Scientific American 203, 89–96.Google Scholar
Hogan, Jenny. 2003. Cave art date splits critics. New Scientist 2391, 8.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth, Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray S. 1990. Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Janis, Wynne D. 1995. A cross linguistic perspective on ASL verb agreement. In Karen, Emmorey & Judy, Reilly (eds.) Language, gesture and space, 195–223. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry, Barbara, O'Dea & Barbara, Shaffer. 2001. The construal of events: Passives in American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 1(3), 281–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of ‘subject’. In Charles, N. Li (ed.) Subject and topic, 303–333. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kegl, Judy A. 1986. Clitics in American Sign Language. In Hagit, Borer (ed.) The syntax of pronominal clitics (Syntax and Semantics 19), 285–309. New York, San Francisco & London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Kisch, Shifra. 2000. ‘Deaf discourse’: Social construction of deafness in a Bedouin community in the Negev. MA thesis, Tel Aviv University.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Johan, Rooryck & Laurie, Zaring (eds.) Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krifka, Manfred. 2007. Functional similarities between bimanual coordination and topic/comment structure. In Shinichiro, Ishihara, Michaela, Schmitz & Anne, Schwarz (eds.) Interdisciplinary studies on information structure (ISIS) 8 (Working Papers of the SFB 632). Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 39–59. [Also to appear in Regine Eckardt, Gerhard Jäger & Tonjes Veenstra (eds.), Language evolution: Cognitive and cultural factors. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.] http://amor.rz.hu-berlin.de/~h2816i3x/Publications/TopicHandedness.pdf, 15 August 2007.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark, Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lane, Harlan, Richard, Pillard & Mary, French. 2000. Origins of the American Deaf-World: Assimilating and differentiating societies and their relation to genetic patterning. In Karen, Emmorey & Harlan, Lane (eds.) The signs of language revisited: An anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, 77–100. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard & Gabriel, Siegal. 1995. Knowledge of meaning: An introduction to semantic theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1988. On the function of agreement. In Michael, Barlow & Charles, Ferguson (eds.) Agreement in natural language, 55–65. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Liddell, Scott K. 2003. Grammar, gesture and meaning in American Sign Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lord, Carol. 1993. Historical change in serial verb constructions (Typological Studies in Language 26). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1984. On the nature of grammatical relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McWhorter, John H. 2005. Defining creole. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Meier, Richard P. 1990. Person deixis in American Sign Language. In Susan, D. Fischer & Patricia, Siple (eds.) Theoretical issues in sign language research, 175–190. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meier, P., Kearsy, Cormier & David, Quinto-Pozos (eds.) 2002. Modality and structure in signed and spoken languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit. 1998a. Syntactic–semantic interaction in Israeli Sign Language verbs. Sign Language and Linguistics 1, 3–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit. 1998b. Thematic structure and verb agreement in Israeli Sign Language. Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit. 2002. A cross-modality perspective on verb agreement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20, 413–450.Google Scholar
Meir, Irit. 2003. Grammaticalization and modality: The emergence of a case marked pronoun in ISL. Journal of Linguistics 39(1), 109–140.Google Scholar
Meir, Irit. 2004. Spatial grammar in signed and spoken languages: Modality effects on grammatical structure. A talk presented at TISLR 8, Barcelona, Spain.Google Scholar
Meir, Irit & Wendy, Sandler. 2007. A language in space: The story of Israeli Sign Language. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Padden, Carol A. 1988. Interaction of morphology and syntax in American Sign Language (Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics, series IV). New York: Garland Press.Google Scholar
Padden, Carol A., Irit, Meir, Wendy, Sandler & Mark, Aronoff. In press. Against all expectations: Encoding subjects and objects in a new language. In Donna, Gerdts, John, Moore & Maria, Polinsky (eds.) Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pizzuto, Elena. 1986. The verb system in Italian Sign Language. In Bernard, Tervoort (ed.) Signs of life: The Second European Congress on Sign Language Research, 17–31. Amsterdam: The Dutch Foundation for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired Child, The University of Amsterdam & the Dutch Council of the Deaf.Google Scholar
Putnam, Hilary. 1988. Representation and reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rappaport, Malka & Beth, Levin. 1988. What to do with Theta-roles. In Wendy, Wilkins (ed.) Thematic relations (Syntax and Semantic 21), 7–36. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Russo, Tommaso. 2004. Iconicity and productivity in sign language discourse: An analysis of three LIS discourse registers. Sign Language Studies 4(2), 164–197.Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy. 1989. Phonological representation of the sign. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy & Diane, Lillo-Martin. 2006. Sign language and linguistic universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy, Irit, Meir, Carol, A. Padden & Mark, Aronoff. 2005. The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new language. The National Academy of Sciences 102(7), 2661–2665.Google Scholar
Shepard-Kegl, Judy A. 1985. Locative relations in American Sign Language word formation, syntax and discourse. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Stokoe, William C. 1960. Sign language structure: An outline of the visual communication systems of the American deaf (Studies in Linguistics Occasional Papers 8). Buffalo, NY: University of Buffalo.Google Scholar
Supalla, Ted. 1982. Structure and acquisition of verbs of motion in American Sign Language. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at San Diego.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy, Shopen (ed.) Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 3: Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 57–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Towards a cognitive semantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taub, Sarah F. 2001. Language from the body: Iconicity and metaphor in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. In press. Complex predicates involving events, time and aspect: Is this why sign languages look so similar? In Josep, Quer (ed.) Signs of the time: Selected papers from TISLR 2004, 219–250. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Wilcox, Sherman E. 2004. Cognitive iconicity: Conceptual spaces, meaning, and gesture in signed languages. Cognitive Linguistics 15(2), 119–147.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1980. Predication. Linguistic Inquiry 11, 203–238.Google Scholar
Williams, Edwin. 1984. Grammatical relations. Linguistic Inquiry 15, 639–674.Google Scholar