Agreement Verb Example Asl

Once this chord mechanism (i.e. assigning the beginning and end points of the verb to the R-loci of arguments) is established for a group of verbs, other verbs can also adopt this morphological mechanism and become corresponding verbs. These verbs may have some, but not all, attributes of transmission verbs in common. For example, communication verbs, such as TELEPHONE or FAX, include two human participants, as well as transmission verbs and also the act of communication. In some languages (e.B. ASL and ISL), these characters have become corresponding verbs. Similarly, say verbs such as TELL, ASK, ANSWER, TELL-A-STORY and ASL SAY-NO-TO have also become matching verbs. As LM&M points out, there are many quirks about which verbs match. I see this as an indication that with the establishment of the formal mechanism in a language, the semantic basis of the category becomes more opaque and the grammatical characteristics of the elements come to the fore. We can now return to the typological conundrum posed above, namely, why is the correspondence of verbs in sign languages limited to transmission verbs? The key to this question is the form of verbs that designate transmission in manual visual language.

When representing a gesture transmission event, hands usually move outward from the signatory`s body, as if they were following the transfer of an entity from one owner (represented by the signatory`s body) to another person (the recipient). One end of the sign is located on the body of the signatory, and the other end is in space, away from the body. The decisive factor here is this „loose end” of verbs: if a language acquires a systematic use of space for referential purposes, this „loose end” is more easily adapted to reanalysis; It is parsed as a morpheme that encodes the R locus associated with the object (recipient) argument. Finally, after one endpoint has undergone such a rescan, the other endpoint, which is located near the signer`s body, can also be rescanned in the same way as the encoding properties of the argument associated with the signer`s body, the subject argument (Meir et al. 2007). Transfer verbs share a component of meaning and a component of formation: they designate the transfer of an entity from one owner to another, and its form consists of a movement of path between the body and the space of the signatory. Both ends (first the spatial end and the end anchored in the body) are quite easy to reanalyze: they become morphemes that encode the personal and numerical characteristics of both owners. These typological peculiarities are exactly what we should consider if we want to better understand the interaction between language and modality. In particular, I would like to examine here the question of the classification of verbs. The chord system described by LM&M is unique in that only one class of verbs is marked in a given sign language for personal chord, the class of chord verbs. Other verbs in the language are not marked for correspondence or are marked for „okative” correspondence (so-called spatial verbs).

Membership in the class of chord verbs is determined semantically; Overall, correspondence verbs refer to transfer, whether concrete or abstract (Meir 2001, 2002). Although languages may differ in terms of the classification of certain verbs, in all sign languages that have this system, there is a core of verbs that designate the transmission (e.B. GIVE, SEND, TAKE, HELP, TELL) in the class of chord verbs. If ISL is a representative example of how verb matching has evolved in sign language, then the languages of the two modalities show a very different development path. In spoken languages, many markers of verb correspondence can be traced (or at least argued) from the grammaticalization and clitization of free pronouns (see e.B. Givón, 1971, 1976; van Gelderen, 2011). In ISL, the source of correspondence morphemes is the form of transfer verbs and the reanalysis of their ends as morphemes. These different origins may explain some of the typological differences between languages in both modalities.

However, both systems also share some characteristics, as shown by LM&M. For example, the two license null arguments and interact with word order. What can explain the similarities between two systems with such different development paths? I propose a functional explanation: formal similarities are shaped by similarities in function. Both systems are used for reference tracking by encoding pronominal characteristics on verbal forms. These systems could therefore be considered as converging structures in the evolution of language. In biology, convergent structures are structures that perform the same or a similar function by a similar mechanism, but have evolved separately, sometimes by different pathways. .