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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton October 24, 2011

On the linguistic status of ‘agreement’ in sign languages

  • Diane Lillo-Martin EMAIL logo and Richard P. Meier EMAIL logo
From the journal Theoretical Linguistics

Abstract

In signed languages, the arguments of verbs can be marked by a system of verbal modification that has been termed “agreement” (more neutrally, “directionality”). Fundamental issues regarding directionality remain unresolved and the phenomenon has characteristics that call into question its analysis as agreement. We conclude that directionality marks person in American Sign Language, and the ways person marking interacts with syntactic phenomena are largely analogous to morpho-syntactic properties of familiar agreement systems. Overall, signed languages provide a crucial test for how gestural and linguistic mechanisms can jointly contribute to the satisfaction of fundamental aspects of linguistic structure.


Correspondence address: University of Connecticut and Haskins Laboratories
Correspondence address: University of Texas at Austin

Published Online: 2011-10-24
Published in Print: 2011-October

© 2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston

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