Insights into person deixis

Autor/a: BERENZ, Norine
Año: 2002
Editorial: Sign Language & Linguistics, Vol. 5, nº 2 (2002) pp.203-227.
Tipo de código: Copyright
Soporte: Digital

Temas

Lingüística » Lingüística de otras Lenguas de Signos

Detalles

Widely accepted analyses of personal pronouns in sign languages present systems that differ in a crucial way from pronominal systems in oral languages and violate linguistic universals proposed by Benveniste, Bühler, Lyons, and others. These analyses argue that the two necessary conversational roles — sender and recipient — are not grammaticized in first and second person pronouns, respectively. This paper presents findings of a detailed analysis of pronominal reference in video-recorded, naturally occurring Brazilian Sign Language conversations which show consistent pairings of form and meaning. On this basis, I argue that the LSB personal pronoun system encodes the two necessary conversational roles. A re-examination of several ASL examples provides additional evidence.