A lexicon with multiple origins: Native and foreign vocabulary in American Sign Language
Temas
Detalles
This chapter examines the composition of the ASL lexicon with particular reference to the status of the types of words containing fingerspelled letters. There are four major findings of this research. First, along with morphologically based diagnostic tests, we found that major divisions within the lexicon emerge based on the handshape inventories of different types of words. Second, the native and non-native components are composed of subcomponents; neither the native and no-native lexicon is a single homogeneous set of signs. Third, the non-native component is divided into strata according to the word-formational operations involved and the proximity to the core. Fourth, items in the non-native component are not necessarily on a predetermined path toward the core. Although ASL has had close contact with English since its beginning, the mechanisms for borrowing English elements into the language are constrained, systematic and expressed within the grammar of ASL.
En: D. Brentari (Ed.). "Foreign Vocabulary in Sign Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Investigation of Word Formation" (2001).