Nominal referential values of semantic classifiers and role shift in signed narratives
Temas
Detalles
As natural languages, sign languages are not instatiated through isolated sentences but rather through signed discourses, as larger relevant units of communication. Discourse is considered to be an entity that is constantly being built and updated. Irrespective of the language modality, some referring expressions have the potential of changing and updating the context, whereas some others interconnect the referring expressions vis-á-vis the entities in the discourse context and, in principle, do not update it because they do not contain descriptive material. Therefore, and according to the general view, discourse is constructed by two operations. The first one is based on the context change potential achieved through the update of the accesibility structure of a discourse and implemented by definite and indefinite noun prhrases. The second one resides in the context-dependent interpretation implemented by anaphoric pronouns. While the first operation updates and manipulates the list of possible referents, the second one implements and evidences the updates through the use of coreferential xpressions. These two dynamic operations are essential for the construction and development of any kind of discourse, regardless of the language modality.
En: A. Hübl & M. Steinbach (eds), Linguistic Foundations of Narration in Spoken and Sign Languages.