Person and number in Catalan Sign Language pronouns
Temas
Detalles
Languages use different resources to specify the numerosity of the referents and to denote the speech act participants. This thesis describes the morphophonological strategies used in Catalan Sign Language (LSC) personal pronouns to encode these distinctions. In a nutshell, I argue that the expression of person and number is achieved by using two interrelated strategies: person is expressed through spatial features (locations in the signing space which are defined in relation to the signer’s body), number is grammatically marked by the path specifications of the sign (movements connecting spatial locations). Combining these two operations results in the formal marking of three person distinctions (with a further contrast between exclusive, minimal inclusive and augmented inclusive in the first person) and four number values (singular, dual, paucal and plural).