Plural formation in German Sign Language: Constraints and strategies

Autor/a: PFAU, Roland; STEINBACH, Markus
Año: 2005
Editorial: Hamburg: Buske, 2005
Tipo de código: Copyright
Soporte: Digital

Temas

Lingüística » Lingüística de otras Lenguas de Signos

Detalles

Pluralization of nouns is an intricate issue. On the one hand, languages make use of different plural  marking  strategies.  On  the  other  hand,  even  within  one  language,  different  strategies and/or different morphological markers may find use, depending on lexical, phonological, or morphological  properties  of  the  base  noun.  In  this  paper,  we  shall  have  a  closer  look  at  the pluralization of nouns in German Sign  Language (DGS).  It will be shown that DGS patterns with spoken languages in that (a) different plural marking strategies are available, (b) within one  strategy  (reduplication)  there  are  different  types  of  realization,  and  (c)  the  choice  of strategy and the choice of type crucially depend on phonological properties of the base noun, in particular, on the noun’s location and movement features. The description of basic plural patterns  will  be  supplemented  by  an  investigation  of  how  and  where  the  plural  feature  is realized  within  a  particular  phrasal  domain. Finally,  we  will  propose  an  optimality-theoretic analysis that accounts for the pluralization patterns in DGS.

En: Helen Leuninger & Daniela Happ (eds.), Gebärdensprachen: Struktur, Erwerb, Verwendung (Linguistische Berichte Special Issue 15), pp. 111-144.