Sources of Meaning in ASL Classifier Predicates
Temas
Detalles
Verbs capable o f being directed in space were initially called directional verbs (Fischer & Gough, 1978) or multidirectional verbs (Friedman, 1976). By the mid-1970s, ASL researchers had identified a category o f signs with characteristics that appeared to distinguish them from other directional signs. Identifying this class o f signs was the first attempt at subdividing the class o f directional verbs. The signs in this class were said to share the distinctive characteristic that each is produced with a meaningful handshape representing some entity. In addition, for many classifier predicates, the movement o f the hand describes the movement of the entity represented by the hand. Frishberg (1975) describes these handshapes as being .. in particular orientations to stand for certain semantic features o f noun arguments” (p. 715). This class o f signs came to be called classifier predicates (Liddell, 1977) or verbs o f motion and location (Supalla, 1978). The sign in Fig. 9.1 is an example o f the type o f sign Frishberg (1975) describes as being produced with a classifier handshape.
En: Emmorey, K. (Ed.), Perspectives on Classifier Constructions in Sign Languages, pp. 199–220.