Transitive and unaccusative V-V constructions in Japanese Sign Language
Temas
Detalles
Recent research has reported that in several sign languages, to denote a cause–effectsemantic relation, serial verb constructions that are composed of transitive and unac-cusative verbs (hereafter, Vtra-Vunacc) are available (Lau 2012; Sevgi 2021; He and Tang2023). This type of verb pairing may include both classifier (CL) and lexical verbs. Ques-tions thus arise concerning whether any combinations of CL and lexical verbs are al-lowed in this type of Vtra-Vunaccconstruction in sign languages as well as what the se-mantic, morpho-syntactic, and phonological restrictions are (if any) that may be im-posed on this type of verb complex. In this paper, on the basis of a grammaticalityjudgment survey conducted with four Deaf native signers, I show that all four possibleCL/lexical combinations of Vtra-Vunaccin Japanese Sign Language ( JSL) can be dividedinto three types with respect to their morpho-syntactic and phonological properties andinteractions with telicity. The results reveal that only two of the three types are permit-ted in a serial verb construction. This observation is explained under a syntactic analysisthat I propose, relying on a functional approach to complex predicates (Grose, Wilbur,and Schalber 2007; Ramchand 2008).