Verb agreement as alignment in signed languages
Temas
Detalles
This thesis provides a novel way of looking at verb agreement in signed languages by using an interaction of several processes within the Distributed Morphology framework. At the center of the model is a phonological re-adjustment rule, called "alignment", which handles various forms of agreement, including orientation change, path movement, relative position of the hands, and/or a combination of these. Further evidence is taken from cross-linguistic data from American Sign Language, German Sign Language, Australian Sign Language, and Japanese Sign Language, as well as from interaction with several other morphemes. It is shown that the output of the alignment process is filtered by various phonetic constraints and may be replaced by an alternative form that does not otherwise violate phonetic constraints.