Notes for today April 14, 2011

Here is a link to today's notes.

Another copy in the usual place

KLIMA E., U. BELLUGI. 1979. "Adjective Modulations on Adjectival Predicates" in Signs of Language. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA. 243-271.

English:

'aspectual and other modfication using unchanged adjective'

his is sick,

he used to be sick

he is rather sick,

he got sick again and again

he gets sick easily

he has been sick for a long time

he became sick

he tends to be sick

'other derivation'

sick

sickness (A>N)

sickly (A>A)

sicken (A>V)

Initially researchers did not notice that modifications to movement can change the meaning of signs. They were expecting that morphological processes would work much as in spoken languages, through concatenative processes of affixation – prefixes and suffixes. Directional changes to verbs were noted and included but other internal changes to signs were not described.

In one experiment, signers were asked to read a story and then retell it from memory in ASL. One of the sentences about a fisherman at sea included the sentence: "His face became red in the wind." Different signers handled that differently. Some followed something like Enlgish syntax FACE BECOME RED, others juxtaposed WIND-AGAINST-FACE RED. But most simple seemed to sign FACE RED or RED FACE leaving out the idea of become. The researchers tried to ask if (along with other questions) if there was something special about the way that FACE or RED was signed but they didn't know what questions to ask and they were misled by their transcription which was always RED.

Even when the researchers began to notice differences in kinds of movement and tried to ask "In what sentences would you make the sign that way?" the answers tended toward "it depends on the mood".

Eventually a deaf researcher Carlene Canady Pedersen, began using her intuitions to study changes in adjectives. She found they fell into two groups. Some like PRETTY, UGLY, INTELLIGENT, STUPID, HARD, SOFT, TALL, SHORT and others did not really change much. Others, however, like ANGRY, AWKWARD, EMBARRASSSED, DIRTY and SICK were more mutable.

Eventually this led to the discovery of modulation of movement as a consistent and important part of the grammar of ASL.

Basic sign: SICK

Handshape

8/  8/

two-handed 'feel' hand

Location                      Movement

˄  []                              x+

forehead, chest        double contact

Circular modulation

This seems to superimpose a repeated circular movement, Ɔ+

This came to be named the Predispositional Aspect and the sign with this modulation might be translated as 'prone to be sick'.

It was also discovered that native signers expressed semantic agreement between time adverbials and the modulations applied to adjectives, the frame TEND HIS ALL-LIFE --- 'He's tended to be sickly all his life' requires the predispositionl aspect and native signers reject the sentence with the citation form of SICK. This would argue for the change to be morphological (part of the grammar of the language) and not 'merely' expressive.

A number of other aspectual modifications of adjectives were also found and they seem to depend on various kinds of co-occurences of six features.

Reduplicated – Is the movement performed once (-) or repeated. (+)

Even – Is the speed of the movement constant (+) or does is change (-)

Tense – Is the movement tense (+) or relaxed (-)

End-marked – Does the movement have an end point (+) or does it continue (-).

Fast – Is the movement performed at normal (-) or faster than normal (+) speed.

Elongated – Is the movement longer than normal (+) or not (-)

There are two aspect classes for various modulations of SICK, the citation form indicates a transitory condition BE-SICK, while the inchoative indicates a change to a state GET-SICK.

Along with these two base forms, the various modulations then fall into four pairs

                                                 Re-                                                     End-

                                                duplicated    Even       Tense          Marked     Fast      Elongated      Class

Predispositional                      +                 +                -                  -                 +                 +                 T

'usually sick'

Susceptative                           +                 +                -                  +                +                 +                 C

'easily get sick'

Continuative                           +                 -                 +                 -                 -                  +                 T

'be sick for a long time'

Iterative                                  +                 -                 +                 +                -                  +                 C

'get sick again and again'

Protractive                             -                                    +                                                      -                  T

'always sick'

Incessant                                +                 -                 +                 +                +                 -                  C

'always getting sick'

Intensive                                 -                  +                +                 +                +                 +                 T

'be very sick'

Resultative                             -                  -                 +                 +                -                  +                 C

'get really sick'

There are other variations as well.