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Aspect marking in Australian Sign Language: a process of gestural verb modification
thesis
posted on 2022-03-28, 12:18 authored by Michael GrayThis study provides a corpus-‐based description of aspect marking by means of verb modification in Australian Sign Language (Auslan). Signed languages are widely reported to make use of a process of verb modification to express aspectual information. These modifications have been analysed as inflectional morphology by many researchers (Klima & Bellugi, 1979; Rathmann, 2005), while some have suggested they are derivational (Maroney, 2004) or even ideophonic morphology (Bergman & Dahl, 1994). In this dissertation, I describe the categories of aspectual verb modification (AVM) found in Auslan. I also suggest that AVM does not form a morphological system, but is more consistently understood as a system of gestural modification. This analysis makes AVM congruent with the other major verbal modification systems in signed languages, depicting and indicating verbs, and also points, all of which I consider partially-‐lexical structures (Johnston & Schembri, 2007; Liddell, 2003; Schembri, 2001). The gestural nature of these systems provides evidence that signed languages make extensive use of gestural representation to convey core grammatical information. This finding is consistent with a model of language that integrates both the linguistic and gestural elements in human communication (Enfield, 2009).
History
Table of Contents
1. Introduction -- 2. Previous work on aspect in signed languages -- 3. Methodology -- 4. Findings -- 5. Morphological analyses of AVM -- 6. A system of gestural modification -- 7. Theoretical implications and conclusions -- 8. ReferencesNotes
Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Bibliography: pages 433-441Awarding Institution
Macquarie UniversityDegree Type
Thesis PhDDegree
PhD, Macquarie University, Faculty of Human Sciences, Department of LinguisticsDepartment, Centre or School
Department of LinguisticsYear of Award
2013Principal Supervisor
Trevor JohnstonRights
Copyright disclaimer: http://www.copyright.mq.edu.au Copyright Michael Gray 2013.Language
EnglishExtent
1 online resources (xxviii, 441 pages) illustrationsFormer Identifiers
mq:33302 http://hdl.handle.net/1959.14/305943 2176496Usage metrics
Categories
Keywords
DeafAustralian Sign LanguageLinguistic changeGrammar, Comparative and generalSign language -- Study and teaching -- AustraliaDeaf -- Australia -- Means of communicationprocess of gestural verb modificationaspectual verb modificationAuslaninflectional morphologyaspect marking in Australian sign languageGrammar, Comparative and general -- Aspectgestural representationgestural modificationLinguistic change -- AustraliaSign languageAustralian Sign Language -- Dissertations, Academic