Preliminary description and typology of Czech Sign Language compounds
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description |
Compounding is one of the core processes in sign language (SL) word-formation (Quer et al. 2017, Sandler and Lillo-Martin 2006), even in emerging sign languages (Meir et al. 2010). While it is relatively straightforward what constitutes a compound in spoken languages, the situation in SLs is more complex due to an ongoing discussion about the definition of morphemes and the distinction between stems and affixes (Zwitserlood 2012), as well as the modality-specific possibility of simultaneous articulation of two signs by two independent articulators (hands). Compounds in SLs are generally understood as morphologically complex signs consisting of two (or more) independent lexemes that may introduce a new non-compositional meaning (Quer et al. 2017). What distinguishes them from set phrases is the phonological reduction/assimilation, e.g. the shortening or the loss of stress on the first sign, the deletion of the movement repetitions, or the assimilation of movement or place of articulation (Zeshan 2004). From the typological perspective, several classifications were proposed (Klima and Bellugi 1979, Brennan 1990, Vercellotti and Mortensen 2012), but so far, the most thorough is Santoro (2018) focused on compounds in French and Italian SL. Santoro categorizes SL compounds along several lines: (i) syntax: subordinate (complement and attributive) vs coordinate (coordinated and hypernym) compounds; (ii) semantics: endocentric vs exocentric compounds; (iii) prosody: sequential vs simultaneous compounds; (iv) lexicon: native (core signs, classifiers, size and shape specifiers) vs non-native (fingerspelled or name signs, loans) vs mixed compounds. The current work aims to apply Santoro´s (2018) thorough typology to the data from Czech Sign Language (ČZJ), which remains deeply understudied (even for a SL). Only a single study (Mladová 2009) comments on compounds in ČZJ, but the typology used there – supported with only a few example signs – is insufficient and needs to be elaborated in more detail. We will utilize the online sign language dictionary Dictio, the largest database of ČZJ signs to date, and categorize all the compounds (and set phrases for their formal closeness) into their respective types. Thus, the contribution of this work is threefold: (i) empirical: an extensive systematic typology of ČZJ compounds; (ii) theoretical: an attempt to answer questions raised by Santoro (2018) about the cross-linguistic nature of the combinatorial gaps in compound production attested in French and Italian SL; (iii) applied: classification and possible correction of compounds and set phrases in Dictio. |
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