Negation as structure building in a home sign system
-
Amy Franklin
Abstract
We identify a gestural marker for negation in a home sign system: a side-to-side headshake. This marker expresses a meaning that corresponds semantically to a function that applies to a sentence (whose semantic value is a proposition) and yields another, more complex sentence. Combining negation with a sentence involves sentential modification; we therefore propose that the side-to-side gesture is a structure building operator. We show that it systematically occupies a position at the left periphery of the string, isomorphic to the logical syntax. If what we see in home sign is language creation (Goldin-Meadow 2003), our analysis implies that home signs have at least the minimal syntax of negation, and therefore contributes to ongoing debates about fundamental properties of language
Abstract
We identify a gestural marker for negation in a home sign system: a side-to-side headshake. This marker expresses a meaning that corresponds semantically to a function that applies to a sentence (whose semantic value is a proposition) and yields another, more complex sentence. Combining negation with a sentence involves sentential modification; we therefore propose that the side-to-side gesture is a structure building operator. We show that it systematically occupies a position at the left periphery of the string, isomorphic to the logical syntax. If what we see in home sign is language creation (Goldin-Meadow 2003), our analysis implies that home signs have at least the minimal syntax of negation, and therefore contributes to ongoing debates about fundamental properties of language
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Acknowledgements vii
- List of contributors ix
- Introduction xiii
- Almost forever 3
- Sadock and the Performadox 23
- Expressing regret and avowing belief 35
- A story of Jerry and Bob 59
- Conventionalization in indirect speech acts 77
- Pseudo-apologies in the news 93
- Towards an intonational-illocutionary interface 107
- Atkan Aleut “unclitic” pronouns and definiteness 125
- Nominalization affixes and multi-modularity of word formation 143
- No more phology! 163
- Wait’ll (you hear) the next one 175
- Aleut case matters 193
- English derived nominals in three frameworks 213
- Out of control 229
- An automodular perspective on the frozenness of pseudoclefts, and vice versa 243
- Negation as structure building in a home sign system 261
- Constraining mismatch in grammar and in sentence comprehension 279
- Evidence for grammatical multi-modularity from a corpus of non-native essays 299
- Autolexical Grammar and language processing 315
- Topic index 337
- Name index 339
