Volume 37, Issue 3-4 - On the linguistic status of ‘agreement’ in sign languages

In signed languages, the arguments of verbs can be marked by a system of verbal modification that has been termed “agreement” (more neutrally, “directionality”). Fundamental issues regarding directionality remain unresolved and the phenomenon has characteristics that call into question its analysis as agreement. We conclude that directionality marks person in American Sign Language, and the ways person marking interacts with syntactic phenomena are largely analogous to morpho-syntactic properties of familiar agreement systems. Overall, signed languages provide a crucial test for how gestural and linguistic mechanisms can jointly contribute to the satisfaction of fundamental aspects of linguistic structure.

Two apparently contradictory insights about sign language can be made compatible within a formal semantic analysis: (i) the claim that directional verbs incorporate agreement markers/pronouns (e.g. Lillo-Martin and Meier, Theoretical Linguistics, 2011); (ii) the observation that directional verbs have an iconic component (e.g. Liddell, Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language, Cambridge University Press, 2003). I sketch formal rules that integrate iconic requirements with standard semantic conditions (be they presuppositional or assertive in nature).