This study investigates the use of reduplication with predicative signs in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), and also the related phenomena doubling and displacement. Reduplication in SSL typically expresses plurality of events and/or referents, but may also express intensification, ongoing event or generic activity. There is a distinction between external and internal events with reduplication: external reduplication expresses some event happening over and over at different points in time and/or with different referents, and is associated with a frequentative/habitual reading; internal reduplication expresses some event consisting of several e.g. movements/actions and is associated with an ongoing reading. Only external expression seems to be applicable to stative constructions, as one would expect. The study also found a phenomenon not previously described: oral reduplication without manual reduplication. This process is found to have the ongoing functions with telic predicates, such that it focuses on the telic predicate as a single event in progress, and thus replaces the function of manual reduplication, which, with telic predicates, would instead express several events. The reading of reduplicated signs is associated with the semantics of the sign reduplicated, and it is also associated with the phonological citation form of the sign—monosyllabic signs tend to get pluractional reading; bisyllabic signs tend to get an ongoing reading. Also, the reading expressed by reduplication is connected to the presence/absence of oral reduplication. Reduplication generally does not occur in negative constructions. This study shows that inherently negative signs may be reduplicated, but reduplicated predicates are negated according to other strategies than for non-reduplicated predicates, thus reduplication has the largest scope. Doubling and displacement are both associated mainly with plural referents, and it is in this respect that they are related to reduplication, and they both occur frequently with reduplication.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-63510 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Börstell, Carl |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för lingvistik |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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