One type of internal diachronic change that has been extensively
studied for spoken languages is grammaticalization whereby lexical
elements develop into free or bound grammatical elements. Based on
a wealth of spoken languages, a large amount of prototypical
grammaticalization pathways has been identified. Moreover, it has
been shown that desemanticization, decategorialization, and phonetic
erosion are typical characteristics of grammaticalization processes.
Not surprisingly, grammaticalization is also responsible for diachronic
change in sign languages. Drawing data from a fair number of sign
languages, we show that grammaticalization in visual-gestural
languages – as far as the development from lexical to grammatical
element is concerned – follows the same developmental pathways as
in spoken languages. That is, the proposed pathways are modalityindependent.
Besides these intriguing parallels, however, sign
languages have the possibility of developing grammatical markers
from manual and non-manual co-speech gestures. We will discuss
various instances of grammaticalized gestures and we will also briefly
address the issue of the modality-specificity of this phenomenon.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:Potsdam/oai:kobv.de-opus-ubp:1088 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Pfau, Roland, Steinbach, Markus |
| Publisher | Universität Potsdam, Extern. Extern |
| Source Sets | Potsdam University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | http://opus.kobv.de/ubp/doku/urheberrecht.php |
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