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I saw the statement a few times that sign languages inflect in the same way that spoken languages do, but all examples I came across refer to phenomena that I would classify as word formation rather than actual inflection.

(Edit.) So my question is this: does any sign language possess a unit (hand or finger movement, facial expression, anything really) that:

  1. makes no sense if used alone,
  2. modifies the grammatical (syntactic, if you will) function of the word it is attached to,
  3. does not modify the semantics of the word it is attached to, and
  4. can be used with at least an entire group of words (see below).

My guess would be that notions such as case, number or gender could be expressed in this way. Or maybe some sign language requires some kind of agreement between e.g. an adjective and a noun?

Examples of what I'm not interested in: 1. ASL for 'person' used after a verb (because it makes sense if used alone); 2. and 3. exaggerating the ASL sign for 'big' to obtain 'huge' (because it's the semantics that is modified, not the grammatical function); 4. signing slow slower in ASL to denote 'very slow' (because it's limited to this one word).

kamil-s
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    Kamil, this is an interesting question. I wonder, though, if we can tell the difference between an inflection and an analytic construction in a gestural language? – Mark Beadles Mar 24 '12 at 01:28
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    At the risk of getting shot down by all the clever linguists around here - but isn't the difference between an inflection and a stand-alone word just one of spelling; and therefore unique to written language (as opposed to spoken or signed language)? So, for example, if English present participles were always written with the "-ing" broken off, (*"I am read ing the newspaper") then "ing" would be a particle, rather than an inflective suffix; but the spoken language would be identical. –  Mar 24 '12 at 04:06
  • @MarkBeadles This is just what I thought when I first saw the statement, and what brought me eventually to post this question :) In fact, yes, we can. For example, in ASL one may intensify an adjective by exaggerating its sign: sign slow slower or make a bigger movement in happy to change them to 'very slow' and 'very happy'. As it all happens within one sign, I would say it is a synthetic construction. – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 07:43
  • @DavidWallace Not exactly. -ing is not accented separately and cannot stand alone, so it has to be classified as a suffix, not a particle. For example English has both an inflective and an analytic way to express possession: the Saxon Genitive and of. (The discussion about the status of clitic is beyond the scope of a comment.) – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 07:51
  • @KamilS. I don't buy into your criteria for being a particle. Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian has a particle "li" which turns a sentence into a question, (and has one or two other uses). "li" is never accented, and it can't stand alone. But it's absolutely not an affix of any kind; it's always written as a separate word. –  Mar 24 '12 at 10:05
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    @david-wallace, "is the difference between an inflection and a stand-alone word just one of spelling; and therefore unique to written language (as opposed to spoken or signed language)" would make an excellent question, please ask it! – kaleissin Mar 24 '12 at 10:58
  • @DavidWallace I don't have a Srb/Cr/Bosn grammar at hand but from what I can see e.g. in http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8Cestice_(vrsta_rije%C4%8Di)#Upitne_.C4.8Destice, it is not in any way confined to the position immediately after a verb, so yes, it can stand alone. In fact, I'd only expect that because that's just how it used to be used in Polish while it was still used. Anyway, if it couldn't stand alone, what would make you believe it's a particle? Because that's how it's spelt? What are your criteria? – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 11:17
  • Sorry, by "stand alone" do you mean in a sentence all by itself? If so, the Sr/Cr/Bo "li" is not a candidate - "li" by itself is not a grammatical sentence. It also has to be in a very particular position in a sentence. But is "particle" the wrong word here? –  Mar 24 '12 at 11:46
  • @DavidWallace By stand-alone I mean 'not only directly after the stem (and possibly other suffixes), and possibly before other suffixes'. li can be used e.g. after gdje 'where' and a few words before the verb, so the term particle is just fine by me. All I'm saying is this example is irrelevant for my question. By the way, if you want a really unclear case of the suffix/particle distinction, I suggest you check Polish personal suffixes for 1 and 2 person or by 'conditional'. – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 12:01
  • @KamilS. I can't think of a grammatical sentence containing "gdje li". But you're right, I've wandered off on a bit of a tangent. Perhaps I'll take kaleissin's advice and post my own question about this. Thanks for humouring me with this line of inquiry. –  Mar 24 '12 at 12:21
  • Well I know that spelling!=language, @kamil-s, and you know that spelling!=language, but people that don't have a degree in linguistics don't necessarily know that! It would be good if we can get the question asked and answered early on so we can point to the best answer whenever it pops up again, and it will. In fact, your reply to me has a perfectly good answer but it shouldn't just be a comment! – kaleissin Mar 24 '12 at 12:24
  • Would a rapid, non-tense repetition of the sign for a verb count as inflection? – Otavio Macedo Mar 24 '12 at 12:25
  • @DavidWallace Gdje li se samo skrila? is an example from the Croatian Wikipedia. I wouldn't know myself. Sure, post the question if it's not clear for you. I'll expand on the Polish examples I mentioned above :) – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 12:35
  • @kaleissin You're right, of course. I realized that too late and deleted the comment, upon which the page refreshed and I saw your reply. Sorry for the confusion. Any way to undelete it? – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 12:36
  • @OtavioMacedo I don't know what non-tense means in this context but anyway, no, not really. Full reduplication is an analytic method, I would say. – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 12:38
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    Ursala Bellugi-Klima demonstrated ASL derivational morphology decades ago. Inflection may be a different matter, however, since the distinction between derivation and inflection is based on concepts that may not be have valid analogs in SL. – jlawler Mar 24 '12 at 16:05
  • @jlawler I'm sorry, I don't understand. I always hear spoken and signed languages are equally rich and the differences are merely medium-related. Can you give an example of a concept expressed by inflection in spoken languages, that cannot have an analogue in signed languages? – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 16:48
  • Consider the distinction between an inflectional affix (like the Latin 1SgPres verb suffix -ō, for example), a clitic like the Indonesian 1Sg -(a)ku-, and a syntactic particle like English 1Sg Obj me or 1Sg Aux am. One might want to restrict the term "inflection" to only the first category; otherwise you get thousands of syntactic constructions like usedta hafta or not gonna wanna being categorized as separate inflections. – jlawler Mar 24 '12 at 17:05
  • So, if one wiggles the fingers just so while performing the sign for "turn", accompanied by a look of increasing frustration, which gets interpreted as attempting to turn something repeatedly and continuing to fail, is that inflection? Or intonation? Or phatic communication? How does one decide how to move the entire metaphor matrix of spoken linguistics -- based on coded sound units in linear sequence, and a coupled production/perception OS -- over to a medium with multiple channels of simultaneous perception, all much broader-band than speech? The answer is Variously. – jlawler Mar 24 '12 at 17:11
  • @jlawler Thanks for the explanation, now I understand what you meant. I don't know how to classify the wiggling but, in accordance with what you said in the first post, inflection is one thing that it isn't. I'll try to rephrase my question to make it clearer. – kamil-s Mar 24 '12 at 18:07
  • I've just been told by a native speaker that "gdje li se samo skrila?" is a slightly archaic usage, not exactly ungrammatical, but not likely to be used today. Interesting that you (@KamilS) found it in the Croatian wikipedia. "Gdje se samo skrila?" is "better" (whatever that means). "Li" is not needed as a question marker, because "Gdje" (or "gde" in some dialects) makes it a question. –  Mar 25 '12 at 02:54
  • @DavidWallace It's under the link I posted above: http://hr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%8Cestice_(vrsta_rije%C4%8Di)#Upitne_.C4.8Destice. It can also be used after da, je and others, see e.g. Katičić R., Sintaksa hrvatskoga književnog jezika, Zagreb 2002: 378f. For me it's a particle all right, and at any rate, it's not really relevant to the main question, is it? – kamil-s Mar 25 '12 at 08:05

2 Answers2

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ASL inflects verbs for aspect, by modifying the motion component of the sign. For most verbs simple aspect is a single movement; this changes to a continuous circling motion for progressive aspect. There are a zillion others.

It can't be even produced on its own, let alone make sense; it can be used with any noun; modifies the morphological function of the word by changing the aspect part of a {verb+aspect} bimorphemic word; does not modify the semantics of the verb part.

Testing it against the criteria in jlawler's link, above: 1. It does not change the part of speech; it stays a verb 3. It affects every verb productively 2& 4. That circular motion isolated by itself is an exact equivalent to the English -ing morpheme, so it relates to the same semantics outside the word, and plays the same role in the tense/aspect system as the English counterpart. 5. doesn't apply as all this stuff happens simultaneously.

Excellent descriptions are given in:

Klima, Edward S., and Ursula Bellugi. 1979. Signs of language. Cambridge,MA: Harvard University Press.

Valli, Clayton and Ceil Lucas. 1995. Linguistics of American Sign Language: an introduction. Washington DC: Gallaudet University Press.

Joe Martin
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  • Thanks for the effort but this isn't really what I was interrsted in. If you look at my criteria again, your answer is ok with points 1 and 4 but not really with 2 and 3. – kamil-s Mar 26 '12 at 19:51
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    This has been the standard analysis of sign morphology for thirty years, so if you have objections to it you'll have to be more specific. Morphological and syntactic functions are not the same things, for one. This is non-linear phonology so you will not find stems and affixes, but internal inflection with paradigms on the movement tier while the others remain unchanged;the syllable peak alternates on the order of sing-sang-sung. Multiple morphemes expressed simultaneously is the norm in visual languages, and the movement component of the sign is a separate morpheme added to the base tier. – Joe Martin Mar 28 '12 at 06:10
  • I understand. I don't at all mind inflection being internal. I just don't see how aspect changes the grammatical meaning, and I wouldn't agree it doesn't change the semantics. I don't want to start a theoretical discussion because I've never seen one lead to any practically useful conclusions. I'll just ask: any other inflection, apart from aspect? – kamil-s Mar 28 '12 at 06:44
  • Agreement is the other standard example, but your question isn't about signed language it's about the definition of inflection. – Joe Martin Mar 28 '12 at 16:04
  • No. If I were interested in the definition of inflection, I would have asked about that. But I asked about anything in signed languages that would fulfill my criteria. I don't care what framework calls it what, or whether your idea of what inflection is is incompatible with mine, because this is merely a label, while I'm interested in actual facts. So agreement, you say? – kamil-s Mar 28 '12 at 16:53
  • How does it not satisfy 2 and 3 in a way that is not also true of the English _ing morpheme? – Joe Martin Mar 28 '12 at 20:53
  • Well, unless it requires an additional, previously missing copula? (As in do : am doing.) Then it would satisfy 2. As for 3., -ing does change the semantics, or at least surely more than e.g. Latin pulcher : pulchra, which is the kind I'm interested in. Also, I changed morphological to grammatical, you're right. – kamil-s Mar 28 '12 at 21:04
  • let us continue this discussion in chat – Joe Martin Mar 29 '12 at 00:49
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You're not the first to ask these questions. Scott Liddell (2003) argues that sign languages are basically inflectionless languages, and I must say, I find his reasoning persuasive. Recently, for example, Corbett (2006) has argued that so called 'agreement verbs' in sign languages don't actually represent examples of agreement, and this is one of the major types of sign modification proposed to be an example of inflection.

Adam Schembri
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