The ‘paradox’ of sign language morphology” by Adam Schembri
- V. 19, N. 2 (2020)
- Submitted: Aug 8, 2020
- Published: Sep 25, 2020
- DOI 10.25189/rabralin.v19i2.1667
Abstract
Adam Schembri discussed the concept of morphological complexity in sign languages, as well as the paradoxes that result from the analysis of these languages in the light of the views of Aronoff, Meier and Sandler (2005) and Trudgill (2011). According to the speaker, the first authors do not define such a concept, but it can be inferred from their work that they associate it with the plurimorphic composition of the sign. In this perspective, the paradox of the morphology of sign languages emerges from the fact that these languages have a mixture of characteristics typical of polysynthetic and creole languages. Alternatively, Trudgill defines the morphological complexity based on the acquisition difficulties faced by adult foreign language learners: the irregularity, the unpredictability of allomorphs, the redundancy and the morphological marking of categories. In this perspective, the paradox of sign language morphology stems from the scarcity of these properties in these languages, even though they present morphologically complex constructions involving indicating verbs and classifiers.
Full-text of the article is available for this locale: Português (Brasil).
References
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ON understanding the ‘paradox’ of sign language morphology. Conferência apresentada por Adam Schembri [s.l., s.n], 2020. 1 vídeo (1h 30min 05s). Publicada pelo canal da Associação Brasileira de Linguística. Disponível em: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqGWPAHZUKU. Acesso em: 02 ago 2020.
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