Verb agreement in Brazilian Sign Language: morphophonology, syntax & semantics

Detalhes bibliográficos
Ano de defesa: 2018
Autor(a) principal: Guilherme Lourenco de Souza
Orientador(a): Não Informado pela instituição
Banca de defesa: Não Informado pela instituição
Tipo de documento: Tese
Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
Idioma: por
Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
UFMG
Programa de Pós-Graduação: Não Informado pela instituição
Departamento: Não Informado pela instituição
País: Não Informado pela instituição
Palavras-chave em Português:
Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/LETR-B7NEZ5
Resumo: Building on the assumption that signed languages are both similar and different from spoken languages (universal principles vs. modality effects), this dissertation discusses verb agreement in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras). Agreement in sign languages has been described as a change in orientation and direction of movement of the verb. However, I propose that agreement in Libras, and possibly in all sign languages, is not marked by the movement of the verb. Instead, the matching of location between the verb and its argument(s) is the sole agreement marker a process I will call co-localization. The different types of path movement, on the other hand, are related to the event properties of the predicate, such as marking of telicity, for example (Event Visibility Hypothesis). Additionally, assuming a Minimalist framework within Generative Syntax, I will claim that the different agreement patterns found in Libras can be derived by assuming a single underlying syntactic structure and by the basic syntactic operations MERGE and AGREE. Finally, I will argue that there is a layering of visual information within the verb internal structure, in such a way that different morphological operations will target specific nodes of the phonological specification of the verb.