A Grammar of Catalan Sign Language (LSC)

In Catalan Sign Language, many person agreement predicates can be characterized as ditransitive predicates expressing some notion of actual or metaphorical transfer. In these predicates, subject agreement encodes the agent/source argument and object agreement encodes the goal/recipient argument. In the example below, the verb give is articulated through a path movement that goes from the location of the subject (the agent argument) to the location of the indirect object (the recipient/goal argument).

 

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book raquel ix₃ ix_{1 1}give₃.                                                                                     

‘I gave the book to Raquel.’                                                                                      

 

The internal theme argument (the direct object book) is not encoded through agreement morphology on the verb, but through the shape of the hand, which is determined by the theme argument (sometimes identified as handling classifier [MORPHOLOGY 5.1.3]). This change in the handshape can be considered as a sort of agreement as well, or also as an instance of noun incorporation into the verb. It is not compulsory.

          Some LSC transitive verbs also function as person agreement verbs. In this case, the second agreement marker agrees with the internal argument realized as a direct object.

          company director ₁summon₃.        

          ‘The director of the company summoned me.’

 

          Some plain verbs that are not body-anchored can show agreement with their arguments [MORPHOLOGY 3.1.1, LEXICON 3.2] by means of the location in signing space. Intransitive plain verbs can show agreement with the subject, as shown in example (a) below, and transitive plain verbs can show agreement with the object, as shown in example (b) below.

 

a)       please ix_{2 2}sit.

   ‘Please, sit down.’                                                 

(based on Ribera, 2015: 232)

 

b)      bill_pl-a paper accumulate_pl-a pay_pl-a must.

            ‘Bills that are accumulated must be paid.’           

(based on Ribera, 2015: 231)

 

Plain verbs that cannot carry inflection (usually body-anchored plain verbs) can coappear with an auxiliary sign that encodes subject and object marking.

 

 
          ix₃ love ₃aux₁.

          ‘He loves me.’

 

This auxiliary sign can also accompany inflected agreement verbs with an emphatic interpretation, as shown in the example below.

 
          ix_{1 1}send_letter_{3 1}aux₃.

          ‘I did send the letter to him!’

 

Moreover, the agreement auxiliary can appear with an inflected backwards agreement verb [LEXICON 3.2.2]. Contrary to backwards agreement verbs, the path of the auxiliary starts in the location of the subject locus and moves towards the location of the object.

 

 

              _3aaux_{3b 3b}understand_3a not.

           ‘She doesn’t understand him.’                                                                                   

 

On the other hand, spatial predicates show manual agreement by means of path movement (motion verbs) or localization at a point (locative verbs) [MORPHOLOGY 3.1]. With motion verbs, the initial and final points of the path agree with the locations of the source and goal arguments that define the movement path.

          ix₃ ix_a barcelona _amove_b berlin ix_b.

          ‘She moved from Barcelona to Berlin.’

      

Spatial locative verbs only have one location argument, and thus, realize agreement by placing the sign in the relevant location or also by orienting the hand or the fingertips towards it.

          ix₃ stay_a barcelona_a year_four.

          ‘She stayed in Barcelona for four years.’