Phrase Structure of Brazilian Sign Language - Ronice.cce.prof.ufsc.br

Braze, 1997; Fischer, 1975; Padden, 1990; Liddell 1980; Aarons, 1994; Lillo-Martin,<br />
1986). The conclusions of these studies of ASL include the following topics:<br />
• SVO is the underlying word order in ASL;<br />
• SOV order seems to follow from object shift because of the presence of handling<br />
verbs (Chen, 1998), aspectual verbs (Matsuoka, 1997; Braze, 1997), and<br />
agreement (Fischer, 1975); there are also special spatial-plain verbs with<br />
‘clitics’ and the possibility of analyzing a single case of SOV as consisting of<br />
three sentences instead of one (Padden, 1990);<br />
• OSV order follows from topicalization (Fischer 1975; Liddell 1980, Aarons,<br />
1994); object shift because of the presence of handling verbs (Chen, 1998) and<br />
aspectual verbs (Matsuoka, 1997; Braze, 1997);<br />
• (S)V(O) order follows from possible null arguments, because ASL is a pro-drop<br />
language (Lillo-Martin, 1986) 3 .<br />
I will consider some of these phenomena, since LSB shows OSV and<br />
SOV word orders besides SVO word order. The following facts give support to<br />
assume that SVO word order is the underlying order in LSB:<br />
(i) All SVO sentences are grammatical;<br />
(1) a) ______________eg<br />
JOHNa aWATCHb bTV (SVO)<br />
John watches TV.<br />
b) JOHN LIKE SOCCER (SVO)<br />
John likes soccer.<br />
Sentences like (1) are very natural in LSB and examples using this<br />
order are always considered grammatical.<br />
The (a) example from (1) has agreement signed on the verb. Also, this<br />
example has in common the special non-manual marker that is associated with the<br />
subject and object of the sentence. We see body shift and eyegaze toward the object<br />
from the subject. Eyegaze is marked in the glosses by the line over the sentence. It is<br />
important to clarify that it is possible to have other non-manual markers associated<br />
with each sentence. For example, head nod can be simultaneously associated with<br />
this example sentence. However, these other non-manuals are not obligatory. For our<br />
purpose, we are considering only eyegaze and body shift with non-plain verbs.<br />
This special non-manual marker that can combine eyegaze and body<br />
shift was first described by Bahan (1996) for ASL agreement non-manual markers.<br />
He observed that this non-manual marker cooccurs with the whole sentence when<br />
agreement is signed, while it is optional with sentences where no agreement is<br />
signed. It is interesting to analyze this special non-manual marker because it seems<br />
to behave similarly in LSB being associated with the asymmetry between plain and<br />
non-plain verbs discussed latter. Agreement together with the non-manual marker<br />
seems to be important for the occurrence of changes in the basic structure. It seems<br />
to have something to do with the information in the verb that licenses different<br />
3 Lillo-Martin (1986, 1991) shows that ASL is a pro-drop language and allows null subjects as well as<br />
null objects. In LSB, we observe the same distribution (Quadros, 1995).<br />
1