Verb Agreement In Chinese Sign Language

Like verb agreement in spoken languages,verb agreement in signed languages is a grammatical system,since it involves systematic encoding of syntactic and thematic roles. Inflectional morphology categorized as "agreement" in signed languages is of the type in which the sign of an agreement verb is adjusted to move from,to,or between points in the signing space which have been established in the discourse as representing particular locations,arguments,etc.In signed languages it is confirmed that a property of one or more words/arguments requires modification of the path/location of a corresponding verb if that verb is a member of agreement verbs.Since there is less constraint on the exact form that modification will take in that a specific referent can be located anywhere in the signing space,a verb which agrees with that referent can be modified in its location/path to begin or end anywhere that referent is located.Verb agreement is one of the most investigated phenomena in both modalities. Unfortunately,there have been few descriptions of verb agreement in Chinese Sign Language(CSL) either in Chinese or English literature.This thesis aims at classifying CSL verbs,describing the agreement verb in CSL,and further making a comparison between verb agreement in CSL and that in spoken languages.The analysis of the class of verbs inflecting for agreement in CSL is based on the Jackendoff's framework(1987, 1990),revealing the similarities as well as differences between the agreement system of signed and spoken languages.It presents that agreement is a structural relation in languages of both modalities,regardless of its strong thematic favour in CSL.The differences are attributed to the nature of the agreeing element.In spoken languages it is the verbal element(verb or auxiliary) that carries agreement morphology;while in CSL it is the directional morpheme(a bound preposition-like element) that encodes motion along a Source-Goal path that contributes to it.These findings may have some significant theoretical implications,since they challenge a strong version of the UG grammar which argues that modality plays an important role in determining crucial differences in the linguistic structure of signed and spoken languages.The whole thesis is composed of five parts.Chapter One provides a brief introduction of the background,purpose and significance of writing the thesis.Chapter Two mainly presents a literature review of the previous studies and developments on verb agreement in a variety of sign languages.It reviews the definition of verb agreement in both spoken and signed languages as well.Chapter Three describes CSL verb classifications and attempts to propose the specific properties of verb agreement in CSL.It lays great emphasis on agreement verbs,since the morphological structure of this verb class is the key to capturing the challenges issued by CSL to linguistic theories.Chapter Four makes a thematic structure analysis of verb agreement under the framework of Jackendoff(1987, 1990),suggesting that the seemingly distinct properties of CSL verb agreement can be accounted for by the same theoretical mechanisms as spoken languages.Chapter Five is a conclusion,which draws a summary of the major findings in this study,followed by its implications.Finally,some suggestions are presented for future research.