Negation In Shanghai Sign Language

Negation is an important component in studying sign language. According to the corpus of sign language and the language survey on Shanghai deafs, the article comprehensively describes and analyzes the negative expressions in Shanghai sign language. First, the negative words of Shanghai sign language can be divided into two categories:basic negative words and other negative words. Basic negative words are "bu" and "meiyou":"bu" can be combined with adjectives and verbs,"meiyou" can be combined with nouns and verbs. Expressing a kind of subjective views,"bu" can only collaborat with stative verbs, dynamic verbs and perfective verbs,"meiyou" can be only followed by dynamic verbs, perfective verbs and momentary verbs, which is simply to negate the occurrence of events. Besides their inherent meaning of negation, other negative words can negate a sentence without using basic negative words. Other negative words have the following four parts:compound negative words, negative words of Handshape of NG, negative words with negative prefix and irregular negative words. Second, the application of non-manual expression of negation in Shanghai sign language include shaking head, facial expression, shrug and hands showing. Shaking head usually appears with negative words in order to negate the topics or questions, rarely serving as an independent negative sign. Facial expression has a relatively weaker effect on expressing negation. The uses of shrug and showing hands are similar with the negative word "meiyou". In the seminar, the author have summarized some special negative expressions in Shanghai sign language. The conception of "action-result" in Shanghai sign language can be negated by "bu" and "meiyou". There are also rare conditions of using antonym instead of negation. In addition, The author also discusses the double negation in sign language. At last, we compare "bu" and "meiyou" in Shanghai sign language with Chinese and other sign languages.