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The communicative importance of agent-backgrounding: Evidence from homesign and Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Rissman, Lilia; Horton, Laura; Flaherty, Molly; Senghas, Ann; Coppola, Marie; Brentari, Diane; Goldin-Meadow, Susan.
Afiliação
  • Rissman L; Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin - Madison, 1202 W. Johnson St., Madison, WI 53706, United States of America. Electronic address: lrissman@wisc.edu.
  • Horton L; Department of Linguistics, University of Texas at Austin, 305 E. 23rd Street, Austin, TX 78712, United States of America. Electronic address: laurahorton@utexas.edu.
  • Flaherty M; Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, PA 19081, United States of America. Electronic address: mflaher1@swarthmore.edu.
  • Senghas A; Department of Psychology, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027, United States of America. Electronic address: asenghas@barnard.edu.
  • Coppola M; Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, 406 Babbidge Road, Unit 1020, Storrs, CT 06269, United States of America; Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1145, Storrs, CT 06269, United States of America. Electronic address: marie.coppola
  • Brentari D; Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, United States of America; Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, 1115 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, United States of America. Electronic address: dbrentari@uchicago.edu.
  • Goldin-Meadow S; Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, 5848 S. University Ave., Chicago, IL 60637, United States of America; Center for Gesture, Sign, and Language, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, United States of America. Electronic address: sgm@uchicago.edu.
Cognition ; 203: 104332, 2020 10.
Article em En | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-32559513
Some concepts are more essential for human communication than others. In this paper, we investigate whether the concept of agent-backgrounding is sufficiently important for communication that linguistic structures for encoding this concept are present in young sign languages. Agent-backgrounding constructions serve to reduce the prominence of the agent - the English passive sentence a book was knocked over is an example. Although these constructions are widely attested cross-linguistically, there is little prior research on the emergence of such devices in new languages. Here we studied how agent-backgrounding constructions emerge in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) and adult homesign systems. We found that NSL signers have innovated both lexical and morphological devices for expressing agent-backgrounding, indicating that conveying a flexible perspective on events has deep communicative value. At the same time, agent-backgrounding devices did not emerge at the same time as agentive devices. This result suggests that agent-backgrounding does not have the same core cognitive status as agency. The emergence of agent-backgrounding morphology appears to depend on receiving a linguistic system as input in which linguistic devices for expressing agency are already well-established.
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Texto completo: 1 Coleções: 01-internacional Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Língua de Sinais / Linguística Limite: Adult / Humans País/Região como assunto: America central / Nicaragua Idioma: En Revista: Cognition Ano de publicação: 2020 Tipo de documento: Article País de publicação: Holanda
Texto completo
Adicionar na Minha BVS
Imprimir
XML
PubMed Links
Buscar no Google

Texto completo: 1 Coleções: 01-internacional Base de dados: MEDLINE Assunto principal: Língua de Sinais / Linguística Limite: Adult / Humans País/Região como assunto: America central / Nicaragua Idioma: En Revista: Cognition Ano de publicação: 2020 Tipo de documento: Article País de publicação: Holanda