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Quantification in American Sign Language

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Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II

Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 97))

Abstract

After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about American Sign Language, this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in chapter “The Quantifier Questionnaire”. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in American Sign Language, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Unless cited otherwise, data are from the authors’ own fieldwork with signers of ASL.

  2. 2.

    Following the conventions of the literature, signs are glossed using the closest English equivalent in small capitals font (picture). If necessary for adequate representation of a single sign’s meaning, a sequence of hyphenated English words may be used (take-picture). Throughout the text, we include figures of certain key signs. Video productions of these and other signs included in the data and discussion here should be largely accessible at Spread the Sign (www.spreadthesign.com), an online dictionary also used by Kimmelman (this volume).

  3. 3.

    The terminology ‘C-handshape’ and ‘B-handshape’ refer to the handshapes of the ASL fingerspelling system, a language contact or language borrowing phenomenon used to represent English words in ASL signing. The handshapes of this system have been adopted as a means of conventionally referring to the handshapes of signs (though they are only a subset of possible sign handshapes).

  4. 4.

    Subscripts are used to transcribe morphological marking. The subscripted [aspect:continuative] in (2a), for example, indicates that the verb eat is inflected with the morphological marking of continuative aspect, which involves reduplication of the movement of the verb in combination with a transitional circular movement. The bracketed material ([I]) in the translation indicates material that is not overtly present in the ASL data but is necessary to provide a grammatical translation in English.

  5. 5.

    The cl:c “loaf”,[reduplication:horizontal, 3x] transcription of the classifier represents that a classifier (cl) using the C-handshape (:c) was used to represent a loaf of bread and was reduplicated horizontally across space three times.

  6. 6.

    The sign glossed here as election is a result nominal derived via reduplication from the verbal form vote-for. For a recent analysis of this nominalization process, see Abner (To appear).

  7. 7.

    Data adapted from cited sources has been changed only to ensure consistency of transcription with the conventions adopted here.

  8. 8.

    As an anonymous reviewer points out, it is also possible to co-locate three in the referential space associated with i craig. Whether or not this co-location is consistent or obligatory is currently unclear.

  9. 9.

    The binding restriction in (14b) may also suggest that the negatively quantified no o politics person is not semantically equivalent to sentential negation of an existentially quantified noun, as argued for in other languages.

  10. 10.

    This process is likely related to ‘covert’ question formation where the wh-question non-manual marker alone serves to form a wh-question in the absence of an overt wh-word (Lillo-Martin and Fischer 1992; Petronio and Lillo-Martin 1997).

  11. 11.

    Some signers will use a calque-like process to meta-linguistically distinguish each/every interpretations, repeating the movement of each so that it matches the multi-syllabicity of English every.

  12. 12.

    The sign glossed here as cl:b small-book is a bent B-handshape indicating the (thin) thickness of a book.

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Acknowledgements

We are extremely indebted to all of the Deaf consultants who have participated in the fieldwork sessions that inform this chapter, especially to Sandra Wood, who provided many insightful discussions of the quantifier data. We also thank Edward Keenan, Denis Paperno, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable feedback and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Linguistics Department, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA

    Natasha Abner

  2. Linguistics Program and Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

    Ronnie B. Wilbur

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  1. Natasha Abner
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  2. Ronnie B. Wilbur
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Correspondence to Natasha Abner .

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  1. LORIA (UMR 7503), CNRS, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France

    Denis Paperno

  2. Dept. of Linguistics 3125 Campbell Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Edward L. Keenan

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Abner, N., Wilbur, R.B. (2017). Quantification in American Sign Language. In: Paperno, D., Keenan, E. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_2

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