Forging a morphological system out of two dimensions: Agentivity and number

• Published in: Open Linguistics Vol. 1; no. 1; pp. 596 - 613
• Main Authors: Horton, L., Goldin-Meadow, S., Coppola, M., Senghas, A., Brentari, D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany De Gruyter Open 01.12.2015; De Gruyter
• Subjects: American Sign Language; Gesture; Homesign; Italian Sign Language; Language emergence; Morphology; Movement Axis; Nicaraguan Sign Language; Sign language; Homesign; Sign language; Nicaraguan Sign Language; American Sign Language; Morphology; Gesture; Language emergence; Movement Axis; Italian Sign Language

Languages have diverse strategies for marking agentivity and number. These strategies are negotiated to create combinatorial systems. We consider the emergence of these strategies by studying features of movement in a young sign language in Nicaragua (NSL). We compare two age cohorts of Nicaraguan s...