Abstract

Sign languages are sometimes claimed to lack argument marking, yet they exhibit many devices to track and disambiguate referents. In this paper, I will argue that there are devices found across sign languages that demonstrate how object marking is a prevalent property and that these devices show clear parallels to differential object marking (DOM) as described for spoken languages. This includes animacy/prominence effects on word order and verbal modification, as well as dedicated object markers used exclusively with [+human] objects. Thus, I propose that DOM phenomena need to be taken into account in any future research on sign language structure, but also that sign languages should be accounted for in typological work on DOM.

Highlights

  • Differential object marking (DOM) has been a well-known linguistic phenomenon for ­decades (Bossong 1985)

  • This paper aims to show how prominence, or animacy, is important for the organization of linguistic structure across sign languages, as it has been shown to be for spoken languages (e.g., Dahl & Fraurud 1996), and to argue for the existence of differential marking phenomena among sign languages, too

  • Directionality concerns flagging on verbs rather than the arguments, which, with regard to differential marking patterns, has been found among spoken languages too – that is, properties of objects may affect which marking the associated verb takes. This is related to DOM and sometimes referred to as differential object indexing (DOI) (Iemmolo 2011)

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Summary

Introduction

Differential object marking (DOM) has been a well-known linguistic phenomenon for ­decades (Bossong 1985). Based on corpus data from British Sign Language, it was shown that object indication is more common than subject indication and that directionality that indicates the object (or, rather, patient) appears to be preferred with 1st and 2nd person rather than 3rd person (Cormier, Fenlon & Schembri 2015; Fenlon, Schembri & Cormier 2018; Schembri, Cormier & Fenlon 2018) This points to prominence of arguments affecting the patterns of marking. Directionality concerns flagging on verbs rather than the arguments, which, with regard to differential marking patterns, has been found among spoken languages too – that is, properties of objects may affect which marking the associated verb takes This is related to DOM and sometimes referred to as differential object indexing (DOI) (Iemmolo 2011). DOM and DOI share similarities and are often discussed as part of a similar phenomenon, it has been argued that there are diachronic and functional differences between them (cf. Witzlack-Makarevich & Seržant 2018)

Auxiliary verbs and argument markers
DOM in Swedish Sign Language
Conclusion
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