Abstract
Many languages across the world are known to have constructions that indicate pluractionality, entailing the existence of a multitude of events. In this paper, we introduce a pattern of pluractionality in sign language, via reduplication of verbal forms. We focus on the semantics of two pluractional markers that appear pervasively in French Sign Language (LSF): exact repetition (/‑rep/) and two‑handed alternating repetition (/‑alt/). We show that /‑rep/ and /‑alt/ fit into a larger typology of pluractionality in (spoken) language, where pluractional morphology specifies distribution over various dimensions. Additionally, however, the LSF pattern shows several novel properties. First, we observe a compositional puzzle, wherein the pluractional morphemes appear to be trivially redundant when they appear under distributive operators. Taking inspiration from work on ‘dependent indefinites’ in the nominal domain, we propose an analysis in which pluractional markers are scope‑taking predicates, that are licensed by distributive operators by taking scope over them. Second, we show that the rate of reduplication for both forms is iconically mapped to the rate of event repetition over time. We show that this iconic mapping is an at‑issue entailment that must be able to interact with logical meaning throughout the composition of a sentence. We propose an integrated model, in which pluractional morphemes incorporate an iconically defined predicate. In the context of our compositional system, this proposal makes the novel prediction of ‘scopable iconicity,’ in which the iconic meaning can be evaluated at different structural positions. BibTeX info
Highlights
Many languages across the world are known to have constructions that indicate pluractionality, entailing the existence of a multitude of events
In this paper, following insights from Henderson 2014, we argue for an analysis in which pluractional markers are scope-taking predicates, that are licensed by distributive operators by taking scope over them
We positioned the semantics of these forms within a broader linguistic context; we saw that the meanings fit into a more general typology of cross-linguistic pluractionality
Summary
Many languages across the world are known to have constructions that indicate pluractionality — that is, constructions that entail the existence of a multitude of events. Under the operators each, ‘each (one),’ and every-day, ‘every day,’ the two pluractional markers may appear innocuously, with an apparently redundant semantic effect — in particular, they need not introduce an additional layer of pluractionality under the distributive operator To date, this is the first systematic documentation of this compositional puzzle in the verbal domain; of note, though, the situation turns out to be formally identical to a puzzle regarding the licensing of ‘dependent indefinites’ in the nominal domain (Balusu 2005, Henderson 2014). Focusing on cases where gradient phonetic manipulations yield gradient semantic effects (Emmorey & Herzig 2003), we argue that LSF verbal forms include an iconic mapping that preserves information about the rate at which an event occurs. All grammaticality judgements and answers to interpretation questions were video recorded
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