A unified explanation of verb agreement in Quebec Sign Language (LSQ).

Titre	A unified explanation of verb agreement in Quebec Sign Language (LSQ).
Type de publication	Communication par affiche
Auteurs	Parisot, A-M, Voghel, A, et Gagnon, L

Membre(s):

Parisot, Anne-Marie

Gagnon, Laurence

Voghel, Amélie

Fichier PDF:

Parisot, Voghel et Gagnon (2025) TISLR.pdf

Résumé :

Most studies on verb agreement in sign languages distinguish between verbs whose form is either non-

modifiable for agreement (plain verbs) or modifiable for i) the locus of the referent (agreeing or

indicative verbs, depending on whether the locus is considered to be determined by morphosyntactic or

gestural considerations) and ii) the location or movement characteristics of the verb (spatial verbs) (cf.

among others, Padden, 1983; Liddell, 2000; Rathmann & Mathur, 2002; Zeshan, 2000;

Johnston & Schembri, 2007; Lillo-Martin & Meier, 2011; Schembri et al., 2018). One of

the important disparities identified regarding verb agreement pertains to the limited number of verbs

involved in the agreement process in sign languages compared to what is found in spoken languages

(Rathmann & Mathur, 2011). In this talk, we argue that it is more economical and predictive to consider

a classification of Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) verbs based on their phonological form, rather

than on morphological features related to agreement controllers. This categorization aims to describe

and explain the manifestations of agreement in all verb categories: agreeing verbs, spatial

verbs, and plain verbs (verbs for which the absence of agreement is postulated). Our proposal adopts a

discourse, or pragmatic, perspective on agreement, as advocated by Barlow (1992), wherein agreement

involves the alignment of discourse referents rather than mere syntactic feature matching.

To achieve this objective, we propose an empirical analysis of LSQ verbs in various contexts,

drawing from: 1) a set of 533 verbs extracted from 469 elicited sentences produced by three native LSQ

signers (Bouchard et al., 1999; Parisot, 2003), 2) a set of 871 verbs extracted from elicited narratives

produced by four other native LSQ signers (Voghel, 2016), and 3) verbs extracted from a corpus of public

speeches. These sources are complemented by judgments elicited from deaf individuals. The verbs

examined in these datasets were coded using the software ELAN (Sloetjes & Wittenburg, 2008) based on

their features of form and meaning (i.e., modifiable/anchored place of articulation, form of movement,

form of hand configuration, presence of a classifier and type of classifier), the presence and nature of

agreement markers (manual/non-manual), and the number and type of arguments (agent, patient,

theme, locative).

Firstly, we will show how the morphological categories of verbs proposed in the literature can be

reanalyzed, for LSQ verbs at least, into three phonological categories: i) verbs whose phonological form

can vary according to more than one place of articulation or orientation, ii) verbs with only

one such phonological unit that can vary, and iii) verbs for which no such phonological unit can vary. We

will illustrate how this proposed phonological classification lets us infer the appropriate type of

agreement marking for LSQ verbs, including verbs described as unmodifiable for agreement (plain verbs).

More specifically, we will argue that the notion of spatial trace is central to verbal agreement in LSQ and

that, regardless of their category, verbal forms allow for a unified use of the signing/syntactic space to

mark the relationship between arguments.Secondly, we will illustrate how the different manual (modification of the verb structure, postverbal

pronouns) and non-manual agreement markers (gaze direction

and torso position) are distributed among this verbal categorization. For instance, we

will demonstrate how verbs with a phonological form that constrains agreement (plain verbs) use

manual (clitic postverbal pronoun) and non-manual markers as an extension of their verb

form. These manual or nonmanual markers allow anchored verbs to use the spatial traces left by

the previous location of a noun to assign thematic roles.

Thirdly, we will present two empirical arguments that support the proposal of a unified model of

agreement based on the phonological form of verbs. The first argument concerns plain verbs with

adaptable forms, which demonstrates that several verbs initially anchored in their citation form

become unanchored in context when there is a need to denote agreement between two animate

arguments. The second argument concerns the evolution of neologisms towards phonological

simplification. Research has indicated that newly coined signs tend to evolve towards less complex

phonological forms (Gagnon and Parisot, 2023), which can be seen in the evolution of compound signs

(Pfau, 2016). This modification appears to yield greater complexity from a production standpoint,

involving the addition of places of articulation and movement. However, from a conceptual

perspective, it yields simplification by maintaining a systematic use of spatial traces in context.

Références :

Barlow, M. (1992). A Situated Theory of Agreement (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315857343
Bouchard, D., Dubuisson, C., Lelièvre, L. & Poulin, C. (1999). Les facteurs articulatoires qui déterminent l’ordre en langue des signes québécoise (LSQ). Actes de l’Association canadienne de linguistique, 63-74.
Gagnon, L. & Parisot, A.-M. (2023). The relationship between place of articulation and semantic features in a corpus of astronomical neologisms in Quebec Sign Language. FEAST, 5, 49-62. https://doi.org/10.31009/FEAST.i5.05
Johnston, T. & Schembri, A. (2007). Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Liddell, S. K. (2000). Indicating verbs and pronouns: Pointing away from agreement. In K. Emmorey & H. L. Lane (Eds.), The signs of language revisited: An anthology to honour Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima (pp. 303–20). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Lillo-Martin, D. & Meier, R. (2011). On the Linguistic Status of ‘Agreement’ in Sign Languages. Theoretical Linguistics, 37, 95-141.
Padden, C. (1983). Interaction of morphology and syntax in ASL [Doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego).
Parisot, A. M. (2003). Accord et clitisation: l'accord des verbes à forme rigide en langue des signes québécoise [Doctoral dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal].
Pfau, R. (2016). Morphology. In A. Baker, B. van den Bogaerde, R. Pfau & T. Schermer (eds.), The linguistics of sign languages: An introduction (p. 197-228). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://benjamins.com/catalog/z.199.05bak
Rathmann, C. & Mathur, G. (2002). Is Verb Agreement the Same Cross-modally? In: R. Meier, K. Cormier, D.
Quinto-Pozos (eds.), Modality and Structure in Signed and Spoken Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 370-404.
Rathmann, C. & Mathur, G. (2011). A featural approach to verb agreement in signed languages. Theoretical Linguistics, 37, no. 3-4, 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1515/thli.2011.015
Schembri, A., Cormier, K. & Fenlon, J. (2018). Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 3(1), 89, 1-40. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.468
Sloetjes, H., & Wittenburg, P. (2008). Annotation by category - ELAN and ISO DCR. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008).
Voghel, A. (2016). Le système des verbes à classificateur de la langue des signes québécoise [Doctoral dissertation, Université du Québec à Montréal]. http://archipel.uqam.ca/id/eprint/9404
Zeshan, U. (2000). Sign Language in Indopakistan: A Description of a Signed Language. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

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A unified explanation of verb agreement in Quebec Sign Language (LSQ).