The lecture will be given at University College London, in the Common Room on the ground floor of the Institute for Advanced Studies, which is in the South Wing of the building. Please see this map for more information.
Simultaneous interpretation in BSL will provided.
Please note that all ordinary meetings commence at 4:15pm. Members are welcome to come for tea at 3:45 pm.
Cross-modal typology aims to provide an understanding of universals and linguistic variation that cuts across spoken and signed languages, uncovering both modality-specific and cross-modal patterns (Zeshan & Palfreyman, 2017). In this presentation, I share findings from the CrossMoGram project, a cross-modal study of the grammaticalisation of aspect markers in 30 sign languages and 50 Creole languages. CrossMoGram focuses on aspect markers due to their prominence in the literature for these language types, and applies grammaticalisation parameters developed by the Mainz Grammaticalisation Project (Bisang & Malchukov, 2020).
Sign languages have rich simultaneous morphology but are said to feature few examples of late-stage grammaticalisation such as sequential affixes (Aronoff, Meir & Sandler 2005; Pfau & Steinbach 2006), a claim that can now be tested quantitatively using our CrossMoGram database. I also discuss the ways in which grammaticalisation pathways for signed languages may diverge from spoken languages, for example in terms of ambient gestures that become part of sign language grammar. By considering these diachronic processes in light of the world’s spoken languages, it then becomes possible to begin drawing conclusions about how modality impacts language change.
