-
Views
-
Cite
Cite
Focus and construal in American Sign Language, The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Volume 23, Issue 1, January 2018, Page 108, https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enx039
Close - Share Icon Share
Extract
Subject and object nominals in ASL have received much attention in linguistic research in terms of position in the clause and the structural implications of “null”, or not overtly mentioned, arguments. Rankin takes an entirely different approach to their appearance in ASL clauses, grounded in Cognitive Grammar that examines focused and defocused agentive nominals (rather than strictly subject/object syntactic roles). Focus refers to the prominence an element has in a clause over other elements. Rankin gives the example (p. 13) of the sentences Scott bought the painting from my sister and My sister sold the painting to Scott, wherein the first sentence the buyer (Scott) is more prominent and thus in focus, whereas the second sentence is about what the sister did, so she is in focus. Rankin’s study is motivated by the question of whether ASL has passive “voice”, but takes a broader stance regarding how signers profile agents, which largely coincide with the subject of the sentence. This is dependent on the signer’s construal of the agent’s prominence or importance in the proposition.
