Project Details
Projekt
Doubling in signed child language in A-bar variable positions (DISCAVA)
Subject Area
General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
Term
since 2025
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568889952
Constituent questions and relative clauses are the two most paradigmatic cases of A-bar variable binding. While both cases often involve a so-called "filler-gap dependency" structure where the dependent position contains no articulated maerial, there are also cases where dependent positions are not gaps, but contain material such as pronouns or even a duplicate copy of the filler material. While such doubling can occur in adult spoken languages, it is more frequent in sign languages and also in child spoken language. For all cases of doubling, the copy theory of dependency formation has been invoked as a uniform account. But the copy theoretic account struggles to explain why the distribution of doubling differs considerably between the two most frequent cases: doubling in sign languages has been primarily described in matrix questions and only with monomorphemic elements. Doubling in spoken child language is primarily found with relative clauses and also occurs with complex phrases. An alternative non-uniform hypothesis for doubling assumes the copy articulation for child language. For sign languages, a process of scope marking different from copying is assumed, which was originally proposed for Japanese Sign Language. The non-uniform hypothesis explains the high frequency of wh-doubling in sign languages by assuming that parallel articulation is more likely to happen in the visual modality than the spoken one, while a lack of articulation suppression can be the reason for doubling in child language. The project goal is to compare the uniformity and the non-uniformity hypothesis on the basis of data from adult and child data from German sign language (DGS). The two hypotheses make different predictions especially for the frequency of doubling in questions vs. relative clauses by children. To test these empirical predictions, we consider first the linguistic analysis of DGS constituent questions and relative clauses in the light of the different hypothesis, and also need to investigate further how DGS questions and relative clauses are produced in informal settings. Then we will carry out DGS language production experiments with both adults and children, specifically, targeted elicitation studies on questions and on relative clauses in DGS. From the results of these studies, we will be able to determine whether the predictions of the uniformity or the non-uniformity hypothesis are borne out. Furthermore, we will gain valuable insights in the factors affecting the variability of constituent question and relative clause production by child and adult DGS signers and we will contribute to answering the question why doubling is frequently found in sign languages.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
