UMASS LINGUISTICS, NOVEMBER 12, 2004

Reflexes of Focus in American Sign Language 
Carol Neidle, Boston University

This presentation will begin with a brief overview of our syntactic
research on American Sign Language, including mention of available
annotated data sets (including high-quality video files with multiple
synchronized views of the native signers) and collaboration with computer
scientists interested in the problem of sign language recognition.  Further
information about the research to be discussed, supported in part by grants
from the National Science Foundation, is available from
http://www.bu.edu/asllrp/.

Like other signed languages, ASL makes critical use of non-manual markings
(gestures of the face and upper body) to express syntactic information.
Quite a few different constructions, including 'if' and 'when' clauses,
focused NPs, and 'relative clauses' (really correlatives), are
characterized by very similar non-manual markings. Not coincidentally, all
of these phrases normally occur in a sentence-initial position and share
some interesting semantic and syntactic commonalities. It is argued here
that this position and grammatical marking are associated with Focus. The
proposed analysis further provides an explanation (in terms of Rizzi's
Relativized Minimality) for previously puzzling semantic and syntactic
differences between wh-questions in which the wh-phrase does or does not
undergo movement to the right periphery of the clause.

Considerations of focus also provide the key to understanding the apparent
optionality of the non-manual realization of subject agreement. We argue
that this non-manual marking, which suffices to license null subjects, in
fact functions to mark focus. Thus, for example, the VP may or may not bear
this focus marking -- which, when present, includes an overt non-manual
expression of subject agreement. Thus, two puzzling cases of apparent
optionality in the syntax of ASL are considered. In both cases, it is
argued that focus is the relevant factor differentiating the variants.