LINGUIST List 9.923

Sat Jun 20 1998

Disc: American Sign Language

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Zylogy, Re: 9.890, Disc: American Sign Language

Message 1: Re: 9.890, Disc: American Sign Language

In response to Peggy Speas suggestion that pointing is pronouns but
not deixis, consider that in very many spoken languages the forms of
pronouns and demonstratives are clearly related, but that the mapping
of 1st and 2nd persons pronouns to proximal and distal demonstratives
(systems are often more complicated than this, though) is not always
the same. There seems to be some way to invert the
"point-of-reference". In fact, having the 2nd person form correspond
to proximal demonstrative may be more common to head-marking or
"verby" languages. Children need to figure out which way the wind
blows, so to speak, typologically.

zylogyaol.com