Paradigm leveling in Japanese sign language and related languages.
Keiko Sagara
- Osaka-JP : National Museum Ethnology, 2019.
- páginas 147-163: ilustraciones en blanco negro.
- Irregular
- no. 101 (2019)
- Senri Ethnological Studies ; no. 101 .
- National Museum of Ethnology Osaka. .
This chapter focuses on cases of apparent paradigm leveling found in varieties of three related sign languages, namely Japanese Sign Language (JSL), Taiwan Sign Language (TSL) and Korean Sign Language (KSL). Paradigm leveling, or the equivalent of it in sign languages, has not been documented, part of the reason being that it is not common for grammatical features of sign languages to be described as paradigms. However, in some semantic domains where the number of the constituent lexical items is limited, such as kinship terms, number expressions and days of the week, it is sometimes found that a phonemic change takes place across multiple members, sometimes in all members. We argue that such changes can be perceived as parallel to morphological changes that occur in paradigms in spoken languages, such as pronouns, in the sense that a change is associated with an abstract notion shared by the members in common.