Cross-modal perspectives on grammaticalisation: Aspect markers in creoles and sign languages

• Applicant: Dr. Susanne Maria Michaelis
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 508353074

This project brings together a hearing typologist working on creole languages (Michaelis) and a deaf sociolinguist working on sign languages (Palfreyman) to create a unique pairing with the experience and skills to deliver a cutting-edge programme that sheds new light on our understanding of creole languages (CLs), sign languages (SLs), and processes of language change in general. In the Cross-modal Grammaticalisation project (‘CrossMoGram’), we systematically compare language change processes in CLs and SLs with respect to aspect markers. While CLs are spoken languages inhabiting the oral-aural modality, SLs are produced manually and non-manually (e.g. with facial expressions) and are usually perceived visually. Consequently, research encompassing CLs and SLs is cross-modal. Based on claims from the literature, we start from the following two hypotheses:Hypothesis 1: Aspect markers in CLs and SLs have dissimilar grammaticalisation pathways in that SLs also use modality-dependent pathways compared to CLs (and other spoken languages). (SLs can recruit early grammaticalised markers directly from co-speech gestures, bypassing an initial lexical stage, a path undocumented for spoken languages.)Assuming that SLs grammaticalise more similarly to CLs than to other spoken languages, then we further hypothesise that:Hypothesis 2: In the domain of aspect, CLs and SLs show more instances of early-stage grammaticalisation (lexemes, auxiliaries, particles) than non-CL spoken languages, and fewer examples of late-stage grammaticalisation (affixes, stem change etc.).CLs and SLs are conspicuous in their absence from large-scale systematic typological studies on grammaticalisation in the world’s languages. Consequently, the consensus on grammaticalisation is incomplete and in need of substantial additional well-researched data from CL and SL to verify received positions. To find out whether CLs and SLs share specific features in their grammaticalisation processes, it is imperative methodologically to i) compare such processes in both types of languages with each other, and ii) compare potential communalities and differences of CLs and SLs against the background of worldwide diachronic typological studies: only then can meaningful patterns emerge. The most important academic output of the project is the open-access database CrossMoGram that will be part of the CLLD suite (which includes well-known databases such as WALS and APiCS) that documents, for the first time and in a comparable way, structural language change processes in CLs and SLs languages in the domain of aspect. These cross-modal data create a reliable basis that allows us and future scholars to classify and explain grammatical change processes of CLs and SLs on a solid empirical basis.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Partner Organisation: Arts and Humanities Research Council
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Nicholas Palfreyman