Roland Pfau received his PhD in linguistics from the University of Frankfurt in 2001. In the same year, he started to work at the University of Amsterdam, where he holds a position as Associate Professor in sign language linguistics. He is interested in sign language typology and formal approaches to sign language grammar. He is one of the editors of the international journal ‘Sign Language & Linguistics’.
Sign Language Negation: Typology and Grammaticalization (Working Title)
The expression of standard negation by means of manual and/or non-manual markers has been described for a considerable number of sign languages. Typological comparisons have revealed an intriguing dichotomy: while some sign languages require a manual negative element in negative clauses (manual dominant sign languages), in others negation can be realized by a non-manual marker alone (non-manual dominant sign languages). In addition, we find variation within both groups, e.g. with respect to the scope of the headshake and the availability of Negative Concord. In this talk, I will describe the attested variation, and offer some speculations on how sign language negation fits into a general typology of clausal negation. Moreover, I will discuss the negation data from a diachronic perspective by addressing the grammaticalization of linguistic headshakes from co-speech gesture. In this context, I will also speculate how the attested patterns might related to Jespersen’s Cycle.
