Document Type

Theses, Masters

Disciplines

1.2 COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SCIENCE, Computer Sciences

Abstract

In sign languages (SLs), e.g., American Sign Language (ASL), gerunds help express the meaning of ongoing actions and activities conveyed by verbs (Klima & Bellugi, 1979, p. 295). In spoken languages, a gerund is a form of the verb that functions as a noun and expresses the state of being or an ongoing action (Maekelberghe, 2020). Gerunds are complex constructions as they have nominal-verbal nature (Travis, 2005, p. 321) and morphological similarity with present participle or progressive aspect (Siegel, 1998). This research is motivated by the challenging nature of distinguishing gerund constructions at the morphological level, and research in sign languages with regard to this phenomenon in terms of comprehensive analysis is still understudied (Quer et al., 2017, p. 418). In this research, we attempt to investigate gerund constructions in Irish Sign Language (ISL). We outline our research questions below:

RQ1: Does ISL exhibit gerund constructions, and if so, what are their morphological and syntactic characteristics?

RQ2: How can methodological approaches used in analysing gerund constructions and derived nouns in other SLs be used to investigate gerund constructions in ISL?

RQ3: What linguistic features distinguish gerund constructions in ISL from other similar aspectual forms of the verb?

As part of addressing RQ2, we reported on the literature on various sign language linguistic phenomena that can help in understanding if/how gerunds occur in Irish Sign Language. This step involved reporting on various linguistic phenomena at the levels of phonology, morphology, and syntax, as well as providing an account for gerunds in ISL. We then set out our methodology to investigate gerunds in ISL by leveraging the work that has been done to investigate gerunds in other SLs. This step was followed by 3 conducting our systematic analysis of gerund constructions using the Signs of Ireland (SOI) corpus (Leeson, Saeed, Byrne-Dunne, Macduff, & Leonard, 2006) (as part of addressing RQ1and RQ3). The SOI corpus consists of data collected from different parts of the Republic of Ireland, elicited from the participant’s life, and the ‘frog’ story, which is commonly used in cross-linguistic studies (Leeson et al., 2006). As part of the analysis, we define constructions that function as gerunds and we try to distinguish gerund constructions from other forms that may share similar phonological and morphological properties.

Our findings indicate that previous methodologies used to investigate the existence of gerunds and noun-verb pairs in SLs can be leveraged to investigate gerund constructions in ISL. We found that gerund constructions express themselves in different ways. Those ways gerunds represent themselves are through derived signs or signs that are lexicalised and communicate the meaning of gerund. Signs that are derived from verbs through the repetition of the movement parameter can act as gerund constructions or to mark progressive aspect. Gerund constructions can share morphological similarities with constructions marked for progressive aspect (Massone & Martínez, 2015). Gerund constructions do not act as the main verb in a sentence, as appears in both Argentine Sign Language (LSA) and Spanish (Massone & Martínez, 2012b). In English, gerund constructions can act as subjects or direct objects (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999, pp. 201–202).

As part of our findings, we found that a gerund construction: (i) tends to be accompanied by mouthing while progressive aspect is not, (ii) does not function as the main verb in sentences while progressive aspect does, and (iii) mainly functions as a subject, a direct object, or an object of the preposition while progressive aspect does not. The outcome of this research helps in sign language processing, such as sign language recognition, 4 understanding, generation, modelling, and translation. Addressing the gap in our understanding of the complexity of gerund constructions in ISL can inform the development of SL lexicon entries that are robust enough to represent gerund constructions in ISL. The lexicon entries may have the potential to be used within the computational processing to develop the natural language understanding (NLU) for a Sign Language Machine Translation (SLMT) system, which will help bridge the communication gap between the hearing community and Deaf and hard-of-hearing communities.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/awgf-5d91

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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