The lecture will be given at University College London, in Room 225, Central House, 14 Upper Woburn Place, London, WC1H 0NN. This is just off Euston Road, on the opposite side of the road to Euston Station and just round the corner from the Tavistock Hotel (Upper Woburn Place is a continuation of Eversholt St.). Please see this map for more information.
Anyone wishing to attend online may follow this link; the session will open at 4pm.
Simultaneous interpretation in BSL will provided.
Please note that all ordinary meetings commence at 4:15pm. Members and guests are welcome to come for tea at 3:45 pm.
Cross-modal typology aims to provide an understanding of universals and linguistic variation that cuts across spoken and signed languages, uncovering both modality-specific and cross-modal patterns (Zeshan & Palfreyman, 2017). In this presentation, I share findings from the CrossMoGram project, a cross-modal study of the grammaticalisation of aspect markers in 30 sign languages and 50 Creole languages. CrossMoGram focuses on aspect markers due to their prominence in the literature for these language types, and applies grammaticalisation parameters developed by the Mainz Grammaticalisation Project (Bisang & Malchukov, 2020).
Sign languages have rich simultaneous morphology but are said to feature few examples of late-stage grammaticalisation such as sequential affixes (Aronoff, Meir & Sandler 2005; Pfau & Steinbach 2006), a claim that can now be tested quantitatively using our CrossMoGram database. I also discuss the ways in which grammaticalisation pathways for signed languages may diverge from spoken languages, for example in terms of ambient gestures that become part of sign language grammar. By considering these diachronic processes in light of the world’s spoken languages, it then becomes possible to begin drawing conclusions about how modality impacts language change.
