Disjunction in Brazilian Sign Language: a corpus based analysis

• Grant number: 19/03307-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2019
• End date: November 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Linguistic Theory and Analysis
• Principal Investigator: Angélica Terezinha Carmo Rodrigues
• Grantee: Sarah Cristina Pavarina Chiodi
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Araraquara. Araraquara , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In this research project we aim to investigate disjunctive coordination in Brazilian Sign Language. Based on naturalistic data from Corpus de Libras from Federal University of Santa Catarina and videos from signing blogs, we intent to analyze how disjunction is express, considering the use or not of manual conjunctions, units that can be coordinated (nouns and/or sentences) and the use of non manual markers. Our theoretical background is basically researches on other sign languages (DAVIDSON, 2013; PFAU, 2016; ZORZI, 2018) and also on oral languages (SWEETSER, 1990), specially Portuguese (NEVES, 2000; PEZATTI; LONGHIN-THOMAZI, 2008). Our analysis concerns the in search of type and token frequency (BYBEE, 2003), in order to offer first results on the expression of disjunction in Brazilian Sign Language.