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| Author(s): |
Renata Lúcia Moreira
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Master's Dissertation |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) |
| Defense date: | 2007-06-29 |
| Examining board members: |
Evani de Carvalho Viotti;
Jose Luiz Fiorin;
Sirio Possenti
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| Advisor: | Evani de Carvalho Viotti |
| Abstract | |
This dissertation presents a proposal of description of personal deixis in Brazilian Sign Language. In sign language, personal deixis is substantially performed by means of two kinds of pointing signs: personal pronouns and indicating verbs. The aim of my research is to introduce a description of these two kinds of signs, based on work by Liddell (2003), who has analyzed the deictic signs of American Sign Language (ASL) within the framework of cognitive grammar (Langacker, 1991) and mental space theory (Fauconnier, 1994 [1985]; Fauconnier & Turner, 1998). According to Liddell, both personal pronouns and indicating verbs have this property of being signed and located in the physical space in front to and around the signer\'s body; in this space, they can point to a locus associated, within the discourse, to a mental representation of their referents. For Liddell, deictic signs have two parts: a linguistic and invariable component; plus a deictic component, which depends on the discourse situation. In order to describe the personal pronouns and indicating verbs of Brazilian Sign Language, I analyzed data from (i) the dictionary by Capovilla & Raphael (2001); (ii) elicited tests with deaf collaborators, and (iii) language in use in the form of a child narrative told by a deaf collaborator. With the empirical studies carried out, as well as the construction and transcription of the narrative, it was possible to (i) describe how deaf people use the signing space in order to construe, represent and characterize the characters of the story that are pointed at by deictic signs; (ii) identify the personal pronouns and indicating verbs of Brazilian Sign Language, and (iii) describe some of their formal aspects and the pragmatic characteristics of their pointing (deictic or anaphoric), by looking at both the elicited contexts and those instances of direct speech in narrative. (AU) | |