Featured There: Sign Languages in Asia and Africa
Subject/Object Marking Auxiliaries in Japanese Sign Language
2014 Volume 146 Pages 31-50
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2014 Volume 146 Pages 31-50
Subject/object marking auxiliaries such as AUX1 and AUX2 were first identified by Smith (1990) in Taiwan Sign Language (TSL). Because TSL is known to originate from Japanese Sign Language (JSL), it is not surprising that Fischer (1996) also recognized AUX1 in JSL’s eastern dialect (JSL-e). Smith’s research proves that AUX2 is derived from the verb SEE because of their similarity in phonetic configuration. However, close observations of these two sign languages by Smith and Fischer do not elucidate the developmental process of AUX1. Sapountzaki’s (2012) comparative study of 11 sign languages hypothesizes that AUX1 is “a smoothed series of indexical pronouns,” but his argument is not supported by either TSL or JSL-e data. Observing newly collected data from the JSL’s western dialect (JSL-w), which has both AUX1 and AUX2, our analysis proposes an alternative hypothesis that “AUX1 was created as the result of grammaticalization of the verb SEE (MIRU) by way of AUX2.” Our research also investigates the adequacy of the new hypothesis.
