Personal pronouns and verbal classes in the Brazilian Sign Language
personal pronoun; topic; null argument; Brazilian Sign Language
In this thesis, we present a study of the pronominal system in the Brazilian Sign Language, considering argument realization in subject position in two signed narratives in this language. We adopt the framework of the generative theory, as in Chomsky (1986; 1995), as well as the theory of argument structure and clause structure, as formulated in Quadros (1999), Quadros and Karnopp (2004), Almeida and Lessa-de-Oliveira’s (2014) studies of Libras. In the analysis of the pronominal system, we take into consideration the distinction between plain verbs and agreeing verbs, as proposed in previous studies, further adotping Meir et al.’s (2006) analysis of plain verbs that use the body as the point of articulation which in turn is taken as a lexical component of the meaning marking the subject function, as opposed to agreeing verbs, which use the hands for marking grammatical person. In the analysis, we identify lexical DPs, overt pronominal DPs and null arguments. Following previous studies, we assume that inflectional afixes in the structure of agreeing verbs license null pronominal DPs (pro), extending this analysis to first person null arguments of plain verbs using the body as the point of articulation. In this respect, the distribution of pro with plain verbs is determined by the features [+participant, +author], giving rise to a split in the pronominal system. We further noticed that the reference of null arguments may be established by a discourse topic. Assuming that Libras is a discourse-oriented language, in the same fashion as other sign languages (SL), as proposed in various studies (cf. Quadros 1999; Sandler e Lillo-Martin 2006), we suggest that this strategy may be analysed in terms of the presence of a Topic phrase (TopP) in the left periphery of the clause structure. In some contexts, we found out that non-manual marking, such as body movement, allow for shift reference, as proposed in Sandler and Lillo-Martin (2006) for ASL, by which the signer takes the role of a discourse participant, in the first person. In this approach, the null argument is realized by a logophoric pronoun.