CHALLENGING THE UNIVERSAL ON DOUBLING STRUCTURES (To be presented in English) Many interesting syntactic constructions are found in complex clauses in JSL. One such construction is doubling at the clausal level. The following examples are from a JSL data corpus. (1)
mouthing: have FIVE CHILD FIVE Have five child five ‘She has five children.’ (2)
IX.1.SG AGAINST DIRTY KITCHEN IX.1.SG AGAINST I against dirty kitchen I against ‘I am against dirty kitchens.’ (3)
IX.1.SG ACCEPT WHAT TEACHER TELL IX.1.SG ACCEPT I accept what teacher tell I ‘I accepted what the teacher told me.” accept Sandler and Lillo‐Martin (2006) refer to the work of Petronio (1993) and Quadros (1999) in their discussion of copied sentence elements. None of the theoretical frameworks provided can account for the doubling of sentence elements larger than the noun phrase. Petronio (1993, 135) outlines five syntactic properties of double constructions in ASL. JSL violates property (ii) which states that the doubled construction is X0 not XP meaning that “only a single sign, a head, can occur in the doubling construction [and] full phrases … are not allowed” (Sandler and Lillo‐Martin 2006, 418). JSL violates this in (2) and (3) where doubling is seen at the clausal level. From the data corpus, this repetition of main clauses, like IX.1.SG ACCEPT, appears to be productive in JSL. This is at variance with what has been previously reported for sign languages. In (2) and (3), two signs were doubled and based on the aforementioned frameworks, each of these signs are actually XPs. IX.1.SG is a NP in each sentence. AGAINST and ACCEPT are VPs. Two XPs are doubled. This goes against Petronio (1993) which says that not even one XP can be doubled. Quadros (1999) explores doubling in Brazilian Sign Language (LSB). LSB allows a sentence with more than one clause, excluding relative clauses, to double an element from each clause. This still does not account for JSL allowing two elements from one clause to be doubled. It should also be noted that the rhythm of (3) made it clear that the second occurrence of IX.1.SG was as the subject of the clause IX.1.SG ACCEPT and not as the object of TELL. At an abstract level, JSL differs from other sign languages in the doubling constructions that it allows. It can be argued that the clause or noun phrase is being repeated at the underlying level with ellipsis of elements of the clause or of the noun phrase at the surface level. Only the elements that the signer wishes to mark pragmatically are realised at the surface level. The signer is motivated to place focus on an element (s) in response to earlier discourse as or to make an assertion. Quantifier slots in (1) were doubled at the surface when a question was being answered. In (2), the signer was asserting his stance on kitchen cleanliness. The NP and VP slots in the clause were doubled at the surface. This JSL doubling phenomenon requires a deeper discussion.