Title: Classifying Reduplicated Nominals in ASL
Key Words: ASL, Nominalization, Reduplication, Verb Structure, Classifiers, Syntax, Morphology
Language of Presentation: English
Background: As early as Klima and Bellugi (1979), it was observed that the reduplication process
(.
Nmz-Red
) deriving concrete object-denoting nominals (1) (Supalla and Newport 1978) is also evident in derived nominals with non-concrete (henceforth result) interpretations (2).
(1) [
V staple-with-stapler
] to staple
(2) [
V accept
] to accept
[
Nmz staple-with-stapler.Nmz-Red
] stapler
[
Nmz accept.Nmz-Red
] acceptance
Linguistic description and analysis of nominal reduplication must also reconcile the deterministic role played by the verbal classifier in certain forms (Figure 1) with the absence (Figure 2) or irrelevance of classifier structure in other reduplicated nominals. The analysis of nominalization via reduplication developed in the present research resolves both of these longstanding issues.
Evidence for Formational Ambiguity: Concrete object- and result-denoting nominals share formational properties (‘restrained manner’) and exhibit the same paradigm of phonologicallyconditioned allomorphy (3) (Brentari 1998).
This suggests that the alternation between these interpretations is a genuine case of structural ambiguity of a single morpho-phonological form, an analysis confirmed by the interpretive ambiguity of certain reduplicated nominals (4).
(3)
Redup. Movement
Redup. Aperture Change
Redup. Orientation Change
Concrete Object-Denoting Nominals sit.Nmz-Red
( chair ) staple-with-stapler.Nmz-Red
( stapler ) strike-match.Nmz-Red
( match )
Redup. Movement
Redup. Aperture Change
Redup. Orientation Change
Result-Denoting Nominals develop.Nmz-Red
( development ) accept.Nmz-Red
( acceptance ) announce.Nmz-Red
( announcement )
[
Nmz move-in-air-by-plane.Nmz-Red
] airplane (concrete object) or flight (result)
(4) [
V move-in-air-by-plane
] to fly
Proposal (cf. Figure 3): Concrete object-denoting interpretations arise only in the presence of verbal classifiers and always refer to the object denoted by the classifier handshape. These depencies result from the (reduced) relative clause structures proposed to underlie concrete objectdenoting nominals: the classifier present in the relevant verbs introduces a null nominal argument
(cf. Benedicto and Brentari 2004) that then functions as the head of the relative clause. Conversely, result-denoting interpretations arise when [
C
N
Nmz-Red
] serves as input to a nominalization, not relativization, structure. The structural ambiguity of the derived forms is, then, the joint consequence of (a) the presence of [
C
N
Nmz-Red
] in all derived forms, (b) its uniform VP
Res target, as supported by structural (Grimshaw 1990) and morpho-phonological (Wilbur 2003) patterns, and
(c) the absence of overt material distinguishing the nominalization and relativization structures.
Word Count: 357

Figure 1: staple-with-stapler.Nmz-Red elicited carrier sentence ix i say — yesterday
.
Figure 2: accept.Nmz-Red elicited carrier sentence ix i say — yesterday
.
Result Nominalization
CP
N
Concrete Object Relativization
CP
N
Nmz-Red
VP
Res thing
C
N
VP
Res
V
Res f
3
CL-P
Nmz-Red
V
Res f
3
CL-P thing f
3
CL move-in-air thing cl:ily f
3
CL move-in-air cl:ily
Figure 3: move-in-air-by-plane.Nmz-Red
, result-denoting ( flight ) nominalization (left) and concrete objct-denoting ( airplane ) relativization (right) structures.
Benedicto, Elena, and Diane Brentari. 2004. Where did all the arguments go?: Argument-changing properties of classifiers in ASL. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22:743–810.
Brentari, Diane. 1998. A prosodic model of sign language phonology. MIT Press.
Grimshaw, Jane. 1990. Argument structure. MIT Press.
Klima, Edward S., and Ursula Bellugi. 1979. The signs of language. Harvard University Press.
Supalla, Ted, and Elissa Newport. 1978. How many seats in a chair? The derivation of nouns and verbs in American Sign Language. In Understanding Language through Sign Language Research, ed. Patricia Siple. Academic Press.
Wilbur, Ronnie. 2003. Representations of telicity in ASL. In Proceedings of CLS 39, 354–368.