Form, Meaning, and Focus in American Sign Language

Chapter 4 Defocused Agents in ASL Utterances

35 Chapter 4 Defocused Agents in ASL Utterances Chapters 4 and 5 present my analysis of agent focus in ASL utterances elicited as translations of individual passive sentence prompts from English . The elicited ASL translations include a variety of utterance types. As discussed in chapter 2, the level of focus on an entity depends on both the specificity with which it is expressed and the prominence it is given within the syntactic structure. As we will see, ASL users have at their disposal a range of constructions that vary in the level of focus with which they construe the agent, which reflects both its degree of prominence and its degree of specificity. Because our understanding of language is based on the connection between form and meaning, this analysis follows those two interrelated aspects. The first step was to determine the structural form of the ASL utterances, and the second step was to analyze their meaning. In this way, various constructions were identified, each with a unique syntactic form that construes the agent with a certain level of focus. The various ASL constructions that appear in the elicited data are here categorized according to three main levels of agent focus: utterances that express a construal with the agent fully in focus; utterances that express defocused agent construals; and utterances that express a reduced agent focus construal, which are described in chapter 5. In any discussion of language data, one must understand where the data come from, so I first provide an overview of the prompt materials. COLLECTION OF ENGLISH-TO-ASL SENTENCE TRANSLATIONS Twenty passive sentences in English were presented one at a time to deaf adult native ASL users who were asked to translate the sentences into ASL (table 4.1). The sentences were adapted from textbook and website materials designed for teaching the passive construction to English language learners. Rankin_Pgs 1-136.indd 35 10/18/2013 9:55:49 AM 36 : Chapter 4 Although the primary consideration for all of these sentences was that the main verb be expressed in a passive construction, additional features related to defocusing were also purposely included in the set to elicit as wide a variety of responses as possible. For example, sentence 14 contains two passive clauses (“needs to be completed” and “gets published”), sentence 17 includes a passive infinitive (“to be broken”), and the subject of sentence 19 is a nominalization1 of a transitive event (“recommendation ”). While most of the verbs are divalent, meaning that they encode the relationship between two entities, one passive construction is trivalent; the trivalent verb given, which occurs in sentence 10, encodes the relationship between an unnamed giver, an object given, and a receiver. Three of the passive verbs occur in modal constructions (the modals are must, should, and needs to). 1. Recall from chapter 2 that infinitives and nominalizations with transitive root verbs are impersonalization strategies in English, so they are included here as a defocused agent form. As I show later, the way the participants expressed the events in ASL translations also warrants their inclusion here. 1 Your bicycle was damaged in the accident. 2 I have never been beaten at chess. 3 That old car will never be stolen. 4 This street has been closed because of the snow. 5 Peter wasn’t invited to the party. 6 German is spoken in Austria. 7 The best cars are made in Japan. 8 The report must be completed by next Friday. 9 His bike is being repaired. 10 Receipts should be given to the secretary tomorrow. 11 I am encouraged by the positive results. 12 Rachel was brought to this country from Africa as a slave. 13 She is believed to have lived in Virginia for a short time. 14 Our project needs to be completed before her new book gets published. 15 His car was being repaired, so he asked his friend for a ride to work. 16 Dinner is going to be made by Sally tonight. 17 Rules were made to be broken. 18 Ice has been discovered on Mars. 19 The recommendation was vetoed by the president. 20 The results will be published in the newspaper tomorrow. table 4.1. English Sentence Prompts. Rankin_Pgs 1-136.indd 36 10/18/2013 9:55:49 AM Defocused Agents in ASL Utterances : 37 The primary discourse function of passive voice is to defocus the agent (Shibatani 1985), and the vast majority...