Revisiting the Process of Grammaticalization in Signed Languages
A key factor in our ability to carry out historical linguistics work on
signed languages has been our creation of a database containing
historical corpora of the early stages of ASL. In turn, this allows us
trace the history of morphological persistence and change among
co-dependent forms sharing a common grammatical function. The
observation of these processes in sign languages over time provides
evidence for cross-modal validity of the grammaticalization model
described in Givon (1979) and reproduced in Brinton & Traugott 2005
as follows: Discourse > syntax > morphology > morphophonemics
> zero. The opaque forms we find as relics, left over from obsolete
paradigms in ASL, illustrate the “zero” endpoint of grammaticalization.
Such forms do not appear in young sign languages. As in spoken
languages, grammaticalization proceeds in a unidirectional fashion. In
fact, the historical linguistic research show similarities across sign
and spoken languages and are suggestive of universal linguistic and
cognitive patterns.
