Morphological Complexity Influences Verb-Object Order in Swedish Sign Language

Johannes Bjerva, Carl Börstell


Abstract
Computational linguistic approaches to sign languages could benefit from investigating how complexity influences structure. We investigate whether morphological complexity has an effect on the order of Verb (V) and Object (O) in Swedish Sign Language (SSL), on the basis of elicited data from five Deaf signers. We find a significant difference in the distribution of the orderings OV vs. VO, based on an analysis of morphological weight. While morphologically heavy verbs exhibit a general preference for OV, humanness seems to affect the ordering in the opposite direction, with [+human] Objects pushing towards a preference for VO.
Anthology ID:
W16-4116
Volume:
Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (CL4LC)
Month:
December
Year:
2016
Address:
Osaka, Japan
Venues:
CL4LC | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
The COLING 2016 Organizing Committee
Note:
Pages:
137–141
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/W16-4116
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Johannes Bjerva and Carl Börstell. 2016. Morphological Complexity Influences Verb-Object Order in Swedish Sign Language. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Linguistic Complexity (CL4LC), pages 137–141, Osaka, Japan. The COLING 2016 Organizing Committee.
Cite (Informal):
Morphological Complexity Influences Verb-Object Order in Swedish Sign Language (Bjerva & Börstell, 2016)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/update-css-js/W16-4116.pdf