美国手语句法:功能语类和等级结构>(Syntax of American Sign Language:Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structure)一书由MIT出版社于2000年出版,作者是Carol Neidle,Judy Kegl,Dawn MacLaughlin,Benjamin Bahan和Robert G.Lee.

The distribution of null arguments across languages has been accounted for in terms of two distinct strategies: licensing by agreement and licensing by topic. Lillo-Martin (1986, 1991) claims that American Sign Language (ASL) exploits both strategies for licensing null arguments, depending on the morphological characteristics of the verb. Here we show that this is incorrect. Once the nonmanual correlates of agreement features (comparable to the nonmanual expressions of other syntactic features) in ASL are recognized, it becomes apparent that null arguments in this language are systematically licensed by an expression of syntactic agreement.

Neidle, Kegl, Bahan, Aarons, & MacLaughlin 1997 argues that rightward WH-movement in ASL constitutes a counterexample to claims by Kayne (1994) that all phrasal projections exhibit specifier-head-complement order and that syntactic movement is leftward. Petronio & Lillo-Martin 1997, although not adopting Kayne's antisymmetry framework, offers a critique of our analysis and a proposal involving leftward WH-movement. Here, we argue that Petronio and Lillo-Martin's interpretations of the data are incorrect and that their analysis cannot account for the facts of the language. We therefore maintain our position that ASL WH-phrases move rightward in ASL, and that universal grammar must allow the option of rightward movement.

ASL syntax makes essential use of specific non‐manual expressions of syntactic features (e.g., +neg, +wh) that co‐occur with manual signs. These markings occur obligatorily with manual material contained in the node of origin and optionally extend over the c‐command domain of that node, thus providing important evidence for hierarchical structure. In this article, we show that agreement features, both within the clause and the noun phrase, also have non‐manual correlates that exhibit the predicted distribution. Interestingly, transitive IPs and possessive DPs pattern together in their manifestation of agreement marking, while intransitive IPs pattern with non‐possessive DPs.

American Sign Language is the natural language used by the Deaf community in theUnited States and parts of Canada. Linguistic research in the past 25 years hasrevealed that signed languages such as ASL are full-fledged linguistic systems, andthat they share the same fundamental structural characteristics as spoken languages.Signs are produced with the hands, which assume particular handshapes andundergo specific types of movement. In addition, important information isconveyed non-manually, through expressions on the face. These facial markingsexpress fundamental grammatical information. For example, negative sentencesare accompanied by a characteristic negative head shake; yes-no questions areaccompanied by raised eyebrows; and other kinds of questions are marked bylowered eyebrows. The first part of this article contains example sentences whichillustrate the syntactic distribution of these non-manual markings. The second partfocuses on new results concerning agreement, where we show that subject andobject agreement also have non-manual correlates that had not previously beenidentified as such.The article is organized as follows:•We begin by demonstrating how non-manual markings provide importantgrammatical information and by showing that these markings have adistribution that can be expressed in terms of a well-defined syntacticdomain and a strong preference for non-manual marking to occursimultaneously with manual material. We illustrate this with respect tonegation and yes/no questions.•Then we show how non-manual grammatical marking can provideimportant evidence for the syntactic structure we propose. We exemplifythis with respect to wh-questions.•Finally, we discuss the agreement system in ASL. We describe both itsmanual and non-manual expressions. We show that head tilt and eye gazeconstitute non-manual correlates of subject and object agreement within theclause. Our findings suggest that this same kind of agreement marking isalso found internal to noun phrases, and we discuss some interestingparallels between noun phrases and clauses in this respect.