Exploring the Limits of Simultaneity: Encoding Caused Change-of-state Events with Classifier Constructions in German Sign Language (DGS)

Project Participants

Cornelia Loos

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Dr. Cornelia Loos
(Principal Investigator)

University of Hamburg
cornelia.loos@uni-hamburg.de

https://cornelialoos.wixsite.com/linguist

Cornelia Loos received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2017. After completing a two-year postdoc project on aspects of the syntax and semantics of German Sign Language (DGS) in Göttingen as well as a second post-doc at the university of Hamburg working in the DGS-corpus project, she is currently a visiting professor at the Institute of German Sign Language and Communication of the Deaf in Hamburg. Her research interests cluster around the syntax-semantics interface, focusing on lexical semantics as well as experimental semantics and pragmatics. She works predominantly on signed languages and has investigated topics such as word class and sentencehood in American and German Sign Language (DGS), the syntax and semantics of resultative constructions in these two languages, the influence of iconicity on the semantics of taboo language in DGS, and, most recently, on response elements and NPIs in DGS.

Selected publications

  • Loos, C., German, A., & Meier, R. P. (2022). Simultaneous structures in sign languages: Acquisition and emergence. Frontiers in Psychology, 7232.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.992589
  • Loos, C. 2022. Sizing up adjectives: Delimiting the adjective class in American Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics.
  • Loos, C. and D.J. Napoli. 2021. Expanding Echo: Coordinated Head Articulations as Nonmanual Enhancements in Sign Language Phonology. Cognitive Science 45(5). doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12958.
  • Loos, C. 2020. Quite a mouthful: Comparing speech act verbs in Nederlandse Gebarentaal and American Sign Language. Linguistische Berichte.
  • Loos, C., M. Steinbach and S. Repp. 2020. Affirming and rejecting assertions in German Sign Language. Sinn und Bedeutung 24 Proceedings.

Project Description

While sign languages exhibit parallels to spoken languages in all key areas of linguistic description (Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006), they also have characteristics unique to the visual-gestural modality. The current project builds on one such characteristic, namely the availability of two paired manual articulators, which can move independently (in addition to various non-manual articulators). The coordination of the two hands allows, among others, encoding information about the simultaneous occurrence of two events. In those cases, each hand represents one event participant, and the simultaneous presence of both hands represents the parallel existence of these referents in time and space (Perniss, 2007). Simultaneous encoding of information is a much-researched hallmark of sign languages (Vermeerbergen et al., 2007), yet potential limitations on simultaneity have been explored to a much lesser extent.

This project researches both linguistic and non-linguistic constraints on the simultaneous encoding of complex events in which two subevents occur at the same time. Using data from German Sign Language (DGS), I look at the expression of events that involve an externally caused change of state. An example of such an event might be Mary hammered the spoon flat, since Mary’s hammering caused a change in the degree of flatness of the spoon. Hammering and becoming flatter go ‘hand in hand’ here, a fact that a visual-gestural language can potentially express iconically. For example, one hand might represent hammering while the other depicts the spoon flattening over time. Since depictions of the visual properties of an object are typically found in classifier constructions (CCs) in DGS and other sign languages, CCs form the focus of this project. In most recent research, they are analyzed as containing both linguistic and gestural components (e.g., Davidson, 2015). One important contribution of this project is therefore an empirically grounded analysis of the linguistic vs. gestural properties of CCs in DGS. I will conduct a series of corpus and experimental studies (production and acceptability) that demonstrate how iconic motivation, physiological and phonological constraints, as well as discourse-pragmatic factors interact to influence the simultaneous expression of externally caused changes of state in DGS vs. Silent Gesture. The aims are twofold: On the one hand, this project seeks a better understanding of how much simultaneity visual-gestural languages such as DGS allow, and on the other hand, it aims to develop a model of simultaneous CCs.

Project Activities

Publications

Loos, C. (Under review). Simultaneous vs. sequential caused change-of-state events in German Sign Language (DGS): A corpus study. To appear in: Krauße, D., Czerwinski, P. & Aplonova, K. Issues in Complex Predicates: Typology, Syntax, Diachrony. De Gruyter Mouton. 

Klomp, U., Kopf, M & Loos, C. (Accepted). Gender and classifiers in sign languages. Oxford Handbook of Gender and Classifiers (eds. Niels  Schiller & Tanja Kupisch) Oxford University Press.

Lettow, I. & Loos, C. (Accepted). A ministry of not-so-silly walks: An investigation of the use of 1 vs. V-classifiers in representations of motion and location events in German Sign Language (DGS). Special Issue of Open Linguistics (ed. Vadim Kimmelman).

Loos, C. (Accepted). How direct is direct enough? Comparing directness constraints on resultatives in American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Serial Predicates Across Modalities (eds. Roland Pfau, Beyza Sümer, Cornelia Loos).

Loos, C. & Repp, S. (To Appear). Beyond yes and no: Multimodal multilexical polar responses in German. Sinn und Bedeutung 29 Proceedings. 

Loos, C., German, A. & Meier, R. (2022). Simultaneous structures in sign languages: Acquisition and emergence. Frontiers in Psychology 13:992589. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.992589.

Loos, C., & Napoli, D. J. (2023). Depicting Translocating Motion in Sign Languages. Sign Language Studies, 24(1), 5-45.

Loos, C., Steinbach, M., & Repp, S. (2024). Polar response strategies across modalities: Evidence from German Sign Language (DGS). Language, 100(3), 433-467.

Lettow, I. & Loos, C. (2025). A ministry of not-so-silly walks: An investigation of the use of 1 vs. V-classifiers in representations of motion and location events in German Sign Language (DGS). Open Linguistics 11 20250049. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2025-0049

Conference contributions:

2025                Loos, C. Limitations on the encoding of temporally simultaneous events: Evidence from Uruguayan and German Sign Language (LSU & DGS). Presentation at Sign Café 3, Warsaw.

2025                Loos, C. Encoding temporal simultaneity of events in classifier constructions: Investigating the limits of iconic representation in German Sign Language (DGS). Dimensions of Iconicity in the Visual Modality Workshop, Göttingen.

2025                Loos, C. Simultaneous classifier constructions in German Sign Language (DGS)
Restrictions on representing caused change of state”. Presentation at TISLR 15, Addis Abeba.

2024                Loos, C. & S. Repp. The many ways to mark agreement & rejection: Multimodal polar responses in German. MMSYM Symposium Series on Multimodal Communication, Frankfurt.

2024                Loos, C. & S. Repp. Beyond yes and no: Multimodal multilexical polar responses in German. Sinn und Bedeutung 29, Noto.

2024                Loos, C. The limits of simultaneity: Representations of caused change-of-state events

                        in German Sign Language. 57th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, Helsinki.

2024                Loos, C. & S. Repp. Gestures in polar responses. DGfS Annual Meeting 2024, AG 5 ‘Visual Clause Typing‘, Bochum. 

Teaching

Loos, C. La simultaneidad en las lenguas de señas y sus límites. Postgraduate intensive seminar taught at the Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Urugay, March-April 2024.

Loos, C. Examining visual communication at the sign-gesture interface. Advanced BA seminar taught at the University of Hamburg, Fall 2022/23.

Loos, C. A kaleidoscope of visual communication: An in-depth discussion with ViCom project members. Advanced BA seminar taught at the University of Hamburg, Fall 2022/23.

Events

Co-organization of the workshop Annotation Standards for Non-Manuals in Sign Languages and Gesture (Barcelona), with Pilar Prieto, Floris Roelofsen, Annika Herrmann

Outreach

01/2023 Letter (DAAD-Alumni Magazin) “Abenteuer Sprachwissenschaft”, Feature on linguistics with a focus on sign language research