Having looked at how the completive is realised in several spoken languages in section 5.1.4, I turn to how it is encoded in sign languages. Rather than take a language-by-language approach, I consider firstly the formal means of encoding the completive aspect (section (i)) and then the functional properties that completives exhibit (section (ii)). According to Zeshan (2003b:49), the category of completive aspect is very common across sign languages, and in section 5.1.5 the discussion draws upon sign languages for which completion has been examined in the literature.
Formal means of encoding the completive aspect in sign languages
Most of the sign languages for which completion has been studied express it using particles.121
Zeshan (2003b:49) notes that particles are ‘by far the most common way of marking completive
aspect in sign languages’. An example of a particle is the ASL sign FINISH, which is shown in
Figure 5.1. In light of the formal and functional variation that has been found in spoken languages, it is notable that comparatively little has been reported on formal variation among completive particles in sign languages. It is not certain whether this is because variation has simply not been documented, or because such variation is uncommon. Zeshan (2003b) reports on three particles in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) – see below – but it is not clear whether these particles are functionally equivalent. The same is true of Auslan: data presented by Johnston (2011:20) suggests that there are at least six signs that might indicate completion (glossed as FINISH.1 to
FINISH.6) but it is not clear whether these are functionally equivalent.
Figure 5.1. FINISH in ASL (Rathmann 2005:47).
121 Documented examples of such sign languages include ASL (Fischer & Gough, 1999; Rathmann, 2005),
BSL (Sutton-Spence & Woll, 1999), FinSL (Salonen, 2011), HKSL (Tang, 2009), IPSL (Zeshan, 2000a,b), IsraeliSL (Meir, 1999), LIS (Zucchi, 2009), Kata Kolok (de Vos, 2012b), TİD (Zeshan, 2003b) and UgSL (Lutalo-Kiingi, 2014).
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TİD is a particularly remarkable language in terms of completion, because it appears to encode completion in three very different ways, through the use of particles, movement patterns and mouth gestures. As noted above, particles are common across sign languages – see below on ASL
and Auslan, for example – and TİD has several. Zeshan (2003b:50) mentions two signs (TAMAM
‘done, complete, ready’ and BITTI ‘finish(ed)’) along with a third OLMAK ‘be, become’ that
seems to have a resultative function. TAMAM and BITTI may occur at the sentence level (35) or
the discourse level at the end of the paragraph (36) or text (37).
(35) BEN OKUL TAMAM TİD
IX1 school done (Zeshan, 2003b:50)
‘I have finished school.’
(36) BEN Osol ISARET TELEVIZYON Osol 1HABERsag-tekrar BITTI
IX1 IXleft sign television IXleft 1messageright-iterative finish ‘I kept telling [the deaf people] in signs what was happening on TV, that’s one thing.’
TİD (Zeshan, 2003b:50)
(37) SONRAKI HAFTA TAMAM sol.yukariUCAKon GELMEK TAMAM
next week done left.upairplanefwd come done
‘After a week, [the trip] was over and I came back home, and that’s it.’
TİD (Zeshan, 2003b:50)
However, Zeshan describes a movement pattern that occurs quite commonly with a range of predicates: this ‘consists of a single accentuated movement, which may have a longer movement path than its non-completive counterpart and may be accompanied by a single pronounced head nod or, alternatively, a forward movement of the whole torso’ (ibid.:51). The use of movement patterns are common in sign languages for other kinds of aspect, such as habitual and continuative (Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006:47), but this is the first instance of a movement pattern for the completive aspect.
Besides grammatical particles and movement patterns, a third option in TİD is the mouth gesture ‘bn’. Dikyuva (2011:47) describes this mouth gesture as ‘an extremely common and frequent feature of TİD’, and ‘strongly associated with actions’ (ibid.:48), as in (38).
(38) bn TİD
BEN INGILTERE GITMEK (Dikyuva, 2011:47)
me England go
‘I have been to England.’
In some sign languages, completive aspect markers have a limited syntactic distribution. For example, the completive particle in IPSL always follows the predicate, and has scope over the whole clause (Zeshan, 2003a:159), as in (39):
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(39) YESTERDAY FATHER DIE COMPLETIVE IPSL
‘(My) father died yesterday.’ (Zeshan, 2003a:159)
In other sign languages, completive aspect markers may occupy one of several syntactic slots. For
example, the ASL sign FINISH may occur pre-verbally or clause-finally, and Rathmann (2005)
argues that pre-verbal FINISH shows the perfect, while clause-final FINISH shows perfective
viewpoint. Additionally, the completive FINISH in Ugandan Sign Language (UgSL) sometimes
appears to cliticise (Lutalo-Kiingi, 2014:117) (see section 3.5.2(i) on clitics). In this case, the handshape for FINISH assimilates to the handshape for SEE:2, while the outward twist in the orientation of FINISH is retained; the sign co-occurs with the completive mouth pattern ‘fi’. So far, I have discussed how the completive is expressed formally in different sign languages. In section (ii), the functions of completive forms are considered.
Functional properties of completive forms in sign languages
There is little in the literature to date on the functions of completives in sign languages, and most
of this research relates to the sign FINISH in ASL. Friedman (1975:952) describes FINISH as a
perfective, but Rathmann (2005) detects a relationship between syntactic distribution and function. Using tests for perfectivity, perfect aspect and past on FINISH before the verb and at the end of the clause, Rathmann (2005:144) concludes that pre-verbal FINISH is a perfect marker, while clause-final FINISH is a perfective marker. However, several other functions for FINISH
have been identified. Fischer and Gough (1999:67) note that: ‘just about all of the meanings of
FINISH are semantically, and to a certain extent syntactically, related’. They then identify several parts of speech for FINISH: it can be a main verb, a past-participle adjective, an adverb, and ‘a sort of auxiliary verb’ that can occur in first, second or final position. FINISH also marks perfective action and can be used in sequences of actions, as in (40), where it has a subordinating function.
(40) WAIT SHIRLEY READ FINISH GIVE-YOU YES WAIT
‘Wait until Shirley has read it, then we’ll indeed give it to you; just wait.’
ASL (Fischer & Gough, 1999:70) FINISH has further meanings, which Fischer and Gough (1999) refer to as being ‘somewhat peripheral to the structure of the sentence’ (ibid.:70) – these include ‘that’s all’ and ‘that’s enough!’122 Incidentally, they also note that FINISH may cliticise, but only ‘with certain verbs
such as SEE, READ and TOUCH,’ where ‘the hand configuration for FINISH assimilates to the hand configuration of the previous verb’ (as with clitics in UgSL in section (i), above).
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Janzen (1998) describes FINISH as having three separate grammatical functions: a pre-verbal perfect; a clause-final completive; and a conjunction (‘and then’). This third function is of particular interest, since it is an attempt to explain the occurrence of FINISH in examples such as example (41).
(41) GO RESTAURANT EAT++ [FINISH]-top TAKE-ADVANTAGE SEE TRAIN ARRIVE
‘We went to a restaurant and ate and then got a chance to go and see the train arrive.’
ASL (Janzen, 2003:2, my emphasis)
Janzen (2003:4) describes the conjunction as meaning that ‘the first action is completed and so a second action follows it; the completion of the first action enables a second action to follow it’. According to Janzen (2007:186), FINISH ‘retains ... "pivot" functions in that it looks back to the
item that comes before it, but also looks forward to the clause to follow.’ Rathmann (2005:145) notes that Janzen’s approach is motivated by information ordering, while his own approach is concerned with event structure. He further notes (2005:147) that Janzen interprets a non-manual expression (brow-raise) occurring with FINISH as a topic marker. This suggests that Janzen
regards FINISH as belonging to the second of the two sentences, while Rathmann considers it to
be the final sign of the first sentence.123 These issues are discussed further in section 5.3.2.
Johnston (2011:20) presents an analysis of two Auslan sign types in the semantic area “finish” (FINISH.5 and FINISH.6) according to the following grammatical classes: verb, auxiliary, interjection, discourse marker, noun, conjunction, adjective, and adverb. Elsewhere, Johnston gives definitions of these classes: for example, auxiliaries are defined as co-occurring with a main verb, and expand its meaning in some way (Johnston, 2011:52). The difficulty with this kind of classification has already been referred to in the last paragraph. More generally, Johnston (2014a:59) notes that some signs ‘appear not to be unambiguously in one class or another’ and that researchers may parse a given string differently, resulting in disagreement as to how to assign a grammatical class to some signs (Johnston, 2011:7).
To summarise, although little has been written about the functions of completives across sign languages, what has been written suggests that completives may perform several functions, as they can in spoken languages. Just as varieties such as Ambonese Malay may be analysed at different levels of organisation (section 5.1.4(i)) so it seems useful to consider the functions of completive signs from different perspectives, such as lexico-semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. Given this tendency of completives to perform functions at several levels of linguistic organisation – sometimes simultaneously – completive signs may have membership of several
grammatical classes, such as ‘conjunction’ and ‘discourse marker’ (as with FINISH in ASL) and
so I do not attempt to categorise instantiations of the completive aspect according to discrete
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grammatical classes. Instead I focus in section 5.3 on the functions that the completive can perform, bearing in mind that the same token may perform more than one function.