<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p>Dear colleagues,
<br>
<br>
We are happy to announce that Evgeniia Khristoforova
(Universtiy of Amsterdam) will give a talk on "<span lang="EN-US">Exploring
Complementation Strategies in Sign Languages: Insights from the
Sign Language of the Netherlands and Russian Sign Language</span>"
on 22 June, 14:45, Seminarraum 2, Sensengasse 3A as part of the
FWF project Implicational hierarchies in clausal complementation
(PI Susi Wurmbrand). <br>
</p>
<p>We cordially invite you to join us there! The abstract can be
found below.<br>
</p>
<p>Best, <br>
Magdalena Lohninger</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>ABSTRACT:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Complementation strategies,
which refer to the ways in which clauses function as object
arguments of the main clause, exhibit extensive
cross-linguistic variation. Recent typological research has
shown that while languages may differ in how they differentiate
complementation types, the semantic classes of predicates
selecting for the same types of complements remain consistent.
This observation is captured by the Implication Complementation
Hierarchy (ICH) (Wurmbrand & Lohninger, 2019), which
categorizes complement classes into three broad semantic
classes, ‑ Events, Situations, and Propositions, - and further
maps them on different clause sizes to explain their
consistently variable morphosyntax across spoken languages. The
ICH has proven instrumental in explaining the diverse complement
clause markers found in spoken languages, but there is limited
knowledge regarding the applicability of the ICH to sign
language data, despite the accumulating evidence for a diverse
typology of complement clauses in sign languages.</span></p>
<span lang="EN-US">In this talk, I would like to address this issue
by first providing an introduction to sign languages, focusing on
their syntactic complexity. I will then delve into the latest
research on complementation in sign languages. Finally, I will
present my study on different types of complement clauses in the
Sign Language of the Netherlands, where I found that Proposition
complements in this sign language exhibit less variable sign order
patterns compared to Event/Situation complements. Time permitting,
we will also examine the Russian Sign Language data, which
presents a very different way of marking complement types,
characterized by agreement deficiency. The findings from Russian
Sign Language and the Sign Language of the Netherlands confirm the
modality-independent nature of the ICH and sheds light on the
mechanisms underlying the rich typology of complementation
strategies across different languages and modalities.
</span>
<p></p>
</body>
</html>