Morphosyntax

Verb agreement. Turning to the grammatical processes associated with the availability of a functional projection above the VP, the IP, the analysis reveals that verb inflection is productive in file 1. Hamida produces several agreement verbs in this narrative. These include the verb look-at, as in examples (254a,b). Notice that the verbs are modulated differently, that is, in (254a) the tips of the fingers are directed toward the top (to express the frog’s looking upwards), whereas in (254b) the sign is directed toward a location in front of the signer. No object is specified in these sequences, nor do the verbs pick up loci established before. Hence, the activities described remain generic, although the audience familiarised with the book might infer that the sequences refer to the episode in which the frog and the dog look at each other. Referential ambiguity, as we will see below in the section dedicated to the syntax-discourse interface, represents a recurrent phenomenon in this file. There are, however, examples of unambiguous referential identity such as (255): the locus associated with the frog family, picked up at a location toward the centre of the sign space, at the bottom (slightly to the right), is also picked up by the verb wave to agree with the object.

Spatial verbs. Hamida produces several constructions with the verb fall (compare example (256c)). Owing to her preferred use of shifted referential frameworks to describe the character’s activities, their motion, too, is often described in the context of POVs, whereby the body is used as a classifier. Notice that in (256) Hamida uses fixed and shifted perspectives to provide a detailed description of the narrative episode concerning the boy and the dog’s falling (no location is specified). This combination of FRFs and SRFs is typical of this narrative, as we can also see in (257). In this sequence, Hamida recounts that the deer is nervous and cross (recall that the boy has fallen on his neck), jumps up and runs away.