Universität zu Köln

de Souza Santos, Thiago Bruno ORCID: 0000-0002-5124-0958 (2025). The competition between arguments for prominence in German Sign Language. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

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Abstract

This dissertation investigates the relationship between argument structure, linguistic prominence, and spatial expression in German Sign Language (DGS), focusing on two core phenomena: the use of the person agreement marker (PAM) and the modification of indicating verbs. Through three empirical studies based on corpus data, the thesis explores how morphosyntactic and discourse-level prominence interact in shaping argument marking and tracking strategies in a visual-spatial language. The first study demonstrates that PAM is closely linked to argument competition, particularly when prominence shifts from the subject to the object. While PAM is frequently associated with individuated and affected objects, supporting its role as a Differential Object Marker (DOM), findings also reveal its ability to index both subjects and objects in contexts of low agentivity or ambiguous transitivity. This leads to the proposal that PAM functions more broadly as a Differential Argument Indexing (DAI) strategy, reflecting not only syntactic roles but also semantic and discourse-driven pressures. The second study examines how PAM interacts with other strategies for signaling prominence, including sign order, verb modification, and overt expression of arguments. Results indicate that PAM provides such a strong cue to prominence that it may override or render redundant other marking mechanisms, supporting the view that PAM operates independently within the grammar of DGS while remaining sensitive to argument competition. The third study focuses on the modification of indicating verbs and its relationship to linguistic prominence. Contrary to expectations based on morphosyntactic hierarchies, there is no strong evidence that modification aligns with syntactic prominence. Instead, results suggest that verb modification functions primarily as a discourse-driven referential strategy, used to reintroduce or re-anchor referents in the signing space, especially when they are less accessible in the discourse. This challenges traditional agreement-based models of verb modification and aligns with findings from other sign languages, such as BSL. Together, these studies reveal that argument marking in DGS cannot be fully explained by syntactic hierarchies alone. Instead, it emerges from a dynamic interaction between discourse accessibility, semantic features, and spatial-referential organization. The thesis highlights the role of linguistic prominence as a fluid, multi-layered concept, showing how visual-spatial languages exploit the signing space to encode referents and manage discourse in ways that diverge from spoken language patterns.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code de Souza Santos, Thiago Bruno thiago.santos@fale.ufal.br https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5124-0958 UNSPECIFIED
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-788680
Date:	2025
Place of Publication:	Köln
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Human Sciences
Divisions:	Faculty of Human Sciences > Department Heilpädagogik und Rehabilitation
Subjects:	Language, Linguistics
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language DGS English PAM English Indicating verbs English Prominence English
Date of oral exam:	6 June 2025
Referee:	Name Academic Title Perniss, Pamela Doctor von Heusinger, Klaus Doctor
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/78868