[UMR] Mirko Santoro (Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS-ENS-EHESS)

Sign languages, as Spoken languages, have sequential compounds like  in ASL EAT(FOOD)^NOON (lunch), but differently from them they also have simultaneous compounds. roughly two signs co-articulated at the same time.

The typology of lexical signs is quite rich (core signs, classifiers, initialized forms and fingerspelling). In principle each of these forms may give rise to compounds.

In the talk I will present a detailed overview of how compounding works in LSF, showing that both sequential and simultaneous compounds are well attested.

I also claim that SASS classifiers involved into compounds are independents lexical units rather than affixes (as argued by Sandler 2010). Furthermore, I present experimental results showing that LSF simultaneous and sequential compounds are perceived differently, and the phonological criterion is not sufficient criterion to identify them (as argued by Klima and Bellugi 1979). I argue that the different perception of simultaneous and sequential compounds is due a different morphological derivation.