Nominal-internal word order in Hong Kong Sign Language and Cantonese: A Comparative Study

This comparative study aims to verify if the nominal-internal word order patterns of HKSL and Cantonese are accountable based on Universal 20 (Cinque’s 2005 version), just as has been discussed for other sign languages (e.g. Zhang 2007 on TSL, Mantovan and Geraci 2017 on LIS). Word order patterns of Cantonese have been documented in previous research. As for HKSL, we extracted data from 90 minutes of free conversations in HKSL to identify the patterns. The data came from 2 dyads of native Deaf signers of HKSL. Among the 4281 tokens of nominal word orders extracted, the majority are pronominals (e.g. pointing signs; 44%, 1872 tokens), bare nouns (16%, 696 tokens), bare/modified proper nouns or kinship terms (9%, 374 tokens), modified nouns (12%, 531 tokens) and other constructions (e.g. bare adjectives, bare quantifiers; 19%, 808 tokens). This study bases its analysis on the 12% of modified noun phrases with simple nominals (11%, 472 tokens), i.e. tokens with an overt head noun and at least one of any of the three modifiers: Dem, Num, Adj, excluding those involving a classifier expression. Results reveal that the word order patterns observed in HKSL as well as Cantonese align with the 14 attested patterns as stated in Cinque’s 2005 version of Universal 20; they also correspond to the patterns found in TSL and LIS.1