The morphosyntax of verbs of motion in serial constructions: a crosslinguistic study in three signed languages

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the structural properties of serial verb constructions (SVC) in three sign languages: LSA (Lengua de Señas Argentina, Argentinean Sign Language), LSC (Llengua de Signes Catalana, Catalan Sign Language) and ASL (American Sign Language).
The paper presents new data from LSA and LSC, which make it clear that certain restrictions shown to take place in ASL do not hold in those languages, while others do. The paper also provides evidence that SVCs constitute one clausal unit, with a single inflectional system, and provides a vPshell based structural analysis that accounts for the similarities found in the three languages and also parameterizes the variation found. The crosslinguistic parameterization is based on (i) the headedness properties of functional projections, (ii) the range of syntactic operations available on the corresponding structures, and (iii) the range of permissible outputs, under a Copy Theory of Movement.
This paper, thus, contributes to show the range of variation among sign languages and underlines the need for a better understanding of such variation before serious claims of modality effects can be made.