Construções recíprocas em Língua Brasileira de Sinais

Abstract

A reciprocal construction, by definition, “denotes an eventuality that involves reciprocity between its participants” and reciprocal verbs usually bear a specific morphological marking (Siloni, 2008, p.452). In this dissertation, we aim at investigating the strategies employed by Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) to express reciprocity, whether they are grammatical or lexical. Reciprocal constructions have already been described in different signed languages (Fischer; Gough, 1978; Pfau; Steinbach, 2003; Zeshan; Panda, 2011; Kubus; Hohenberger, 2013), including in Libras (Ferreira, 2021; Pizzio et al., 2023), however, these studies focus more on reciprocalization strategies (grammatical) than on lexical strategy. Therefore, in this research, we will broaden this debate by describing the lexical strategy for expressing reciprocity in Libras, the use of inherently reciprocal verbs. This group of verbs presents an interesting pattern regarding the number of hands and the type of movement. All the inherently reciprocal verbs in Libras are bimanual, and we argue that this property reflects a semantic (iconic, actually) mapping between each of the hands and a participant in the event. Regarding the patterns of movement, we note two main types of movement: i) simple (or repetitive) movement and ii) alternating movement. The difference between these two types of movement reflects an important semantic distinction related to symmetry of reciprocal events in Libras. Additionally, we analyzed reciprocal constructions in Libras, based on data from the Libras Corpus (Quadros et al., 2020). Therefore, we aim at identifying occurrences of reciprocal constructions with inherently reciprocal verbs and occurrences of reciprocalized constructions, from which we will describe the reciprocalization strategies in Libras, namely: i) phonological feature copy onto the non-dominant hand; ii) conversion of movement (simultaneous or sequential) and iii) H2 decoupling.