Chapter 5. A corpus-based analysis of coordinate structures in Libras

Abstract

This chapter describes coordination processes in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) based on data from the Libras Corpus . Similar to other sign languages (e.g., Tang & Lau 2012; Zorzi 2018), coordinate structures in Libras are organized by juxtaposing one to the other, either marked only by nonmanual markers, or through connectors such as but, or, is (with a value of “that is”), also, or a combination of manual and nonmanual markers. After annotating the data for each sign for both hands, we annotated the syntactic units and then identified the coordinated sentences using ELAN. We find that use of nonmanual markers is especially prevalent, in both conjunctive and disjunctive structures, establishing prosodic boundaries and clauses limits. In adversative coordinate clauses, manual connectors such as mas (“but”) are used, and we attest to a small number of occurrences of nonmanual markers with adversatives.