The Verbal System of Catalan Sign Language (LSC)

Abstract

This article describes the predicative verbal system of Catalan Sign Language (LSC) as it is used by Deaf people in the province of Barcelona. We also present a historical perspective of the research on this topic, which provides insight into the changes that have taken place over the last few decades in sign language linguistics. The principal differences between these languages and oral ones include the visual character of their linguistic units and the use of the space in front of the signer (neutral space) to describe events of the real world. This space is broadly exploited in the verb structure, which constitutes a complex gestural form that accumulates most of the information in the sentence and the discourse as a whole. For this reason, since the 1970s, descriptions of these verb systems have attracted the attention of numerous researchers.