Word order in the context of extensional and intensional events in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS)

This study examines the impact of the semantics of events and their participants on syntax (word order) in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS), replicating and extending findings on other sign languages (Napoli et al. 2017). We tested the hypothesis that in the visual modality, intensional and extensional events are preferentially expressed by different word orders: verbs expressing an intensional event are preferred before the object and verbs expressing an extensional event are preferred after the object. To test this pattern for ÖGS and whether animacy of the object argument contributes to these preferences, Deaf signers were asked to sign transitive relations involving extensional and intensional events in non-reversible and reversible contexts. Results indicate systematic differences between verb types. Subject-object-verb order (SOV), the basic ÖGS word order, was preferred for extensional events, while subject-verb-object order (SVO) was more prevalent with intensional events, which also showed more complex structures. Unlike prior research, we did not find a preference for SVO orders due to argument reversibility, which had been suggested to reflect iconicity in the visual modality. We reconsider how extensional/ intensional are traditionally defined and suggest that while both are relevant to word order decisions in ÖGS, imputed iconicity loses any explanatory value it might have had if the stimuli more narrowly compared creation and non-creation verbs.