A categoria de posse na língua de sinais brasileira em uma perspectiva tipológica

Abstract

This study is a descriptive analysis of the expression of possession in Brazilian Sign Language (Libras) from a typological perspective. Linguistic typology, as an approach to the study of human language, highlights the wide range of manifestations in the systems that constitute languages. A broad view of different languages and their comparison allows us to recognize actual tendencies of manifestation and the predictability of certain parameters in natural languages. Observing data from diverse languages helps reduce biases and enables a more open perspective when analyzing categories that are still little described in a specific language. Possession is a complex domain present in all languages worldwide, which can be defined as a biocultural domain arising from the relationship between a human being and their kin, body parts, material belongings, and cultural or intellectual products. From a syntactic standpoint, possession can be expressed in two ways: predicative and attributive possession (Baldi & Nuti, 2010; Herslund & Baron, 2001; Seiler, 2001). The general objective of this research is to describe attributive and predicative possession in Libras. The specific goals are: (i) to describe the strategies of possession available in Libras, (ii) to identify pronominal and lexical signs that express possession, (iii) to describe articulatory and syntactic patterns related to possessive constructions, and (iv) to identify signs that, although prototypically related to possession, encode other properties. The corpus comprises (i) videos from the Libras Corpus; (ii) field observations; (iii) social media videos; and (iv) a personal video database. Data were analyzed using the EUDICO Linguistic Annotator (ELAN) software and Excel. Results show that attributive possession occurs through (i) possessive pronouns with IX, B, and P handshapes; (ii) juxtaposition; and (iii) the use of signing space. There is a distinct distribution between pronoun form and discourse person: pronouns with IX and P handshapes are broadly distributed, whereas the B handshape pronoun is restricted to first-person singular. Juxtaposition-based possession seems to follow a head-modifier construction, in which the possessor is articulated after the possessed, maintaining the prevalent possessed–possessor order. Directionality in the predicates IR (‘go’) and SINAL (‘sign’) suggests the identification of the possessor through signing space, making the use of pronouns unnecessary. Regarding predicative possession, four signs were identified in which the argument structure encodes entities in a possessive relation. Three of them—TER (‘have’), POSITIVO (‘positive’), and PRÓPRIO (‘own’)—function as predicates that select possessor and possessed arguments. The sign PRÓPRIO, although glossed as ‘own,’ appears as a lexical item linked to possession, with residual semantics of another kind. In Libras, PRÓPRIO may function as a verb within a sentence, establishing the relation between possessor and possessed. The fourth construction consists of (É)-pronoun, where the verb is omitted, selecting the possessed argument from a notion of state involving the participant. We conclude that further research is needed, with an expanded corpus to enable more robust generalizations. This study contributes to a better understanding of the forms and functions of possession in Libras, while also raising reflections on linguistic universals, both intramodal and intermodal.