Abstract We investigate transitivity prominence of verbs across signed and spoken languages, based on data from both valency dictionaries and corpora. Our methodology relies on the assumption that dictionary data and corpus-based measures of transitivity are comparable, and we find evidence in support of this through the direct comparison of these two types of data across several spoken languages. For the signed modality, we measure the transitivity prominence of verbs in five sign languages based on corpus data and compare the results to the transitivity prominence hierarchy for spoken languages reported in Haspelmath (2015). For each sign language, we create a hierarchy for 12 verb meanings based on the proportion of overt direct objects per verb meaning. We use these hierarchies to calculate correlations between languages – both signed and spoken – and find positive correlations between transitivity hierarchies. Additional findings of this study include the observation that locative arguments seem to behave differently than direct objects judging by our measures of transitivity, and that relatedness among sign languages does not straightforwardly imply similarity in transitivity hierarchies. We conclude that our findings provide support for a modality-independent, semantic basis of transitivity.

中文翻译：

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模式内和模式间的及物性突出

摘要我们基于化合价词典和语料库的数据，研究了动词在手语和口语中的及物性突出。我们的方法论基于这样的假设，即字典数据和基于语料库的及物性度量是可比较的，并且我们通过跨几种口语对这两种类型的数据进行直接比较来找到支持这一点的证据。对于签名方式，我们基于语料数据测量五种手势语中动词的及物性突出，并将结果与​​Haspelmath（2015）中报道的口语的及物性突出层次进行比较。对于每种手语，我们将根据每个动词含义中公开的直接宾语的比例为12个动词含义创建层次结构。我们使用这些层次结构来计算语言之间的相关性（包括手语和口语），并找到可传递性层次结构之间的正相关性。这项研究的其他发现包括观察到，根据我们的可及性标准，定位论点的行为似乎与直接宾语不同，并且手语之间的相关性并不直接暗示可及性层次结构的相似性。我们得出结论，我们的发现为与形式无关的，可及性的语义基础提供了支持。手语之间的相关性并不直接暗示在传递性层次结构中的相似性。我们得出结论，我们的发现为与形式无关的，可及性的语义基础提供了支持。手语之间的相关性并不直接暗示在传递性层次结构中的相似性。我们得出结论，我们的发现为与形式无关的，可及性的语义基础提供了支持。