L’expression de l’aspect dans dix langues des signes

This article presents a cross-linguistic study of the expression of aspect in ten sign languages of various geographical origins. For each language, video data were collected from five deaf adults. The series of examples derived from this data is used to illustrate our purpose and to extract the manual and body markers specific to the four selected aspects (habitual, progressive, punctual and completed). Our observations reveal slight differences between languages, notably for some facial expressions with aspectual value, but above all they show the great similarity in the ways aspect is expressed, whatever the language used. This supports the hypothesis that the world’s sign languages are rooted in the same iconicisation process, based on the perceptual-practical experience of deaf signers.