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Article published In: Impersonal human reference in Sign Languages
Edited by Gemma Barberà and Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
[Sign Language & Linguistics 21:2] 2018
► pp. 204–231

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Special issue articles

Impersonal reference in Russian Sign Language (RSL)

 | University of Amsterdam
Published online: 22 March 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.00018.kim
Abstract
This paper contains the first description of impersonal reference in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Impersonal reference has been investigated using a variety of elicitation techniques. It has been found that RSL uses a variety of strategies, namely pro-drop, an indefinite pronoun someone, a plural pronoun ix pl, and probably a second-person pronoun ix 2 in impersonal contexts. The impersonal strategies in RSL follow the general typological tendencies previously identified for spoken languages (Gast, Volker & Johan van der Auwera. 2013. Towards a distributional typology of human impersonal pronouns, based on data from European languages. In Dik Bakker & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), Languages across boundaries. Studies in memory of Anna Siewierska, 31–56. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), and do not show obvious modality effects (such as described by Barberà, Gemma & Josep Quer. 2013. Impersonal reference in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). In Laurence Meurant, Aurélie Sinte, Mieke van Herreweghe & Miriam Vermeerbergen (eds.), Sign language research, uses and practices: Crossing views on theoretical and applied sign language linguistics, 237–258. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Some impersonal strategies show evidence of influence of spoken/written Russian in the form of borrowing and/or code-switching.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Impersonal reference in spoken and sign languages
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Impersonal strategies
    • 4.1Pro-drop
    • 4.2The indefinite pronoun
    • 4.3 ix pl
    • 4.4 ix 2
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Impersonal strategies on the semantic map
    • 5.2The role of modality
    • 5.3Contact with Russian
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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2021. Acceptability Judgments in Sign Linguistics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 561 ff. DOI logo
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Charpentier, Myriam
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