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Part of
Advances in Sign Language Corpus Linguistics
Edited by Ella Wehrmeyer
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 108] 2023
► pp. 90–122

Chapter 4
Syntactic functions of nonmanuals in Russian Sign Language

| Institute of Linguistics of the Russian Academy of Sciences
| University of Amsterdam
| University of Bergen

This chapter presents the Russian Sign Language (RSL) Corpus and demonstrates its capabilities as a research tool by summarizing three corpus-based studies primarily focused on syntactic functions of nonmanual markers. The first study considers question marking in regular wh-questions and in question-answer pairs. It shows that the two constructions have very different nonmanual markers. The second study analyzes marking of topics in RSL, and shows that nonmanual markers of topics are typologically common, but are infrequent in naturalistic corpus data. The third study investigates conditional and concessive constructions in RSL. It demonstrates that these constructions make extensive and frequent use of nonmanual markers, but that no single marker is specialized for the function of expressing conditional or concessive meaning. Instead, complex combinations of multiple markers are employed in these constructions. All three studies also contribute to sign language typology by providing novel descriptions of syntactic and discourse phenomena in RSL.

Keywords: Russian Sign Language, nonmanuals, questions, topics, conditionals, concessives
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The Russian Sign Language Corpus
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Recordings and conditions of filming
    • 2.3Technical capabilities
    • 2.4Annotations and types of markups
    • 2.5Access
    • 2.6Overview of corpus-based publications
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Case study 1: Wh-questions
    • 4.1Regular wh-questions
      • 4.1.1Position of wh-signs
      • 4.1.2Nonmanual markers of wh-questions and their scope
    • 4.2Question-answer pairs
      • 4.2.1Two types of QAPs in RSL
      • 4.2.2Position of wh-signs and nonmanual markers in two types of QAPs
      • 4.2.3Towards formal analysis of QAPs in RSL
  • 5.Case study 2: Topic marking
  • 6.Case study 3: Conditional and concessive constructions
    • 6.1Conditionals
    • 6.2Concessives
  • 7.Summary and conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 3 April 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.108.04bur
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