Special issue articles
Impersonal reference in Russian Sign Language (RSL)
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 & Van der Auwera
2013), and do not show obvious modality effects (such as described by Barberà &
Quer 2013). 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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Cited by
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Burkova, Svetlana, Evgeniia Khristoforova & Vadim Kimmelman
Kimmelman, Vadim
2021.
Acceptability Judgments in Sign Linguistics. In
The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax,
► pp. 561 ff.

2022.
Argument Structure in Sign Languages.
Annual Review of Linguistics 8:1
► pp. 19 ff.

Kimmelman, Vadim, Vanja de Lint, Connie de Vos, Marloes Oomen, Roland Pfau, Lianne Vink & Enoch O. Aboh
2019.
Argument Structure of Classifier Predicates: Canonical and Non-canonical Mappings in Four Sign Languages.
Open Linguistics 5:1
► pp. 332 ff.

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