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 ixpl, and probably a
second-person pronoun ix2 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.
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Barberà, Gemma
2012bThe meaning of space in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). Reference, specificity and structure in signed discourse. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra PhD dissertation.
Barberà, Gemma & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
2017Backgrounded agents in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): passives, middles, or impersonals?Language 93(4). 767–798.
Barberà, Gemma & Josep Quer
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2013Towards 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.
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2013Statistics for linguistics with R: a practical introduction (2nd revised edition). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
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2013Indefinite pronouns. In Matthew S. Dryer & Martin Haspelmath (eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at [URL], accessed on 2017-08-17).
Kimmelman, Vadim
2014Information structure in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.
Kimmelman, Vadim
2015R-impersonals in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Presentation at
Workshop on sign languages and R-impersonal pronouns
, Paris, February 2015.
Kimmelman, Vadim
2017Quantifiers in Russian Sign Language. In Edward L. Keenan & Denis Paperno (eds.), Handbook of quantifiers in natural languages, vol. 21, 803–855. Berlin: Springer.
Liddell, Scott
1990Four functions of a locus: Re-examining the structure of space in ASL. In Ceil Lucas (ed.), Sign language research: theoretical issues, 176–198. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.
Nyst, Victoria
2007A descriptive analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.
Schütze, Carson T. & Jon Sprouse
2014Judgment data. In Robert J. Podesva & Devyani Sharma (eds.), Research methods in linguistics, 27–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Siewierska, Anna
2008Impersonalization from a subject-centred vs. agent-centred perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society 1061. 1–23.
2011Third person plurals in the languages of Europe: Typological and methodological issues. Linguistics 491. 575–610.
R Core Team
2016R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL:[URL]
Wilbur, Ronnie B.
1996Evidence for the function and structure of wh-clefts in American Sign Language. In William Edmondson & Ronnie B. Wilbur (eds.), International review of sign linguistics, 209–256. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
2021. Acceptability Judgments in Sign Linguistics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 561 ff.
Kimmelman, Vadim
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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