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
Special issue articles

Impersonal reference in Russian Sign Language (RSL)

| University of Amsterdam

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.

Keywords: impersonal reference, Russian Sign Language, pro-drop
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
Published online: 22 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.00018.kim
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