Cover not available
Article published In:
Sign Language & Linguistics
Vol. 26:1 (2023) ► pp.64–116

Subject agreement in control and modal constructions in Russian Sign Language

Implications for the hierarchy of person features

ORCID logo | University of Amsterdam

The present research combines three fields of inquiry in sign language linguistics: verbal agreement, person features, and syntactic complexity. These topics have previously been addressed in isolation, but little is known about their interaction. This study attempts to fill this gap by investigating subject agreement in complement clauses in Russian Sign Language. By means of corpus investigation and grammaticality judgments, I found that subject agreement in clausal complements of the control predicates try, love, want, begin, and modal can may be deficient – in particular, it can be reduced to the forms identical to first-person marking even in the case of a third-person subject controller. Deficient subject agreement in complement clauses is thus reminiscent of non-finite verbal forms in spoken languages. I further argue that the choice of first-person forms in deficient agreement reveals a default status of first person in sign languages, which is consistent with proposals regarding the modality-specific properties of first-person reference in these languages.

Keywords: verbal agreement, person feature, complement clause, control clause, finiteness, sign language, Russian Sign Language
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Person feature system in sign languages
    • 2.2Verbal agreement in sign languages: A modality-independent approach
    • 2.3Subordination in sign languages and beyond
      • 2.3.1Subordination in spoken languages
      • 2.3.2Subordination in sign languages
    • 2.4Complement clauses in Russian Sign Language
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Stimuli
      • I.Baseline incorrect sentences
      • II.Agreement in simple clauses
      • III.Deficient vs. full subject agreement in control complement clauses
      • IV.Deficient vs. full subject agreement in constructions with modal and phasal predicates
      • V.Subject agreement in constructions with first-person embedded object
      • VI.Deficient vs. full subject agreement in impersonal constructions with modals
    • 3.3Procedure
    • 3.4Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Agreement in non-embedded contexts
    • 4.2Subject agreement in control constructions
    • 4.3Subject agreement in constructions with can and begin
    • 4.4Subject agreement in constructions with first-person objects
    • 4.5Subject agreement in impersonal constructions with modals
    • 4.6Interim summary
  • 5.Formal analysis
    • 5.1Hierarchy of the person feature system
    • 5.2Deficient subject agreement in control complement clauses: default first-person feature analysis
    • 5.3Constructions with modal can
      • 5.3.1Subject agreement in constructions with can
      • 5.3.2A note on impersonal constructions with can
  • 6.Discussion
    • 6.1Insights from typology
      • 6.1.1Agreement deficiency in control clauses: Hebrew
      • 6.1.2Finite control and (hyper)raising: Greek and Brazilian Portuguese
    • 6.2Modality-specific properties of the person feature system in sign languages
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 6 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.21005.khr
References
Ackema, Peter & Ad Neeleman
2018 Features of person: From the inventory of persons to their morphological realization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mark C.
2013 Agreement and Case. In Marcel den Dikken (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of Generative syntax, 607–654. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barberà, Gemma & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr
2018 Impersonal human reference in sign languages: Introduction and questionnaire. Sign Language & Linguistics 21(2). 183–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker
2015 Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Benveniste, Emile
1966 La nature des pronoms. In Problemes de linguistique generale, 251–257. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Boeckx, Cedric & Norbert Hornstein
2004 Movement under control. Linguistic Inquiry 35(3). 431–452. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boeckx, Cedric, Norbert Hornstein & Jairo Nunes
2010 Control as movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bošković, Željko
2013 Principles and Parameters theory and Minimalism. In Marcel den Dikken (ed.), Cambridge handbook of Generative syntax, 95–121. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brentari, Diane
1998 A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bross, Fabian
2020 The clausal syntax of German Sign Language. Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Brunelli, Michele
2011 Antisymmetry and sign languages: A comparison between NGT and LIS. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation. Utrecht: LOT.
Burkova, Svetlana
2012 Russian Sign Language Corpus [Electronic Resource] 2015 2012 [URL]
Chomsky, Noam
1981 Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.Google Scholar
1995 The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
2000 Minimalist inquiries: The framework. In Roger Martin, David Michaels, Juan Uriagereka & Samuel Jay Keyser (eds.), Step by step. Essays on Minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
2001 Derivation by phase. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.), Ken Hale: A life in language, 1–52. Cambridge. MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo
1999 Adverbs and functional heads: a cross-linguistic perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
CLARIN-NL, TDS Curator
2012 Free personal pronoun system. Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corbett, Greville G.
2006 Agreement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Costello, Brendan
2015 Language and modality. Effects of the use of space in the agreement system of lengua de signos española (Spanish Sign Language). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.
Cristofaro, Sonia
2003 Subordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
De Beuzeville, Louise, Trevor Johnston & Adam C. Schembri
2009 The use of space with indicating verbs in Auslan: A corpus-based investigation. Sign Language & Linguistics 12(1). 53–82. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Leeuw, Joshua R.
2015 jsPsych: A JavaScript library for creating behavioral experiments in a Web browser. Behavior research methods 47(1). 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth
1993 Space in Danish Sign Language. The semantics and morphosyntax of the use of space in a visual language. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar
Fedden, Sebastian
2019 To agree or not to agree? – A typology of sporadic agreement. In Matthew Baerman, Oliver Bond & Andrew Hippisley (eds.), Morphological perspectives: Papers in honour of Greville G. Corbett, 303–326. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenger, Paula
2018 How impersonal does one get? The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21(3). 291–325. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenlon, Jordan, Kensy Cooperrider, Jon Keane, Diane Brentari & Susan Goldin-Meadow
2019 Comparing sign language and gesture: Insights from pointing. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 4(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenlon, Jordan, Adam Schembri & Kearsy Cormier
2018 Modification of indicating verbs in British Sign Language: A corpus-based study. Language (1). 84–118. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferreira Brito, Lucinda
1990 Epistemic, alethic, and deontic modalities in a Brazilian Sign Language. In Susan Fischer & Patricia Siple (eds.), Theoretical issues in sign language research. Vol.1: Linguistics, 229–260. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ferreira, Marcelo
2000 Argumentos nulos em português brasileiro. Campinas: Universidade Estadual de Campinas MA thesis. DOI logo
2004 Hyperraising and null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 47: Collected Papers on Romance Syntax, 57–85.Google Scholar
2009 Null subjects and finite control in Brazilian Portuguese. In Jairo Nunes (ed.), Minimalist essays on Brazilian Portuguese syntax, 17–49. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Lynn A.
1975 Space, time, and person reference in American Sign Language. Language 51(4). 940–961. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geraci Carlo, Carlo Cecchetto & Sandro Zucchi
2008 Sentential complementation in Italian Sign Language. In Michael Grosvald & Dionne Soares (eds.), Proceedings of the 38th Western Conference on Linguistics, 46–58.Google Scholar
Geraci, Carlo & Valentina Aristodemo
2016 An in-depth tour into sentential complementation in Italian Sign Language. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Annika Herrmann (eds.), A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages, 95–150. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Göksel, Aslı & Meltem Kelepir
2016 Observations on clausal complementation in Turkish Sign Language. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Annika Herrmann (eds.), A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages, 65–95. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Alec Marantz
1993 Distributed Morphology and the pieces of inflection. In Kenneth Hale & Samuel Keyser (eds.), The view from building 20: Essays in honor of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Harley, Heidi & Elizabeth Ritter
2002 Person and number in pronouns: A feature-geometric analysis. Language 781. 482–526. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hauser, Charlotte
2020 Subordination in LSF: Nominal and sentential embedding. Paris: Université de Paris PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert & Maria Polinsky
(eds.) 2010 Movement theory of control. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Joseph, Brian
1983 The synchrony and diachrony of the Balkan infinitive. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, David
1989 Demonstratives. In Joseph Almog, John Perry & Howard Wettstein (eds.), Themes from Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L.
1976 Towards a universal definition of ‘subject’. In Charles N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 303–333. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Khristoforova, Evgeniia
2020 Complement clauses in Russian Sign Languages. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam MA thesis.
Khristoforova, Evgeniia & Vadim Kimmelman
2021 Question-answer pairs in Russian Sign Language: a corpus study. FEAST. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory 41. 101–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kimmelman, Vadim
2012 Word order in Russian Sign Language: An extended report. Linguistics in Amsterdam 5(1). 1–51.Google Scholar
2018 Impersonal reference in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Sign Language & Linguistics 21(2). 204–231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2021 Acceptability judgments in sign languages. In Grant Goodall (ed.), Cambridge handbook of experimental syntax, 561–584. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klomp, Ulrika
2021 A descriptive grammar of Sign Language of the Netherlands. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation. Utrecht: LOT.
Kwok, Lily, Stephanie Berk & Diane Lillo-Martin
2020 Person vs. locative agreement: Evidence from late learners and language emergence. Sign Language & Linguistics 23(1–2). 17–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landau, Idan
2004 The scale of finiteness and the calculus of control. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 22(4). 811–877. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Control in generative grammar: A research companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lehmann, Christian
1988 On the function of agreement. In Michael Barlow & Charles A. Ferguson (eds.), Agreement in natural language, 55–65. Stanford, CA: CSLI.Google Scholar
Legeland, Iris
2016 Agree or not? Congruentie in de Nederlandse Gebarentaal: Een corpusgebaseerd onderzoek [Agree or not? Agreement in Sign Language of the Netherlands: A corpus-based study]. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam BA thesis.
Liddell, Scott K.
2003 Grammar, gesture, and meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lillo-Martin, Diane & Richard P. Meier
2011 On the linguistic status of ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Theoretical Linguistics 37(3/4). 95–141. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lourenço, Guilherme & Ronnie B. Wilbur
2018 Are plain verbs really plain?: Co-localization as the agreement marker in sign languages. FEAST. Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory 21. 68–81. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lüdecke, Daniel
2021 sjPlot: Data visualization for statistics in social science. R package version 2.8.10, [URL]
Mathur, Gaurav & Christian Rathmann
2012 Verb agreement. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language: An international handbook, 136–157. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meier, Richard P.
1990 Person deixis in American Sign Language. In Susan D. Fischer & Patricia Siple (eds.), Theoretical issues in sign language research. Vol.1: Linguistics, 175–190. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meier, Richard P. & Diane Lillo-Martin
2010 Does spatial make it special? On the grammar of pointing signs in American Sign Language. In Donna B. Gerdts, John C. Moore & Maria Polinsky (eds.), Hypothesis A/hypothesis B: Linguistic explorations in honor of David M. Perlmutter, 345–360. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Meir, Irit
1998 Thematic structure and verb agreement in Israeli Sign Language. Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem PhD dissertation.
2002 A cross-modality perspective on verb agreement. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 20(2). 413–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit, Carol A. Padden, Mark Aronoff & Wendy Sandler
2007 Body as subject. Journal of Linguistics 43(3). 531–563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miyagawa, Shigeru
2011 Optionality. In Cedric Boeckx (ed.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic minimalism, 354–376. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Moltmann, Friederike
2006 Generic one, arbitrary PRO, and the first person. Natural Language Semantics 141. 257–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Napoli, Donna J. & Rachel Sutton-Spence
2014 Order of the major constituents in sign languages: Implications for all language. Frontiers in Psychology 51. 376. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neidle, Carol, Judy Kegl, Benjamin Bahan, Dawn MacLaughlin & Robert G. Lee
2000 The syntax of American Sign Language: Functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nevins, Andrew
2011 Prospects and challenges for a clitic analysis of (A)SL agreement. Theoretical Linguistics 371. 173–187. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Noonan, Michael
1985 Complementation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 2: Complex constructions, 42–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
2007 Complementation. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol.2: Complex constructions (2nd edition), 52–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nunes, Jairo
2008 Inherent case as a licensing condition for A-movement: The case of hyper-raising constructions in Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics 7(2). 83–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oomen, Marloes
2017 Iconicity in argument structure: Psych-verbs in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Sign Language & Linguistics 20(1). 55–108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2020 Iconicity as a mediator between verb semantics and morphosyntactic structure: A corpus-based study on verbs in German Sign Language. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD Dissertation. Utrecht: LOT.
Oomen, Marloes & Vadim Kimmelman
2019 Body-anchored verbs and argument omission in two sign languages. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 4(1). 42. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Padden, Carol
1988 Interaction of morphology and syntax in American Sign Language. New York, NY: Garland.Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer
2007 On the syntax of negation and modals in Catalan Sign Language and German Sign Language. In Pamela Perniss, Roland Pfau & Markus Steinbach (eds.), Visible variation. Comparative studies on sign language structure, 129–161. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfau, Roland, Martin Salzmann & Markus Steinbach
2018 The syntax of sign language agreement: Common ingredients, but unusual recipe. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3(1). 107. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pfau, Roland, Markus Steinbach & Annika Herrmann
(eds.) 2016 A matter of complexity: Subordination in sign languages. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polinsky, Maria
2017 When person agreement and binding go their separate ways: Generic second person pronoun in Russian. Ms., University of Maryland.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian & Anna Roussou
2003 Syntactic change: A Minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rodrigues, Cilene
2002 Morphology and null subjects in Brazilian Portuguese. In David Lightfoot (ed.), Syntactic effects of morphological change, 160–178. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2004 Impoverished morphology and A-movement out of Case domains. College Park, MD: University of Maryland PhD dissertation.
Sandler, Wendy & Diane Lillo-Martin
2006 Sign language and linguistic universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sauerland, Uli
2008 On the semantic markedness of phi-features. In Daniel Harbour, David Adger & Susana Béjar (eds.), Phi theory: Phi-features across modules and interfaces, 57–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schembri, Adam, Kearsy Cormier & Jordan Fenlon
2018 Indicating verbs as typologically unique constructions: Reconsidering verb ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 3(1). 89. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schütze, Carson T. & Jon Sprouse
2014 Judgment data. In Devyani Sharma & Robert J. Podesva (eds.), Research methods in linguistics, 27–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shlonsky, Ur
2009 Hebrew as a partial null-subject language. Studia Linguistica 63(1). 133–157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Wayne Henry
1989 The morphological characteristics of verbs in Taiwan Sign Language. Indiana University PhD dissertation.
Terzi, Arhonto
1997 PRO and null case in finite clauses. The Linguistic Review 141. 335–360. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tvica, Seid
2017 Agreement and verb movement: The Rich Agreement Hypothesis from a typological perspective. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation. Utrecht: LOT.
Van Bedem, Neeltje
2006 Modale werkwoorden in de Nederlandse Gebarentaal: De semantiek en syntactische distributie van moeten, kunnen en willen [Modal verbs in Sign Language of the Netherlands: The semantics and syntactic distribution of must, can and want ]. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam BA thesis.
Van Gijn, Ingeborg C.
2004 The quest for syntactic dependency. Sentential complementation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B.
1996 Evidence for the function and structure of wh-clefts in American Sign Language. International Review of Sign Linguistics 11. 209–256.Google Scholar
Wilcox, Sherman & Phyllis Wilcox
1995 The gestural expression of modality in ASL. In Joan L. Bybee & Suzanne Fleischman (eds.), Modality in grammar and discourse, 135–162. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wurmbrand, Susi
1999 Modal verbs must be raising verbs. In Sonya Bird, Andrew Carnie, Jason D. Haugen & Peter Norquest (eds.), Proceedings of the 18th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 18(1). 599–612. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Zeijlstra, Hedde
2015 Let’s talk about you and me. Journal of Linguistics 51(2). 465–500. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwitserlood, Inge
2012 Classifiers. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language: An international handbook, 158–186. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
video

Video - Figure 1a

Video - Figure 1b

Video - Example 16b

Video - Example 18

Video - Example 19c