Part of
The Typology of Physical QualitiesEdited by Ekaterina Rakhilina, Tatiana Reznikova and Daria Ryzhova
[Typological Studies in Language 133] 2022
► pp. 289–308
The paper describes several expressions of physical qualities (namely, sharp, blunt, old, thick-wide, and thin-narrow) in Russian Sign Language (RSL) from a lexical typological perspective. This is the first study to analyse a sign language from the standpoint of the MLexT framework. The results show that RSL structures the aforementioned domains on the same grounds as spoken languages. This finding strongly supports the hypothesis that lexical systems are cognitively motivated. At the same time, RSL exhibits a number of non-trivial lexicalization strategies, which are not accidental but can be explained by the fact that this language is produced in the visual modality.