Cover not available
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
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.00018.kim
References (26)
References
Bank, Richard. 2014. The ubiquity of mouthings in NGT. Nijmegen: Radboud University PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Barberà, Gemma. 2012a. A unified account of specificity in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). In Rick Nouwen, Anna Chernilovskaya & Ana Aguilar-Guevara (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 16. Volume 11. 43–55. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics.Google Scholar
. 2012b. The meaning of space in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). Reference, specificity and structure in signed discourse. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Barberà, Gemma & Patricia Cabredo Hofherr. 2017. Backgrounded agents in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): passives, middles, or impersonals? Language 93(4). 767–798. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barberà, Gemma & Josep Quer. 2013. Impersonal reference in Catalan Sign Language (LSC). In Laurence Meurant, Aurélie Sinte, Mieke van Herreweghe & Miriam Vermeerbergen (eds.), Sign language research, uses and practices: Crossing views on theoretical and applied sign language linguistics, 237–258. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Maechler, Ben Bolker & Steve Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67(1). 1–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burkova, Svetlana I. 2012. Uslovnyje kosntruktsii russkogo zhestovogo jazyka [Conditional constructions in Russian Sign Language]. In Olga V. Fedorova (ed.), Russkij zhestovyj jazyk: pervaja lingvisticheskaja konferentsija: sbornik statej, 50–81. Moscow: Buki Vedi.Google Scholar
2015. Russian Sign Language: general information. Russian Sign Language Corpus. Novosibirsk, 2012–2015. Project leader: Svetlana Burkova. [URL]
Burkova, Svetalana I. & Elizaveta V. Filimonova. 2014. Reduplikatsija v russkom zhestovom jazyke [Reduplication in Russian Sign Language]. Russkij yazyk v nauchnom osveshchenii 281. 202–258.Google Scholar
Cabredo Hofherr, Patricia. 2006. ‘Arbitrary’ pro and the theory of pro-drop. In Peter Ackema, Patrick Brandt, Maaike Schoorlemmer & Fred Weerman (eds.), Agreement and arguments, 230–258. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Caponigro, Ivano & Kathryn Davidson. 2011. Ask, and tell as well: clausal question-answer pairs in ASL. Natural Language Semantics 19(4). 323–371. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Kathryn & Deanne Gagne. 2014. Vertical representation of quantifier domains. In Urtzi Etxeberria, Anamaria Fălăuș, Artiz Irurtzun & Bryan Leferman (eds.), Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 18, 110–127. Bayonne and Vitoria-Gasteiz.Google Scholar
Gast, Volker & Johan van der Auwera. 2013. Towards 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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gries, Stefan Th. 2013. Statistics for linguistics with R: a practical introduction (2nd revised edition). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2013. Indefinite 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. 2014. Information structure in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
. 2015. R-impersonals in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Presentation at Workshop on sign languages and R-impersonal pronouns , Paris, February 2015.
. 2017. Quantifiers in Russian Sign Language. In Edward L. Keenan & Denis Paperno (eds.), Handbook of quantifiers in natural languages, vol. 21, 803–855. Berlin: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddell, Scott. 1990. Four 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.Google Scholar
Nyst, Victoria. 2007. A descriptive analysis of Adamorobe Sign Language (Ghana). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Schütze, Carson T. & Jon Sprouse. 2014. Judgment data. In Robert J. Podesva & Devyani Sharma (eds.), Research methods in linguistics, 27–50. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 2008. Impersonalization from a subject-centred vs. agent-centred perspective. Transactions of the Philological Society 1061. 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2011. Overlap and complementarity in reference impersonals: Man constructions vs. third person plural-impersonals in the languages of Europe. In Andrej Malchukov & Anna Siewierska (eds.), Impersonal constructions. A cross-linguistic perspective, 57–90. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siewierska, Anna & Maria Papastathi. 2011. Third person plurals in the languages of Europe: Typological and methodological issues. Linguistics 491. 575–610.Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2016. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL:[URL]
Wilbur, Ronnie B. 1996. Evidence 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.Google Scholar
Cited by (5)

Cited by five other publications

Burkova, Svetlana, Evgeniia Khristoforova & Vadim Kimmelman
2023. Syntactic functions of nonmanuals in Russian Sign Language. In Advances in Sign Language Corpus Linguistics [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 108], ► pp. 90 ff. DOI logo
Khristoforova, Evgeniia
2023. Subject agreement in control and modal constructions in Russian Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 26:1 ► pp. 64 ff. DOI logo
Kimmelman, Vadim
2021. Acceptability Judgments in Sign Linguistics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Syntax, ► pp. 561 ff. DOI logo
Kimmelman, Vadim
2022. Argument Structure in Sign Languages. Annual Review of Linguistics 8:1 ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo
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. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 december 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.