In this paper, basic verb classes and argument structure alternations in Russian Sign Language (RSL) are described, and the implications of these data for the theory of argument structure are discussed. The analysis is based on data elicited using a list of 80 verbal meanings from the Valency Classes in World’s Languages project (
In this study, I provide a first basic description of argument structure in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Argument structure is one of the most well researched topics in linguistics. It has been at the centre of descriptive and typological as well as theoretical research (
In order to introduce the purpose of this study in more detail, I first provide an overview of previous research on argument structure in sign languages, and then discuss two general questions for which the data from sign languages (including RSL) can provide relevant evidence.
Until now, argument structure in sign languages has not been studied in a systematic manner (see
A number of studies on various sign languages were devoted to specific argument structure alternations. Passive or passive-like structures have been described (
An important topic that is discussed by various authors (even if not as the main research question of their studies) is the relation between argument structure and verb classes (
Finally, quite a large number of studies are devoted to argument structure of classifier predicates (
Thus, one of the main purposes of this study is to provide a general description of argument structure in one sign language by analysing a variety of verbs with different argument structures, by investigating how argument structure correlates with morphological type of the verb, and by taking a closer look at classifier predicates. This description is the first step that allows addressing more theoretical issues introduced in the next two sections.
Linguists have gathered a substantial body of knowledge on argument structure in various spoken languages. In particular, an important part of this knowledge has been collected as a part of the recent typological project under the name Valency Classes in World’s Languages (VALPAL) (
In the VALPAL project, experts working on 37 typologically and geographically diverse languages described valency (argument structure) and argument structure alternations for 80 basic verbal meanings representative of various verb classes. The meanings were selected in a way to represent concepts which are often lexicalized as zero valency verbs (e.g. ‘rain’), as intransitive verbs (both unaccusatives ‘die’ and unergatives ‘jump’), as transitive verbs (‘break’), and as ditransitive verbs (‘give’). For each language, the project contributor was asked to describe the basic valency of the verb (namely, how many and which arguments it demands and how are these arguments marked, e.g. by word order, case marking, or agreement) as well as valency alternations that the verb can participate in.
This typological project (as well as other typological studies before it) confirms the following core fact: argument structure is based on the verbs’ semantics. For instance, events which naturally occur as situations without an external agent (‘melt’) are usually lexicalized as intransitive, while events which almost necessarily involve an agent (‘shave’) are lexicalized as transitive (see also
Since no systematic description of argument structure in a sign language has been done so far, we cannot really claim that the semantic basis of argument structure also holds for sign languages. In principle, the systems in sign languages and spoken languages can be completely different, identical, or have a degree of overlap. While I strongly expect that the first and also the second option are unlikely, it is still necessary to test this expectation. This is what I do in this study with the help of RSL data. I expect to find that the verbal meanings which are typologically commonly lexicalized as intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, etc., are also going to be lexicalized as such in RSL. If this turns out not to be the case a strong argument can be made in favour of a modality effect on argument structure.
In order to directly compare RSL to previous typological findings and to the specific results of the VALPAL project, I am using the verbal meanings from the VALPAL list.
An important theoretical debate concerning argument structure is the relation between argument structure and the lexicon. Traditional grammarians, as well as many contemporary linguists consider argument structure of a verb to be a part of its lexical description. In addition, argument structure alternations – e.g. deriving a causative or an anticausative form of a verb – also happen in the lexicon (
There are various arguments in favour of both approaches and neither approach seems to have definitely won the upper hand so far (see for instance
Some of the arguments are not directly related to argument structure but are rooted in more general architectural considerations. For instance, in the Distributed Morphology framework, there is no theoretical concept that would be parallel to the traditional notion of lexeme: abstract features are combined in syntax while phonological realizations of these features (both functional morphemes and roots) are inserted later in the derivation (
In particular, several researchers have argued that classifier predicates in sign languages provide evidence in favour of syntactic approaches to argument structure (
However, several researchers have recently questioned the observed dependency of argument structure on the type of the classifier morpheme (
As further discussed in Section 3, the VALPAL list fortunately provides a large number of meanings that are expressed by classifier predicates in RSL. This makes it possible to discuss argument structure of such predicates and their significance for the syntax vs. lexicon debate.
The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, the necessary background on some modality-specific properties of sign languages is provided. Section 3 describes the methodology of the study. In Section 4, RSL verb classes are described, and in Section 5, argument structure alternations are discussed. Section 6 is devoted to classifier predicates, because, as I show in the next section, they should be investigated separately from other verbs. Section 7 contains discussion of the general issues raised in Section 1, and Section 8 concludes the paper.
The paper is accompanied by an appendix (Appendix A) containing all 80 verbal meanings analysed in this study with basic information about the argument structure of the verbs expressing these meanings and examples (both elicited and from the corpus of RSL;
Sign languages are natural languages, and they share many fundamental properties with spoken languages on all levels of grammatical description, e.g. in phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics and pragmatics (see
There are some clear domains in which the visual modality influences the grammar of sign languages (
A very important property of sign languages is that the space in front of the signer is used for linguistic purposes. In many sign languages (but not all, see
Consider example (1).
(1) | |
‘Mother is cooking’. |
|
‘And she is also washing clothes.’ |
As mentioned above, verbal agreement can also use locations in space for reference tracking. Most sign languages have separate morphological classes of verbs, specifically plain (non-agreeing) and agreeing verbs (
(2) | |
‘Give the black handkerchief to me!’ |
Padden (
In this study spatial arguments of verbs of movement or location (location, goal, and source) are considered arguments, and no further distinction between agreeing and spatial verbs is made. However, since I explicitly discuss which argument the verb agrees with, the traditional labels of agreeing vs. spatial verbs can be easily deduced.
There is an obvious relation between agreement and argument structure: only transitive or ditransitive verbs can be agreeing (but see a different kind of agreement discussed below). However, not all transitive verbs are agreeing, as I will also show for RSL in Section 4. Furthermore, in most signs languages, in ditransitive verbs like
Another type of agreement-like mechanism that has been less well studied is Single Argument Agreement (
(3) | |
‘He builds a house.’ |
Another type of construction that uses space, and also illustrates the iconicity modality effect, is classifier predicates (
(4) | |
‘The family with the children (two sons and a daughter) sits around the table.’ |
Note that the gloss
The existence of classifier predicates suggests that the lexicon of sign languages is not homogeneous (
Since classifier predicates have are thus in many respects different from non-classifier predicates, I do not discuss them in Section 4 together with lexical verbs, but separately in Section 6.
Another important property of sign languages is that most signers (at least in countries with a developed system of deaf education, and this is clearly also true for Russia) are bilingual: in addition to sign language, they also acquire and use at least the written form of the spoken language of their country (
Moreover, in many countries an artificial manual communication system exists that mixes elements of the spoken and signed languages. Such systems use signs from the sign language, in addition to some artificially introduced new lexemes, but follow the grammar of the spoken language as closely as possible. For instance, the Signed Russian manual system uses mainly RSL signs to support spoken Russian, but it adheres to the Russian word order, and even sometimes morphological markers represented by fingerspelling (the manual alphabet); in contrast, modality-specific aspects, such as use of space and simultaneity, are not a part of Signed Russian. Such systems are often used in deaf education and also by sign language interpreters. Surprisingly, they often have a social status higher than the corresponding natural sign language, which is also the case in Russia.
The existence of such systems is a very interesting phenomenon, and it has some theoretical and practical consequences. First, borrowing and code-switching can thus not only occur across modalities, but also via the intermediary manual communication system. This leads to a significant amount of influence of the spoken language on the signed language. Second, due to the fact that both the manual communication system and the sign language use the same channel of communication, it is sometimes difficult to disentangle the two in practice, and not all signers have clear intuitions concerning what belongs to the sign language proper and what is an element of the spoken-language based system. As I discuss in the next section, this could have also somewhat influenced the results of this study, as I found some minor discrepancies between elicited and corpus data.
In general, it is always important to consider whether a particular structure found in a signed language can be an example of borrowing from or even code-switching to a manual communication system. Some examples of such phenomena in the domain of argument structure are discussed in Sections 4 and 5.
As discussed in the Introduction, I used the list of 80 verbal meanings from the VALPAL database (
The meanings in the list had been originally selected by the creators of the project in order to be representative of the verbal lexicon and show distinctive syntactic properties. Therefore the list includes meanings which are likely to lexicalize as predicates with no arguments, as predicates with one argument, and so on. The list has been created based on many years of typological and descriptive research on spoken languages, and, as the results of the VALPAL project show, it is indeed a valid tool to study basic argument structure.
It would have been possible to investigate basic argument structure in RSL starting with language-internal considerations; for instance, by first dividing verbs into morphological classes (plain, agreeing, Single Argument Agreement verbs, and classifier predicates of various types) and then investigating their argument structure. While this is certainly a valid approach, I decided to start with the cross-linguistically validated VALPAL list in order to make it possible to compare RSL to other (spoken) languages. Further studies into separate groups of RSL verbs are clearly necessary; in Kimmelman et al. (
One might ask whether it is possible to directly use the VALPAL list to elicit sign language data or whether it needs to be modified. For instance, the famous Swadesh list has been shown to need modification to be usable in lexical comparison of sign languages (
The difference is that the Swadesh list is used for lexical comparison (so the main purpose is to find out whether two words or signs in two languages have a common origin). Sign languages present additional complications for lexical comparison, such as the use of indexical signs (pointing) for pronouns and body parts, and the widespread use of iconic signs. Both iconic and indexical signs can look the same in two unrelated sign languages by chance which makes the lexical comparison procedure invalid; therefore, attempts have been made to adjust the list to avoid such signs.
The current research project is devoted to argument structure. The fact that some of the signs for the VALPAL meanings are iconic
One important consideration (see discussion in Section 2) is the structure of the lexicon in sign languages, and especially the fact that there is a difference between lexicalized verbs and productive classifier predicates, and between agreeing and plain verbs. It turns out that the verbal meanings present in the VALPAL list are representative of all these groups of signs (see Sections 4 and especially 6), so the list does not appear to need modification in this respect either.
The main data source was elicitation sessions conducted in 2016 in Moscow, Russia. I created a written questionnaire in Russian using the 80 verbal meanings from the VALPAL database. For each verbal meaning, a number of sentences in Russian were created in order to elicit possible argument structures, both basic and derived.
Four native signers of RSL (one male) participated in the elicitation sessions. The elicitation was conducted by me, with the help of the written questionnaire; further questions and discussion were conducted by me in RSL. Consider for instance the meaning ‘burn’. I asked the signers to translate a basic sentence with this meaning with one argument (‘the wood burns’) from Russian. After that I asked them to translate a sentence with two arguments (‘the man burns the wood’). I also checked whether the subject in the transitive use can be an instrument (‘a looking glass burned the paper’) or an inanimate cause (‘the sun burned the paper’). It turned out that only the intransitive use of the verb
Although it is well known in sign language linguistics that using written language in stimuli can influence the data (
Of course, some influence of Russian cannot be ruled out, especially given that I am not a native signer, which might have influence the participants’ judgments. In order to improve the validity of the findings, elicited data was checked against corpus data. Whenever discrepancies between corpus and elicited data were found, it is reported in Appendix A. Another argument for the reliability of this data is the high between-signers consistency: with a few exceptions, the patterns described in this paper were accepted by all four signers. This still does not exclude that some of the facts discussed in this paper are somewhat influenced by Russian. A much more detailed investigation focusing on certain verbs and using more advanced elicitation techniques would be necessary to completely exclude such influence.
The corpus of RSL (
The elicited sentences recorded on video, and the example found in the corpus were further annotated and analysed. For each verb, it was described how many arguments it has, what the thematic roles of these arguments are, and what alternations the verb participates in. In addition, the morphological type of the verb was also described (i.e. whether it is plain or agreeing, and whether the meaning can or should be expressed by a classifier predicate).
Several methodological decisions have been made that need explicit statement.
First, since the research is based on the VALPAL list of concepts, I am not making an a priori distinction between verbs, adjectives, and even nouns used as predicates. The list contains meanings which are often verbal (e.g. ‘go’), nominal (‘be a hunter’) and adjectival (‘dry’). I do not specifically look at the part of speech of the signs which are used to express these meanings in RSL. First, it is not clear whether adjectives form a separate part of speech in RSL – no research has been done on this issue so far. Second, although RSL does have a morpho-phonological noun-verb distinction (
Another issue that needs to be addressed is the difference between arguments and adjuncts. I adopted the following simple rule: noun phrases expressing thematic roles of the predicate and not introduced by any kind of additional predicate are considered arguments (see for instance (15)). This rule has at least two caveats. First, some verbs participate in the unspecified object alternation (see Section 5.2): they can have an overt object, but they can be used without an object to express a general activity. Second, RSL, similar to other sign languages, is a pro-drop language, so omitting a given subject or object is almost always possible. However, this does not mean that the null argument is not a part of the argument structure. Practically, in elicited sentences the arguments are always new information, so pro-drop does not play a role.
A related issue is the analysis of spatial arguments. In many languages verbs of location and movement can have direct objects referring to locations, or sources and goals of movement (e.g.
A final note concerns thematic roles. I am using the labels such as agent, patient, theme, experiencer, stimulus, cause, goal, addressee, instrument, beneficiary and source as a descriptive instrument to specify the semantic role of subjects and objects (see e.g.
As is evident from the title of the paper, this is only a basic description of argument structure of RSL verbs. The list of verbs is obviously not exhaustive. Moreover, many of the meanings can be expressed by several different verbs. Typically only one or two most common verbs are discussed. The list of argument structure alternations found in this study is also clearly not complete. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to serve as a starting point for future detailed investigation of various argument structure properties of RSL.
In this section, I describe the basic verb classes in RSL: from verbs with no arguments to verbs with up to three arguments. Note that classifier predicates are discussed separately in Section 6.
RSL does not have expletive subjects, so weather verbs, such as
(5) | |
In the evening, it rains strongly. |
Typologically, RSL follows a very common pattern. Out of the 37 languages in the VALPAL database (
Some verbs in RSL are intransitive. These verbs include predicates with adjectival meanings, such as
(6) | |
‘When it does not rain, the grass is dry and can burn.’ | |
(7) | |
‘All the old teachers died.’ |
|
(8) | |
‘He runs.’ |
|
(9) | |
‘My mother is a Leo (astrological sign)’ |
Some verbs in RSL are labile, as discussed in Section 4.3, so they can appear in both intransitive and transitive sentences. In contrast, the verbs discussed in this section are truly intransitive: it is not possible to simply add another argument to derive a transitive meaning. For instance, in order to derive the transitive meaning ‘dry something’ RSL signers would use a bi-predicative resultative construction, as in (10). Adding the agent without a second predicate is ungrammatical (11).
(10) | |
‘The mother dried the clothes (by hanging them).’ (S2) | |
(11) | * |
‘The mother dried the clothes.’ |
As expected, none of the intransitive verb shows regular agreement, because regular agreement implies two arguments. Many of the intransitive verbs are body-anchored (
(12) | |
‘The clothes hanging there are burning.’ |
Typologically, the verbs that are intransitive in RSL are also very commonly intransitive cross-linguistically. According to Haspelmath’s (
Some verbs in RSL can be used transitively or intransitively without any additional marking in either context. Here one needs to distinguish several cases. Firstly, there are transitive verbs that participate in the unspecified object alternation (see Sections 4.4 and 5.2). These would not normally be considered labile. In addition, there are some verbs that allow body-part possessor ascension (also known as external possessor, see also Section 5.5), such as
(13) | |
‘Sometimes my back hurts.’ |
|
(14) | |
‘My belly hurts/I have pain in my belly.’ (S1) |
Other labile verbs are those that participate in the unmarked causative-inchoative alternation (see also 5.1). These verbs are
(15) | |
‘I broke the computer.’ (S2) | |
(16) | |
‘The swings on the tree broke.’ |
|
(17) | [ |
‘The son also hid something [under the Christmas tree].’ |
|
(18) | |
‘We two hid calmly.’ |
|
(19) | [ |
‘The father boiled/cooked the rice.’ (S3) | |
(20) | |
‘The water boiled.’ (S1) |
All labile verbs happen to participate in Single Argument Agreement. For instance, in (17) the verb
Typologically, the basic coding frame for the verbs ‘hide’ and ‘break’ (
A large number of verbs in RSL are transitive. They fall into different classes. A large group of transitive verbs denotes various activities:
(21) | |
‘I smelt the flower.’ (S3) | |
(22) | |
[I] lighted [the firecracker] up. |
|
(23) | |
‘[The cat] robbed it [the monkey].’ |
|
(24) | |
‘We were stealing blankets.’ |
Another class of transitive verbs are psych-verbs, including verbs of cognition and emotion:
(25) | |
‘I fear dogs.’ (S1) | |
(26) | |
‘The crows are afraid to sit down.’ |
|
(27) | / |
‘This dog scared me.’ (S3) | |
(28) | / |
‘This picture frightened me.’ (signers S2, S3 consider it grammatical, while signers S1, S4 ungrammatical) |
In addition, there are three transitive verbs that are stative.
(29) | |
‘My name is Vadim.’ (S2) | |
(30) | |
‘I called it “The toilet”.’ |
(31) | |
‘The man lives in an old five-story building.’ |
|
(32) | |
‘There is a bucket full of poop.’ |
|
(33) | |
‘The boy filled the basket with apples.’(S1) |
Finally, the locative verbs
(34) | |
‘(We) went to Saint-Petersburg.’ |
|
(35) | |
‘I sit in a chair.’ (S2) |
Transitive verbs include both agreeing and non-agreeing verbs. Transitive plain verbs are
(36) | |
‘He builds a house.’ |
|
(37) | |
‘The guard searched the man.’ (S2) | |
(38) | |
‘The son is playing.’ |
It should be clear that the presence/absence of agreement does not correlate well with the three groups of verbs that were identified among transitive verbs, although most psych verbs are plain. This latter fact is probably due to the underlying metaphoric iconicity of these signs which causes them to be body-anchored and thus plain (
Transitive verbs can undergo some unmarked alternations, a common one being the unspecified object alternation, illustrated by (38), and further discussed in Section 5.2. In addition,
(39) | |
‘The two friends hugged.’ (S2) |
According to Haspelmath’s (
RSL also has a number of ditransitive verbs. Firstly, many verbs of speech are ditransitive, namely
(40) | |
‘He explained to me how to breathe.’ |
Verbs of transfer, which are most commonly ditransitive typologically, are also ditransitive in RSL, namely
(41) | |
‘We two did not give him [water].’ |
|
(42) | |
‘The small son also poured water into it.’ |
|
(43) | |
‘I was sending the exams [there].’ |
|
(44) | |
‘I sent [him] a telegram’. (S3) |
In addition, some verbs that can be characterized as metaphorically related to transfer, namely
(45) | |
‘He teaches the dog to fight.’ |
Most of the ditransitive verbs show agreement, namely
(46) | 2- |
‘Give me [your address].’ |
|
(47) | |
‘A thief stole a bike from me that was in the garage.’ (S1) |
Finally,
According to typological research (
I have found no lexical verbs with more than three arguments in RSL. Some classifier predicates can be analysed as having four arguments if spatial arguments are included. This is further discussed in Section 6, see example (73).
This fact is not surprising, because, typologically, for verbs to have more than three arguments is quite uncommon. In the VALPAL database, there are only 16 verbs (out of 1156) which have four arguments, and no examples with five arguments (
(48)
öždi
boy.
waya
cow(III).
sabali-ya-d
rope-
m-ico-yo
III-tie-
xöx-i-ł.
tree-
‘The boy tied the cow to the tree with the rope.’
Note that the four-argument verbs in RSL, as described in Section 6, are quite different. They are all verbs of motion, and include two spatial arguments (source and goal). The reason that such verbs are probably more likely to have four arguments in sign languages than in spoken languages is that the latter do not often use prepositions and instead resort to using space to describe spatial events.
In this section, I briefly discuss the argument structure alternations that I discovered in this study (and only for the verbs that were considered in this study). I start with a general discussion of the causative-inchoative alternation, and then discuss valency-reducing alternations (Sections 5.2–5.4) and valency-increasing alternations (Section 5.5–5.8).
One of the typologically common alternations is the causative-inchoative alternation, whereby the verb can be used intransitively (to refer to a non-caused or internally caused process) or transitively (to refer to a caused process and specify the cause/agent) (
However, the majority of verbs are not labile. Some verbs are intransitive, and the causative counterpart is expressed either by a different verb (e.g.
One important complication in establishing whether a verb can be used intransitively has to do with the fact that an unmarked impersonal alternation is very productive in RSL (see Section 5.3), so it is relatively easy to find examples of clearly transitive verbs without agents in corpus data.
Another typologically very common alternation is the unspecified object alternation, where the patient object of transitive verbs is omitted to express the meaning of a general activity, involving some generic/understood patient (
(49) | |
‘I ate.’ |
A very common alternation in RSL is the impersonal alternation where the agent/subject is interpreted as having impersonal reference. In Kimmelman (
(50) | |
‘The bus came. They pronounced its number.’ |
Similarly, RSL seems to have an unmarked middle alternation, where the action is evaluated as having a particular characteristic, is not bound to a particular time, and has an agent that is removed (
(51) | |
‘This plastic is easy to damage.’ (S1) |
Typologically, impersonal marking in RSL is quite ordinary. The unmarked impersonal strategy described in this section (omitting the agent argument) is attested in both spoken and signed languages. Moreover, the fact that the same strategy can be used in different impersonal contexts is also typologically common (
Some languages use reflexive and reciprocal alternations: this means that instead of using a reflexive or a reciprocal pronoun, the object argument can be omitted, but the sentence still gets the reflexive/reciprocal interpretation (
The reflexive alternation seems to exist only in the marked form for agreeing verbs: specifically, the form with 1st-person object agreement is interpreted as reflexive (see also
(52) | |
‘My father shaved.’ |
Reciprocal alternation works in a slightly different way. Similar to other sign languages (
(53) | |
‘They look at each other.’ |
|
(54) | |
‘They talk to each other.’ |
With the verb
Note that possessor ascension to the subject position seems to only apply to verbs which have body parts as arguments. For instance, it is ungrammatical to have a possessor as a subject of the verb
(55) | |
‘My t-shirt is dry.’ | |
(56) | * |
‘My t-shirt is dry.’ | |
(57) | |
‘My t-shirt is dry.’ |
In general, external possessors are quite common typologically; moreover, body-part possessors are most often expressed externally (
RSL has a way of introducing a beneficiary argument by using a special benefactive pronoun
(58) | |
‘My parents built me a house.’ (S1) | |
(59) | |
‘He courted me.’ |
This pronominal sign in RSL is probably related to the preposition
A very similar way of introducing the beneficiary argument has been described for Georgian Sign Language (
Lexical argument structure of a verb in RSL can be also extended by adpositions. These adpositions clearly originate as fingerspelling of Russian prepositions:
However, at least for the adposition
(60) | / |
‘The boy thinks about the girl.’ (S2) |
Accepting that
(61) | |
‘I’ll tell about 965.’ |
The functions and status of other potential adpositions in RSL require further research.
A relatively productive way to extend argument structure of a verb is to use a resultative construction, as also described for other sign languages (
(62) | |
‘The boy filled the basket with apples.’(S1) |
Pasalskaya (
In addition, RSL has a common strategy to combine multiple predicates to express events with complex argument structures. For instance, classifier predicates are sometimes combined with lexical verbs, as illustrated by example (63). It might be the case that such combinations are frequent because classifier predicates are on the one hand very rich in agreement and thus express argument structure clearly (see further Section 6), but, on the other hand, they are not lexically specific (they only have a very general meaning of motion) and thus often do not refer to specific events (so the lexical meaning is supplied by the lexical verb).
(63) | |
‘He shows the prepared dough to his mother.’ |
It might be possible to analyse such structures as serial verb constructions (
Poly-predicative resultative constructions are quite common cross-linguistically (see e.g.
Classifier predicates (also known as depictive constructions) have been analysed in numerous studies for various sign languages (see
The movement and location of the sign depicts movement and location of some object;
The handshape of the sign depends on the type of the moving object.
These handshapes are often called classifiers to emphasize parallels with verbal classifiers in spoken languages (although not all researchers agree that this parallel is justified, see e.g.
(64) | |
‘A boy moves to the right.’ | |
(65) | |
‘A car moves to the right.’ | |
(66) | |
‘A boy moves up and down (=jumps).’ | |
(67) | |
‘A boy falls.’ |
In (64), the classifier predicate contains the
One relatively common approach to classifier predicates is represented by Zwitserlood (
According to this approach, the argument structure of classifier predicates depends on the type of argument referred to by the handshape. Sometimes, the handshape refers to an object that moves (this is the so-called whole-entity classifier type): for instance, a car or a person. In this case, the predicate has a theme argument, and also up to two spatial arguments: source and goal if the sign describes movement, or location if the sign describes an object being located somewhere (see examples (68–69) below). In other cases, the handshape refers to a body-part (a hand, a leg, the head). Different sign languages have different argument structure options for such predicates (see
Within Benedicto & Brentari’s approach, the verbal root (which only has a very abstract meaning of
In RSL, many meanings that I investigated are expressed by classifiers predicates. Some meanings can only be expressed by classifier predicates, namely ‘sink’, ‘jump’, ‘meet’, ‘hit/beat’, ‘cut’, ‘take’, ‘tear’, ‘peel’, ‘carry/bring’, ‘tie’, ‘put’, ‘cover’, ‘load’, ‘push’, ‘dig’, ‘touch’ and ‘wipe’. Other meanings can be expressed by lexical verbs or classifier predicates, namely ‘roll’, ‘leave’, ‘go’, ‘sit’, ‘run’, ‘climb’, ‘dress’, ‘wash’, ‘eat’, ‘break’, ‘kill’, ‘give’, ‘throw’, and ‘pour’. It is easy to see that most of these verbs involve movement of different types or manipulation of objects or instruments.
It is important to note that it is sometimes difficult to decide whether a particular sign is a classifier predicate or whether it is at least partially lexicalized. I discuss this issue further in Section 6.5.
According to previous research (
(68) | |
‘The girl is drowning.’ |
|
(69) | |
‘The family with the children, two sons and a daughter, sits around the table.’ |
However, in some cases the whole-entity classifier predicate can be used transitively. For instance, in (70) a whole-entity classifier for the chair is used, but there is an overt agent in the clause, and the interpretation is clearly causative.
(70) | |
‘I pushed the chair to the wall.’ (S3) |
At the moment, it is not clear in which contexts a whole-entity classifier predicate can be used in a transitive frame. I have found that not all contexts allow it; for instance, (71) is ungrammatical, and a handling classifier predicate must be used instead (72), as is also the case in, for instance, ASL (
(71) | * |
‘The boy drowned his toy boat.’ | |
(72) | |
‘The boy drowned his toy boat.’ (S2) |
Similarly, as a rule, handling classifier predicates in RSL have an agent, a patient, and the spatial arguments. For instance, the predicate in (73) has the following (omitted) arguments: agent, patient, and goal, and (74) has four arguments: agent, patient, source, and goal. Instrument or non-animate cause cannot be the subjects of such predicates (75–76), as has also been described for other sign languages (
(73) | |
‘I put it in my mouth.’ |
|
(74) | |
‘I brought a book from the library to my home.’ (S1) | |
(75) | * |
‘The wind drowned the boat.’ | |
(76) | * |
‘The hammer broke the stick.’ |
Not all handling classifiers describing movement take the spatial arguments. For instance, when meanings like ‘break’ or ‘tie’ are expressed, the movement of the signer’s hand reflects the movement of the hands that perform the breaking or tying action, but the hands do not move from one location to another to express the movement of the patient/theme, and no goal or source arguments are specified. Instead, the whole sign is localized in a location associated with the patient, so it shows Single Argument Agreement (77). This has also been described for other sign languages (
(77) | |
‘I tied a rope on my leg.’ |
Finally, I have to note that, in Kimmelman et al. (
Some of the meanings in my sample are expressed by body-part classifier predicates. Specifically, a body-part classifier for legs or paws is used to express the meaning ‘run’ (78–79). When this meaning is expressed, the predicate has the agent argument, and also the spatial arguments.
(78) | |
‘They ran to the swimming pool.’ |
|
(79) | |
‘A dog runs.’ (S2) | |
(80) | |
‘The boy washed his face.’ (S4) | |
(81) | |
‘I do not hit children.’ (S2) | |
(82) | |
‘A dog digs the earth.’ (S2) |
Several meanings can also be expressed by instrumental classifier predicates,
(83) | |
‘We ate the food [with forks].’ |
For other predicates, the instrument can clearly be overtly expressed in the sentence. For instance, in (84) the instrument
(84) | |
‘The mother cuts the bread with a knife.’ (S2) | |
(85) | |
‘The granny hits [the cat] with an umbrella.’ |
Similar to handling classifier predicates like
(86) | |
‘She washed the windows.’ |
Instrumental classifier handshapes are sometimes divided into two groups: whole-entity-like and handling-like (
All classifier predicates can be characterized as agreeing verbs, in two separate ways. First, the handshape can be analysed as an agreement marker, expressing agreement with the theme argument (see
Some meanings, specifically ‘throw’ and ‘take’, are sometimes expressed by predicates that would not be traditionally analysed as classifier predicates, because they involve two different handshapes (an open and a closed hand). However, the closed handshape at least depends on the type of the object that is being thrown or taken, as (87–88) illustrate. One can also argue that only one handshape is phonologically specified, and the other is defined by the hand-internal movement.
(87) | |
‘The boy threw the ball into the room.’ (S4) | |
(88) | |
‘He threw [a firecracker].’ |
In many cases, it is not clear whether a certain predicate is a classifier predicate compositionally expressing a particular meaning or whether at least a part of the construction has lexicalized and is lexically associated with a certain meaning (see also
First, sometimes the classifier handshape of a potential classifier predicate does not match the referent that it is supposed to refer to. For instance, in (89) the 2-handshape does not match the drowning object (the brick), so it is reasonable to suggest that this particular form (
(89) | |
‘This brick does not drown in water.’ (S2) |
Another sign of lexicalization is when a classifier predicate can combine with an abstract object so that the shape of the object, as well as its movement or location simply cannot be expressed. This is illustrated by example (90).
(90) | 2- |
‘Give me [your address].’ |
Lexicalization does not only concern handshape. In the predicate used to describe sitting, the movement and orientation often do not match the real-life position of the legs referred to by the classifier, as (91) illustrates. Again, it is thus reasonable to analyse this predicate as a lexical verb
(91) | |
‘A man is sitting.’ |
Second, some classifier predicates expressing certain meanings have formal sub-parts that are associated with this meaning (see also
Another interesting phenomenon is that sometimes, in a potential classifier predicate, the weak hand is used without any referent associated with it, or not representing the properties of the referent it would be associated with. For instance, in (92) the passive hand (potentially referring to the person being hit) has the b-handshape, which is not used as a classifier for people. In general, two-handed classifier constructions where the hands refer to two different objects are better analysed as coordination of two separate classifier predicates (
(92) | |
‘And the fat one got angry and started hitting him.’ |
It is an interesting question whether lexicalization directly affects argument structure of classifier predicates. This has been argued in the past (
In the beginning of this paper, I implied that argument structure in RSL is relevant for three general issues, namely for the issue of the semantic basis of argument structure, for the relation between argument structure and verbal classes in sign languages, and for the lexicon vs. syntax debate. Here I summarize the findings in relation to these general issues.
The main generalization that can be formulated based on Sections 4 and 5 is that verbs in RSL behave in a typologically common way with respect to the relation between argument structure and meaning. In other words, the concepts which are commonly lexicalized as zero valency, intransitive, transitive, and ditransitive in spoken languages (
This finding is illustrated by Table
Valency-based verb classes in RSL.
Class | Verbal meanings |
---|---|
Classifier predicates are not fully represented in this table as it is not possible to assign them a particular lexical meaning. However, it is clear that argument structure of such predicates is dependent on their semantics. If a non-caused movement of an object is described, the predicate takes the theme argument and the spatial arguments; if a caused movement of an object is described, the predicate also takes an agent.
In addition, RSL obeys the robust generalization that agents are encoded as subjects (external arguments) in the argument structure (
To sum up, argument structure in RSL behaves in a typologically common way. RSL does not provide evidence that the semantic basis of argument structure is influenced by the visual modality. Note however, that modality effects do not have to manifest themselves equally in all sign languages (e.g. the use of manual simultaneity is much more restricted in some sign languages than in others;
RSL presents evidence that verbal morphology in sign languages and argument structure are not in a one-to-one mapping although some relation between morphological and valency classes exists.
To recapitulate, RSL, similar to many other sign languages, has at least the following morphological classes of verbs: (1) plain (non-agreeing); (2) Single Argument Agreement (SAA) verbs; (3) agreeing verbs (including verbs agreeing with spatial arguments); (4) classifier predicates. The relation between morphological class and argument structure can be discussed in two directions: whether it is possible to predict the morphological class based on valency and whether it is possible to predict valency based on morphological class. The answer to both questions is “no” for most morphological and valency classes, but certain tendencies and rules are still visible.
First, there are three trivial findings (they are trivial as they basically arise from definitional properties of verb classes):
Zero valency verbs are plain (because there is no argument to agree with)
Agreeing verbs are at least transitive (because two arguments have to be agreed with)
Classifier predicates are at least intransitive (because an argument has to be represented by the handshape)
Second, we can look in more detail at the distribution of verbs across morphological classes and valency classes. I summarize this in Table
Valency and morphology of verbs in RSL.
plain | SAA | agreeing | total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
3 (100%) | – | – | 3 | |
13 (93%) | 1 (7%) | – | 14 | |
– | 4 (100%) | – | 4 | |
16 (52%) | 7 (23%) | 8 (25%) | 31 | |
2 (15%) | 1 (8%) | 10 (77%) | 13 |
Although the numbers are small, some tendencies are clearly visible. Specifically, one can see that transitive verbs are the most diverse group which are most commonly plain, but can also be SAA and agreeing, and ditransitive verbs are more likely to be agreeing than any other group. An important issue that has to be further investigated is whether SAA and agreement with two arguments are fundamentally similar and what conditions the choice between the two processes. For now it seems that agreement with two arguments is conditioned by (albeit not determined by) argument structure, but SAA is not clearly related to it.
As shown in Section 6, classifier predicates can have different argument structures partially determined by the type of the classifier. This is further discussed in the next subsection.
To sum up, there exists a relation between argument structure and morphological class of the predicates in RSL, but this relation is far from simple. This generally aligns with observations for other sign languages (
Several researchers (
Note that even if classifier type in ASL and some other sign languages indeed unambiguously determines argument structure of the predicate, it is still possible to question the validity of these facts for the lexicon vs. syntax debate. Specifically, it is possible to assume an active lexicon which allows combining verbal roots and classifier morphemes within the lexicon itself; the argument structure of the resulting predicate will be a part of the lexicon as well (see
Let us accept the claim that classifier predicates in ASL provide at least a weak argument in favour of syntactic approaches because their argument structure comes not from the verbal root but from the classifier type. However, classifier predicates in RSL cannot be used even for such an argument.
Turning to the RSL data, the most important conclusion is that it seems that the relation between argument structure and classifier type is less straightforward than expected based on previous research. This relation is summarized in Table
Argument structure of classifier predicates in RSL.
Classifier type | Argument structure |
---|---|
1. Unaccusative + spatial arguments (e.g. |
|
1. Unaccusative + spatial arguments (e.g. |
|
1. Transitive with no instrument argument (e.g. |
|
1. Transitive with no instrument argument (e.g. |
|
Complex events involving holding and moving an object |
From this table it should be clear that, at least in RSL, argument structure is not determined by the classifier. There is still a tendency to express unaccusative meanings with a whole-entity classifier predicates and transitive (causative) meanings with handling classifier predicates, but this tendency is not categorical. I would argue that, in the case of classifier predicates, it is more reasonable to simply predict argument structure based on the meaning of the predicate in a particular context, maybe with some restrictions provided by classifier type.
Specifically, whole-entity classifiers refer to the theme argument of a movement event; therefore, the predicate describes movement which can be caused or non-caused. Body-part classifiers refer to the theme of a movement event which happens to be a body part and again the event can be caused or non-caused. Instrumental classifiers refer to an instrument, so the resulting predicate has to have an agent (
It would go far beyond the scope of this paper to provide a full formal analysis of classifier predicates in RSL (see
Within a lexical approach it is possible to suggest that RSL has different verbal roots (e.g.
On the other hand, it is possible to develop a fully syntactic account where the verbal roots do not have an argument structure but are inserted into syntactic templates (
Finally, for the lexicalized classifier predicates and for lexical verbs in general it is reasonable to assume that the whole predicate is a single morpheme (the verbal root); its argument structure can similarly be modelled lexically or syntactically. I conclude that RSL classifier predicates do not represent a good testing ground for the lexicon vs. syntax debate.
This research has both descriptive results and theoretical implications.
Descriptively, I have shown that Russian Sign Language has various verb classes and various argument structure alternations. With respect to verb classes, verbs with no arguments, intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, labile verbs, and ditransitive verbs are used. RSL uses a number of alternations: an unmarked causative-inchoative alternation that applies to a small number of labile verbs, an unmarked impersonal alternation used to express an impersonal agent, unspecified object alternation, reflexive and reciprocal alternations. In addition to the unmarked alternations, RSL can use special pronouns, prepositions, and poly-predicative constructions to extend argument structure.
Classifier predicates in RSL constitute a separate class of predicates because, as in other sign languages, these constructions do not have a particular lexicalized meaning in many of the uses. It seems that there is a relation between the type of the classifier that occurs in such a predicate, as has also been described in previous research for RSL and other sign languages, but this relation is not absolute. Furthermore, the argument structure of such predicates depends to a large extent on the meaning that is expressed in a particular context, and it can range from consisting of one to four arguments.
Turning to theoretical implications, a major conclusion of this study is that verbs in RSL behave in a typologically common way with respect to argument structure. This has an important theoretical consequence: similar to spoken languages, in the visual modality verbal semantics determines argument structure to a large extent (
A second general conclusion is that although there is some relation between argument structure and verbal morphology in RSL, this relation is far from being straightforward. In particular, transitive and especially ditransitive verbs in RSL can be agreeing, but they can also be plain; Single Argument Agreement applies to almost all classes of verbs. This means that argument structure cannot be the only (or even the main) answer to the question that many sign linguists are interested in, namely why certain verbs are assigned to certain morphological classes (
Finally, I showed that classifier predicates in RSL do not provide direct evidence in favour of a syntactic approach to argument structure (
This study is a first systematic investigation of verbal lexicon and argument structure in RSL, so it raises a lot of questions that should be studied further. First, more verbs and more argument structure alternations should be studied. Second, the verb classes and alternations that have been described here need to be studied in more detail.
Similarly, the relation between argument structure and classifier predicates clearly needs further research. It is clear that the type of classifier contributes to argument structure, and also that context is important, but it is not clear how these two factors interact. The question whether classifier predicates change their argument structure when they undergo lexicalization also deserves further research.
Finally, I hope that comparable studies of basic properties of argument structure will be conducted for other sign languages making it possible to describe typological variation in both the signed and spoken modality.
The additional files for this article can be found as follows:
80 verbal meanings in RSL. DOI:
Frequent verbs in the RSL corpus. DOI:
Handshapes are represented by letters and numbers, and should be interpreted using the following guide:
1:
2:
2b:
5:
5b:
b:
c:
s:
h:
an:
bi:
y:
Traditionally, a line above the glosses is used to represent (the scope of) non-manuals, but since non-manuals are not crucial for this study, a less space-demanding convention is adopted; that is, the / sign on both sides is used for the non-manual marking topicalization. Each example from the RSL corpus is followed by a direct URL link to this example (note, however, that registration is required to access the corpus data), and each elicited example is followed by the code of the signer it was elicited from (S1 to S4).
Some researchers even argue that the same argument structure alternation, for instance causativization, can be syntactic in one language and lexical in another (
See Abbreviations (end of the paper) for glossing conventions. Each example from the RSL corpus is followed by a direct URL link to this example (note, however, that registration is required to access the corpus data), and each elicited example is followed by the code of the signer it was elicited from (S1 to S4).
The function of the second pointing sign IX-B in this example is determiner-like: it belongs to the NP IX-B DRESS ‘clothes’.
Not all sign language researchers would accept that Single Argument Agreement is also an agreement mechanism, similar to the subject-and-object agreement of agreeing verbs (see
In this paper, I do not intend to answer whether traditional agreement and Single Argument Agreement are fundamentally the same phenomenon; instead, I distinguish the non-agreeing, Single Argument Agreement, and agreeing verbs on morpho-phonological grounds, and investigate their argument structure. As I show in Section 6, Single Argument Agreement and agreeing verbs turn out to have different argument-structural properties, which might be used as an additional argument against a unified analysis.
Note, however, that for the sake of readability, in the glosses I will use descriptions such as
The also discuss the non-native part of the lexicon consisting of signs based on fingerspelled letters of the English alphabet.
Code-blending is simultaneous use of elements from a spoken language (e.g. mouthings) and a sign language. This phenomenon is not addressed further in this paper.
None are indexical in the sense of being simply pointing signs.
Many sign languages, including RSL, also have the so-called backward agreement verbs where the movement of the sign is not from subject to object but in the opposite direction. The VALPAL list contains one meaning which seems to be universally expressed by a backward agreement verb, namely ‘take’, and one meaning which is likely to be expressed by such a verb, namely ‘steal’. However, if the researcher is specifically interested in argument structure of such verbs, the list should be extended.
Notice that such a construction would be ungrammatical in Russian, see also the next paragraph.
For some very frequent verbs, I only annotated up to 100 tokens. For verbs with fewer than 100 tokens per type, I annotated all tokens.
In this and some other examples, the verb occurs twice in the same clause. This phenomenon is known as verb doubling, and it is usually expresses pragmatic emphasis or focus (
A coding frame is the means that a language uses to encode arguments and their semantic roles, and it includes word order, agreement, case marking, and adpositions.
Fingrespelling of the Russian word
Note that
There is variation with respect to whether
Given that RSL is a null argument language, it is not always easy to distinguish unspecified object alternation and null objects. There is however a difference in interpretation: a null object is interpreted as definite (it refers to a previously mentioned referent), while a verb undergoing an unspecified object alternation denotes a general activity without any antecedent. Transitive verbs which do not undergo this alternation can only occur without an overt object if the reference of the object is definite and recoverable from the context.
Note that German Sign Language has an auxiliary glossed as
Note that the sign
In Kimmelman et al. (
Note that not all researchers agree that instrumental classifiers are a separate type. As discussed below, Benedicto & Brentari (
I thank an anonymous reviewer for this point.
Kimmelman et al. (
Benedicto & Brentari (
I would like to thank Marloes Oomen, Ulrika Klomp, Roland Pfau, and Enoch Aboh for feedback on an earlier version of the paper, as well as the three Glossa reviewers for their meticulous comments. I am grateful to the RSL signers who participated in the study.
This research has been supported by the NWO grant 360-70-520.
The author has no competing interests to declare.