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Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II pp 803–855Cite as

Quantifiers in Russian Sign Language

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Part of the book series: Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy ((SLAP,volume 97))

Abstract

After presenting some basic genetic, historical and typological information about Russian Sign Language, this chapter outlines the quantification patterns it expresses. It illustrates various semantic types of quantifiers, such as generalized existential, generalized universal, proportional, definite and partitive which are defined in the Quantifier Questionnaire in chapter “The Quantifier Questionnaire”. It partitions the expression of the semantic types into morpho-syntactic classes: Adverbial type quantifiers and Nominal (or Determiner) type quantifiers. For the various semantic and morpho-syntactic types of quantifiers it also distinguishes syntactically simple and syntactically complex quantifiers, as well as issues of distributivity and scope interaction, classifiers and measure expressions, and existential constructions. The chapter describes structural properties of determiners and quantified noun phrases in Russian Sign Language, both in terms of internal structure (morphological or syntactic) and distribution.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term modality in this paper is only used to refer to the channel of communication, and not to the linguistic category of modality.

  2. 2.

    These properties are shared between RSL and most other Western sign languages.

  3. 3.

    Sign are glossed in small caps. The gloss is an approximate translation of the sign. Fingerspelled items are hyphenated (a-l-l). Glosses with similar meaning but different form are accompanied by a number: never1, never2. If one sign is translated with several words, the words are separated by a dot (on.foot); the same is applied to signs with incorporation (two.piece). ix stands for index and is used to refer to pointing signs. poss is a possessive pronoun, at is yet another personal pronoun used in some syntactic contexts, cl is a classifier. Pronouns, agreeing verbs, and classifiers can be also provided with agreement indexes: −1 and −2 for first and second person; no index for the third person if there is only one third person referent in the clause, −a, −b, −c etc. for third person if there are multiple referents in the clause, −pl for plural marking, −distr for distributive marking. Subject agreement precedes the verbal stem, while object agreement follows it (1-see-2 ‘I see you’). A comma marks a prosodic boundary. Non-manual markers are placed above the glosses, with the underlying showing the extent of the marking. Er stands for eyebrow raise, neg stands for a complex facial expression and head movement which expresses negation. In examples taken from other sources other conventions may apply; they are explained separately at the relevant places.

  4. 4.

    Note that for ASL at least some researchers have analyzed pointing signs as definite determiners (MacLaughlin 1997), while more recently others have argued that these signs are better analyzed as demonstratives, as their properties differ from both definite determiners and personal pronouns (Koulidobrova 2012, Koulidobrova & Lillo-Martin to appear). Nobody has looked at pointing signs in RSL in detail so far.

  5. 5.

    Mitchell & Karchmer (2004) assessed the percentage of deaf children in the United States with at least one deaf parent at 4.2 %. There are no such measurements for RSL, but we expect results of the same order.

  6. 6.

    We keep the notation t for non-manual marking of topics in ASL, as used in the original sources.

  7. 7.

    In addition, Philippe Schlenker has recently published several papers on quantification, anaphora, and iconicity in ASL and French Sign Language (see for instance Schlenker 2011, Schlenker et al. 2013).

  8. 8.

    We do not provide illustrations of the RSL numeral signs, as they can be easily found elsewhere, for instance, on this web-site: http://www.spreadthesign.com/

  9. 9.

    This sign can be found at www.spreadthesign.com (search for “nothing” or ничeгo).

  10. 10.

    This sign can be found at www.spreadthesign.com (search for “which” or кaкoй).

  11. 11.

    However, decreasing GQs can be built through a combination of a universal quantifier all and negation; nobody is also a decreasing quantifier. We do not know if there are any negative polarity items in RSL.

  12. 12.

    As this example shows, RSL is a Negative Concord language, so negative pronouns combine with sentential negation, like in spoken Russian. However, example (19) below shows that Negative Concord is not obligatory. Based on our dataset, it appears that Negative Concord does not happen, if the whole sentence except for the negative pronoun or adverb is topicalized, as is the case in (19). In general, sentential negation in RSL can be expressed by two main syntactic strategies: the sentential negation is either adjacent to the focused constituent, or the whole clause is topicalized and followed by negation (see (116)–(118)).

  13. 13.

    This sign can be found at www.spreadthesign.com (search for “sometimes” or инoгдa).

  14. 14.

    This sign can be found at www.spreadthesign.com (search for ничeгo).

  15. 15.

    This sign can be found at www.spreadthesign.com (search for “diversity” or paзнooбpaзиe).

  16. 16.

    This sign can be found at www.spreadthesign.com (search for “similar” or пoxoжий).

  17. 17.

    In my examples the entities referred to by these signs do not necessarily have to be localized in advance; in such cases it is not clear whether the signs equal.dual and all.the.same have a neutral form, or whether they have the additional function of localizing the referents that have not been previously localized.

  18. 18.

    In our examples this happened only to the negative quantifier never, so the doubling might be related to negation, not to the quantifier per se. However, adverbs in general can be doubled in RSL as well (Kimmelman 2014), so this question needs further research.

  19. 19.

    Note also that the quantifier does not have to be adjacent to the NP, see (98) below.

  20. 20.

    The term “topicalization” here is used to describe a syntactic process of fronting, not necessarily referring to the information structural notion of topic (see Kimmelman 2014). It is likely that (99)–(101) are different with respect to information structure as well; however, this need further research.

  21. 21.

    Note that in some cases the term incorporation may be misleading. For instance, the lexical sign minute has a movement different from the movement in the signs one.minute, two.minute etc. Probably this process can be better analysed in terms of ion-morphs (Fernald and Napoli 2000), and not incorporation.

  22. 22.

    Another potential area where iconicity can play a role is comparatives, as shown for Italian Sign Language by Aristodemo and Geraci (2015). Unfortunately, we did not look at comparatives in any detail.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by NWO (project 360-70-520).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Amsterdam University, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Vadim Kimmelman

Authors
  1. Vadim Kimmelman
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Correspondence to Vadim Kimmelman .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. LORIA (UMR 7503), CNRS, Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy, France

    Denis Paperno

  2. Dept. of Linguistics 3125 Campbell Hall, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Edward L. Keenan

Appendix: Pictures of Quantifiers

Appendix: Pictures of Quantifiers

Fig. 6
figure 6

some. In addition to movement from left to right, the fingers wiggle

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Fig. 7
figure 7

a.bit. Contains small repeated circular movements. The facial expression is lexical

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Fig. 8
figure 8

many1

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Fig. 9
figure 9

many2. Obligatorily accompanied by the mouth gesture [af]

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Fig. 10
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few. Contains larger repeated circular movements

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Fig. 11
figure 11

someone. Contains very short repeated movements forward and backward

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Fig. 12
figure 12

nobody

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Fig. 13
figure 13

how.many1. The movement is wiggling the fingers

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Fig. 14
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how.many2

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Fig. 15
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plurality. The right hand moves in small repeated circles

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Fig. 16
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often1

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Fig. 17
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often2. The finger touches the nose several times

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Fig. 18
figure 18

seldom. The movement is repeated

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Fig. 19
figure 19

never1

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Fig. 20
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never2. Repeated circular movements

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Fig. 21
figure 21

never3. This is a sequence of letters n-i, probably an instance of borrowing from Russian (nikogda ‘never’)

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Fig. 22
figure 22

who. Repeated movements

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Fig. 23
figure 23

something. Very small repeated movements from side to side

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Fig. 24
figure 24

what. Repeated movements from side to side

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Fig. 25
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all

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Fig. 26
figure 26

always1. Repeated circular movements

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Fig. 27
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always2. Repeated circular movements

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Fig. 28
figure 28

always3. Repeated movements

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Fig. 29
figure 29

always4. Repeated movements

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Fig. 30
figure 30

whole1

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Fig. 31
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whole2

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Fig. 32
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whole3

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Fig. 33
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whole4

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Fig. 34
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whole5

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Fig. 35
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whole6

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Fig. 36
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half1

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Fig. 37
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half2

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Fig. 38
figure 38

more. Also means ‘most’. If the movement is reverted, the sign means ‘less’

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Fig. 39
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1/2

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Fig. 40
figure 40

č-e-m. Fingerspelling of the Russian word čem ‘than’. The letter e is not clearly formed

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Fig. 41
figure 41

equal.dual

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Fig. 42
figure 42

all.the.same

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Fig. 43
figure 43

every. The movement is repeated

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Fig. 44
figure 44

every-distr. The sign every is repeated in several locations

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Fig. 45
figure 45

exist. Obligatorily accompanied with the mouth gesture [shhh]

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Fig. 46
figure 46

only

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Fig. 47
figure 47

only-finished. The movement is repeated

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Kimmelman, V. (2017). Quantifiers in Russian Sign Language. In: Paperno, D., Keenan, E. (eds) Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II. Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, vol 97. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44330-0_16

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