Article

Name: The ways of expressing nominal plurality in the Russian sign language

Authors: S. I. Burkova

Novosibirsk State Technical University, Novosibirsk, Russian Federation

In the section Linguistics

Abstract: The paper discusses the ways of encoding nominal plurality in Russian Sign Language (RSL). It has been shown that RSL possesses a number of morphological and lexical means used to distinguish different kinds of nominal plurality: additive, collective, associative and distributive ones. The most regularly expressed meaning, encoded by specialized morphological means is the distributive nominal plurality. Apparently, this is due to RSL’s visual-kinetic nature and the importance of space in this language. The ways of expressing nominal plurality in RSL show up both peculiarities, which are mainly caused by the fact that the information in this language is transmitted by means of movements and perceived visually, as well as typological similarities with spoken languages.

Keywords: russian sign language, reduplication, sign modification, nominal plurality, additive plurality, collective plurality, associated plurality, distributive plurality

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