A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

Psychological (psych) predicates express a psychological state. They typically take two arguments: an experiencer, who has a psychological experience or mental state, and a stimulus, which triggers this state or experience. In the example below, the subject ix₁ ‘I’ experiences love, while the object poss₁ husband ‘my husband’ triggers the emotion as a stimulus.

ix₁ poss₁ wife love

‘I love my wife very much.’   


     

There are two types of psych predicates; the ones that realize the experiencer as subject (subject experiencer predicates) and the ones that realize the stimulus as object (object experiencer verbs). DGS does not have object experiencer verbs. Instead, a multi-clausal structure is used. In the following example, the first sentence introduces a board listing missing people as the stimulus. The second sentence introduces the mother as experiencing goosebumps caused by the stimulus.

         cl:board₃ miss this_and_that. mother look-at₃ very goosebumps very

         ‘There were boards with missing people. It gave my mother goosebumps.’