A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

Aside from case and agreement marking, subjects and objects may be marked by their different positions in the sentence. In DGS, the basic word order is SOV, that is the subject precedes the object, which in turn precedes the verb. In other words, we define the grammatical function subject in DGS as the initial argument slot in a basic active clause. In the example below, the subject slot is filled by the agent argument woman.

           

         woman sweet cake bake

         ‘The woman baked a sweet cake.’

 

 

 

Other word orders are possible, but they tend to be marked by non-manuals. For instance, the object may be moved in front of the subject to topicalize it [Pragmatics 4.2]. As shown below, a topicalized object is accompanied by brow-raise, and optionally by a slight forward head tilt, and a pause. 

 

                        top

         cake sweet woman bake 

         ‘The sweet cake, the woman baked (it).’

 

 

 

 

In a few cases, the object can be placed in front of the subject without special marking. This is the case for agreement verbs [Syntax 2.1.2.3], verbs that bear aspectual marking [Morphology 3.3], and in classifier constructions [Morphology 5].

 

The subject may also follow the verb in case it is copied in sentence-final position [Lexicon 3.7, Syntax 2.2.1.3]:

 

                               y/n

         ix₂ cake bake ix₂

         ‘Did you bake the cake?

 

  

 

 

Subjects are frequently omitted in DGS, so when subject pronoun copying is followed by subject drop, the result looks like OVS order:

 

                           y/n

         cake bake ix₂

         ‘Did you bake the cake?

  

 

 

In addition to surface word order, subjects differ from objects in terms of their structural position with respect to the verb. Objects start out inside the verb phrase as sisters to the verb and can occur either to its left (OV) or to its right (VO). Evidence for a VP constituent in DGS comes from VP topicalization and the spreading behavior of non-manuals. The verb can be fronted with its object for topicalization, leaving the subject behind:

 

                     top

         cake bake t-i-m can.not

         ‘Baking cakes, Tim cannot do.’

  

 

 

 

Likewise, the spreading of non-manuals for negation is sensitive to the VP domain. DGS has both manual and non-manual negation (primarily, a negative headshake) [Syntax 1.5], and the non-manual headshake may extend over the verb and its direct object, to the exclusion of the subject:

 

                                 hs          

         man flower buy

         ‘The man is not buying a flower.‘

        

 

 

Since verb and object are sister constituents, no adverbs should occur between them. Instead, adverbs have to be placed before or after the verb phrase in a basic active sentence:

 

a.       man sometimes flower buy

         ‘The man sometimes buys a flower.’

 

      

 

b.      man flower buy sometimes

         ‘The man buys a flower sometimes.’