A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

In DGS, plain, agreeing and spatial verbs [Lexicon 3.2] can be distinguished, whether they show agreement with their syntactic arguments or not. Plain verbs are lexically specified for a place of articulation and path movement and do not show manual agreement. Agreement verbs, however, show manual agreement with subject and/or object by modulation of path movement and/or finger orientation. Spatial verbs agree with points in signing space that are linked to locative arguments. Furthermore, verbs can combine with classifier handshapes that denote physical and geometrical properties of the entities they belong to.

 

Verb type has an impact on the word order in DGS. In sentences with forward (a) and backward agreement (b) verbs, word order is usually SOV as demonstrated below. In sentences with plain verbs, however, word order is more flexible, thus it can be either SOV as in (c) or SVO as in (d). Word order in sentences with a predicate classifier is mostly SOV as in (e).

 

a.       mother_3a often child_3b++ _3ascold_3b++

         ‘Mother often tells the children.’

      

 

 

b.      poss₁ friend_a poss₁ ex-partner_bbinvite_a

         ‘My friend invited my ex-partner.’

 

 

 

c.       poss₁ colleague unsuccessful ix(loc)_anew work look-for

         ‘My colleague is unsuccessfully looking for new job there.’

 

      

 

 

d.      girl little ix_3a like poss_3a doll

         ‘The little girl likes her doll.’

 

 

    

 

e.       ix_1pl table glass++ cl:put_on

         ‘We put the glasses on the table.’