A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

In DGS, two different relative pronouns are used to modify nouns referring to human and non-human discourse referents. ix(H) is a general relative pronoun which can be used in relative clauses modifying head nouns referring to non-humans and human entities. By contrast, the second relative pronoun ix (B) can only be used in relative clauses modifying head nouns such as man in the example below that refer to humans. Like ix(H), ix(B) also agrees with the R-locus of the head noun as indicated by the subscript in the example below.

                                            re

         [ man (ix₃) [ix (B)₃ cat stroke ]_CP ]_DP

         ‘the man who is stroking the cat’

 (based on Pfau & Steinbach, 2005: 512)

The two relative pronouns are both produced with an extended index finger but they differ in the orientation of the hand. In the relative pronoun used for human discourse referent the index finger points upward. This pronoun is identical to the entity classifier [Morphology 5.1.1] for human entities (a). By contrast, in the relative pronoun used for non-humans the index finger points downward. This pronoun is morphologically identical with the pointing sign ix (b).

a.       ix(B)

             

b.      ix(H)