Negative concord in Russian Sign Language

Abstract

In this paper, we provide the first systematic description of negative concord in Russian Sign Language (RSL). Although non-manual markers have been argued to participate in negative concord in sign languages, negative concord involving only manual signs has been shown to be much rarer. The RSL pattern thus fills this typological gap, providing one of the first clear cases of negative concord of manual signs in sign language. We show that RSL contributes important new data to the typology of negative concord known from spoken language. First, we show that RSL (like Hungarian) shows characteristics of both strict and non-strict patterns of negative concord. In neutral contexts without movement, NC items in both subject and object position require a negative licensor; on the other hand, in contexts with appropriate information structure, focused NC items may appear in specific structural positions without a licensor. These facts provide evidence against analyzing the strict/non-strict divide as a language-level property. Second, focusing on non-strict concord, we show that RSL diverges from other languages with respect to important macro-syntactic properties. In RSL, like in a number of other sign languages, negative elements may appear in a structure on the right edge. It is precisely this position that allows NC items to appear without a licensor; in this respect, RSL is a mirror-image of languages like Italian. These syntactic properties provide new evidence that structural hierarchy, not linear order, is responsible for explaining the presence or absence of a licensor in patterns of non-strict concord.