Point of View in Danish Sign Language

Abstract

One way of expressing a particular point of view depends on deixis; the sender ‘lends’ his means of expressing his own point of view to another referent. In Danish Sign Language there are three such basically deictic means of expressing a particular point of view, namely shifted reference, shifted attribution of expressive elements, and shifted locus. Eveathough especially the last two phenomena may seem special to sign languages, they have clear functional parallels in spoken languages.