Russian Sign Language

Речевая деятельность на изучаемом языке требует принятия множества решений о выборе тех или иных грамматических и лексических средств. При этом время, отводимое в межличностной коммуникации для 5-6 простых предложений, измеряется секундами. Авторы полагают, что роль жеста может являться ключевой как в работе над автоматизацией грамматических умений в условиях реальной межличностной коммуникации, так и при формировании естественного коммуникативного поведения.

This study examines the form, function, and linguistic status of PALM-UP in Russian Sign Language (RSL), revealing a unified discursive mechanism underlying its seemingly diverse functions. Analysis of its occurrences in spontaneous narratives demonstrates that all PALM-UP uses share the
core metaphor of “information as an object placed on an open palm”. The form occurs in two primary spatial configurations: a lateral variant tied to the signer’s egocentric space (e.g., expressing opinions or lack of knowledge) and a presenting variant oriented toward communicative space (e.g., addressing the interlocutor or introducing referents). PALM-UP in RSL narratives exhibits variable syntactic behavior depending on contextual conditions, particularly the ability to form independent discourse units (paraclausal or regulatory). Certain non-manual markers accompanying PALM-UP and their combinations (eyebrow and eye movements, head/body shifts) show systematic correlations with its pragmatic functions, while lip configuration (tight and stretched) appears to be an obligatory component of PALM-UP’s inherent structure. The analysis further demonstrates that PALM-UP in RSL has the linguistic
status of a sign (rather than a gesture), albeit a special one: it functions similarly to discourse markers in spoken languages.

The article examines agreement in constructions with conjoined subjects linked by the conjunction ni … ni ‘neither … nor’, where the first conjunct is the personal pronoun ya ‘I’. The study is based on corpus and experimental data, comparing agreement strategies for constructions with ni … ni ‘neither … nor’ and the conjunction i … i ‘both … and’, which is considered to be its positive counterpart. The corpus data revealed the possibility of the closest conjunct agreement in SV word order for constructions with ni … ni ‘neither … nor’, whereas this strategy was less common for constructions with i … i ‘both … and’; however, the experiment did not confirm significant differences between the ni … ni ‘neither … nor’ and i … i ‘both … and’ constructions. The only acceptable agreement strategies were resolved agreement and the 3rd person plural agreement. The article also discusses why constructions with i … i ‘both … and’ received lower ratings, suggesting that this may be due to the presence of negation in the experimental sentences. Special attention is given to the role of non-referential conjuncts in determining the agreement strategy.

In the modern Bulgarian language, a set of numerative classifiers is used, which simultaneously perform two functions: they categorize names according to some physical or functional features of their referents; they serve as intermediaries in counting objects, aggregates or distributed material masses. These are: 1. the numerative classifier чифт 'pair'-categorizes two-component objects: два чифта очила 'two pairs of glasses'; 2. numerative classifiers for categorizing substances according to the physical form in which they are distributed, and for indicating the type of their quantification-standard and non-standard (conventional and unconventional) measures: метър 'meter', буца 'lump', кофа 'bucket', парче 'piece', лъжичка 'spoon', педя 'span', etc.; 3. the numerative classifiers стадо 'herd', глутница 'pack', ято 'flock', рояк 'swarm', etc.-categorize animals, birds, fish, reptiles, insects, etc. in standard or conventional aggregates: ято гълъби 'a flock of pigeons', две стада овце 'two flocks of sheep'.

Complement anaphora is generally only licensed by downward monotone quantifiers, like ‘few’ (Nouwen, 2003). Yet, sign language data suggest that the use of iconic “loci” can license complement anaphora with upward monotone quantifiers like ‘most’ (Schlenker, 2012; Schlenker et al., 2013). This paper tests the hypothesis that the iconic nature of loci would extend to iconic uses of space in co-speech gestures in English. We hypothesised that, when accompanied by iconic co-speech gestures, complement anaphora will be licensed with upward monotone quantifiers, and will be degraded with downward monotone ones. We designed an experiment testing downward and upward monotone quantifiers with and without gesture, and found a significant effect of both gesture and quantifier type, as well as an interaction between the two. Our results show that iconicity affects complement anaphora licensing, and has the inverse effect of monotonicity. We suggest that the iconicity effects are not sign language specific, but are instead more broad, having to do with how humans interpret iconicity in language. We further argue that iconic co-speech gestures trigger an iconic inference of existence, along the lines of what has been suggested for iconic loci in ASL (Kuhn, 2020).

This paper addresses the tasks of sign segmentation and segment-meaning mapping in the context of sign language (SL) recognition. It aims to give an overview of the linguistic properties of SL, such as coarticulation and simultaneity, which make these tasks complex. A better understanding of SL structure is the necessary ground for the design and development of SL recognition and segmentation methodologies, which are fundamental for machine translation of these languages. Based on this preliminary exploration, a proposal for mapping segments to meaning in the form of an agglomerate of lexical and non-lexical information is introduced.

Принято считать, что местоимение «Я» может обозначать
только говорящего, и не может быть употреблено иным способом. Однако,
как продемонстрировано в статье, возможно «переносное» употребление
местояимения «Я», то есть те случаи, когда возникает несоответствие
между употреблением этого местоимения и обозначением говорящего.
Пргмасемантической основой для возможности такого употребления
является двойственная, или двухкомпонентная референция местоимения
Я, одновременно указывающая на говорящего в ипостаси субъекта
речи (высказывания) и как на субъекта предложения. В наиболее общем виде это разграничение может быть представлено как различия между перформативными и дескриптивными аспектами употребления, благодаря чемук становится возможным одноврменное осуществление семиотически различных операций само- и ино- референции. Вместе с тем в особых
модальных контекстах возможно разъединение этих аспектов, что приводит к многозначности и их переносному (метафорическому) употреблению.
Ключевые слова: местоимение «Я»; само- и ино-референция;
перформативное и дескриптивное употребление; Эмиль Бенвенист;
В. В. Виноградов

Разработка приложения осуществляется на базе графической платформы Unity 5. Данное приложение будет включать в себя алфавит, словарь жестов и переводчик текстов. С его помощью возможно уменьшение проблем в общении глухим людей.Application development is based on the graphics platform Unity 5. This application will include the alphabet, vocabulary, gestures, and text translator. With its help it is possible to reduce communication problems for deaf people

Do signers of different signed languages establish and maintain reference the same way? Here we compare how signers of five Western deaf signed languages coordinate fully conventionalized forms with more richly improvised semiotics to identify and talk about referents of varying agency. The five languages (based on a convenience sample) are Auslan, Irish Sign Language, Finnish Sign Language, Norwegian Sign Language, and Swedish Sign Language. Using ten retellings of Frog, Where Are You? from each language, we analyze tokens of referring expressions with respect to: (a) activation status (new vs. maintained vs. reintroduced); (b) semiotic strategy (e.g., pointing sign, fingerspelling, enactment); and (c) animacy (human vs. animal vs. inanimate object). Statistical analysis reveals many similarities and some differences across the languages. For example, signers of each language typically used conventionalized forms to identify new referents, and less conventional strategies to maintain and reintroduce referents. Differences were mainly observed in relation to the patterning

Advances in convolutional neural networks have made possible significant improvements in the state-of-the-art in image classification. However, their success on a particular field rests on the possibility of obtaining labeled data to train networks. Handshape recognition from images, an important subtask of both gesture and sign language recognition, suffers from such a lack of data. Furthermore, hands are highly deformable objects and therefore handshape classification models require larger datasets. We analyze both state of the art models for image classification, as well as data augmentation schemes and specific models to tackle problems with small datasets. In particular, we perform experiments with Wide-DenseNet, a state of the art convolutional architecture and Prototypical Networks, a state of the art few-shot learning meta model. In both cases, we also quantify the impact of data augmentation on accuracy. Our results show that on small and simple data sets such as CIARP, all models and variations of achieve perfect accuracy, and therefore the utility of the data is highly doubtful, despite its having 6000 samples. On the other hand, in small but complex datasets such as LSA16 (800 samples), specialized methods such as Prototypical Networks do have an advantage over other methods. On RWTH, another complex and small dataset with close to 4000 samples, a traditional and state-of-the-art method such as Wide-DenseNet surpasses all other models. Also, data augmentation consistently increases accuracy for Wide-DenseNet, but not fo Prototypical Networks.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many people. First and foremost, I express my sincere gratitude to Carlo Geraci, who I have now known for over twelve years. He is not only my advisor, but also the person who first showed me that formal linguistics could be applied to LIS, who pushed me to re-enroll in the Science of Language department, and who supported and guided me throughout years and years of study (thank you for your patience). Carlo's influence can be seen throughout my linguistic work. I am happy to call Carlo not only a colleague, but also a friend. I thank Philippe Schlenker for his unwavering commitment to support Deaf people in linguistics. It is through his consistent support that it was even possible to consider undertaking a dissertation, and that apparently unsurmountable obstacles were quickly and easily resolved. Without his help, I would not be here today. Many thanks go to my committee: Christian Rathmann, who I have been lucky to have the chance to interact with, and whose feedback and ideas have had a large impact on my work. Christian has been, and continues to be, an extraordinary Deaf role model in the field of linguistics. I can only hope one day to be so accomplished. Diane Brentari, for great feedback, always accompanied by a smile. Jeremy Kuhn,who has been a great interlocutor and collaborator throughout these years. Natasha Abner, Marie-Anne Sallandre, and Roberto Casati, who have each provided insight and expertise on their field. It has been an honor and privilege to be part of the Italian and French Deaf community. I would like to thank all the Deaf people who have worked with me throughout these years. On the Italian side, a special thanks goes to Lorenzo Laudo and Ezio Bramato, as well as rest of the Italian Deaf community, without whom this work would not be possible. On the French side, thank you to Thomas Levêque, Laurène Loctin, Delphine Kholoukhoev, Ludovic Ducasse, Damien Ducasse, and Yohan Marcelino for all their help, and to the French Deaf community i ii who always gave me their time with a positive spirit. To my best friends, EROI, the heros: Fabio Poletti, Giuliano Nonnis and Giovanni Trezza, who have provided me joy, positive feelings, and support throughout the years. Twenty-one years, to be precise. To my colleagues in the IJN Sign Language Group: Jeremy Kuhn, Charlotte Hauser, Justine Mertz, and Kyle Duarte, who filled my days at work with stimulating scientific exchange and joyful camaraderie. At the ENS and the IJN, thanks to Vincent Gaudefroy, Lucie Raveaux, and Nathalie Evin. Last but not least, thank you to my amazing family. Their support has been unconditional. First of all, I would like to thank my mom, dad, and sister, who taught me to have great aspirations and to have greater perseverance in order to achieve them. Thanks to my large extended family, to the many relatives on both my father's and my mother's side. A special thanks to my Deaf uncles and aunts-Nicola and Santina, Ludovico and Giuseppina, and Angelo and Filomena-who watched me grow up. I hope to make them proud as the first Deaf person in the family to have a PhD. Many thanks go to my parents-in-law Antonina and Giuseppe, my brothers-in-law Alessandro and Tommaso, my sister-in-law Mariella, my niece Martina, and my nephew Giuseppe. Words cannot express how grateful I am to my wife Valentina Aristodemo, my traveling partner on this long journey. I have stopped counting how many times I have fallen, because every time it has happened, there is my wife to pull me up again. I could never alone have climbed as many mountains as we have together-the last of these mountains, of course, being this dissertation.

This paper addresses the tasks of sign segmentation and segment-meaning mapping in the context of sign language (SL) recognition. It aims to give an overview of the linguistic properties of SL, such as coarticulation and simultaneity, which make these tasks complex. A better understanding of SL structure is the necessary ground for the design and development of SL recognition and segmentation methodologies, which are fundamental for machine translation of these languages. Based on this preliminary exploration, a proposal for mapping segments to meaning in the form of an agglomerate of lexical and non-lexical information is introduced.

Чехов А.С. О семантических и синтаксических закономерностях употребления личных и возвратных местоимений 3-го лица в английском языке / А.С. Чехов ;  отв. ред. В.Ю. Розенцвейг. – М., 1979. – 44 с. – (Предварительные публикации / Институт русского языка АН СССР ; Проблемная группа по экспериментальной и прикладной лингвистике. Выпуск 119).

Рассмотрены французские и русские терминологические единицы, используемые для описа-
ния систем жестовой коммуникации на современном этапе развития науки и общества. На основе научных
текстов, словарных статей, юридических и публицистических текстов проведен дефиниционный и контексто -
логический анализ лексических единиц, используемых для выражения понятий устного языка и жестового
языка в соответствующем метаязыке. Выявлены лингвистические и экстралингвистические факторы, опре-
деляющие этические проблемы, связанные с некорректной передачей некоторых терминов с французского
языка на русский. Через призму основополагающего общелингвистического разграничения понятий языка
и речи осуществлена систематизация всех выявленных единиц рассматриваемого терминополя в русском
и французском языках. Выстраиваемые системы представлены в виде таблиц, позволяющих наглядно про-
демонстрировать границы выражаемых понятий. Проведен сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ двух
систем с указанием на основные морфологические и семантические различия в используемых терминах.
На основе полученных результатов выстраивается система эквивалентности французских и русских тер -
минов, представляющая собой научно обоснованную номенклатуру единиц, которая может применяться
лингвистами и переводчиками при работе над текстами в сфере коммуникации глухих и слабослышащих
русскоговорящих и франкоговорящих стран

The article discusses the methods to develop socio-cultural competences in students learning Russian as a foreign language; attention is particularly focused on comparing Italian and Russian speakers' communication etiquette. The different meaning of gestures, poses, different kinds of sound (for example sighs), can lead at best to misunderstandings, at worst to serious conflicts. Based on the above, the question arises: is it necessary to conduct classes to familiarize with nonverbal communication means like gestures. This article takes into consideration the opinions of practical and methodologist teachers on the availability of similar topics in classrooms. The article provides and analyzes examples of mismatches between Italian and Russian gestures, that have been combined in a common list-dictionary. The article describes ways to work with this dictionary. In Italian classrooms, the relevance of the topic is due to the presence of profound differences in the system of non-v...

Acquisition of Acquisition of Complements Complements LIGN171: Child Language Acquisition LIGN171: Child Language Acquisition http://ling.ucsd.edu/courses/lign171 http://ling.ucsd.edu/courses/lign171 Both reasons indicative of increasing complexity in Both reasons indicative of increasing complexity in linguistic and conceptual development linguistic and conceptual development Methods Methods Four children studied longitudinally Four children studied longitudinally Observed in their homes during routine activities and Observed in their homes during routine activities and playing playing Sessions lasted ~8 hours, at 6 Sessions lasted ~8 hours, at 6-week intervals week intervals Data grouped into 2 time points based on MLU Data grouped into 2 time points based on MLU Frequency of Complementation Frequency of Complementation Perception Verbs Perception Verbs See (14%); look (10%) See (14%); look (10%) Eric: Doggie is looking up Eric: Doggie is looking up Kathryn: And nobody can see him Kathryn: And nobody can see him Gia Gia: Look : Look what my mommy got me what my mommy got me Kathryn: I Kathryn: I' 'll see ll see where it is where it is Epistemic (i.e., cognitive) Verbs Epistemic (i.e., cognitive) Verbs know (44%); think (83%) know (44%); think (83%)

Проблема автоматизации сурдоперевода с позиции прикладной лингвистики Аннотация: В статье рассматриваются базовые отличительные свойства автоматического перевода, ориентированного на жестовые языки; формулируются общие функциональные требования к семантическому компоненту такой системы; очерчиваются основные современные подходы к построению систем автоматического перевода для жестовых языков. The paper considers basic distinctive features of a system of sign language machine translation, formulates general functional requirements of a semantic component of such a system, and outlines principal present-day approaches to the construction of sign language machine translation systems.

This article investigates complement clauses, i.e., clauses entering an argument slot of a complement taking predicate, in Ötämiš Ḥāǰǰī's Čingiz-nāmä, a 16th century Middle Turkic text from Khiva which demonstrates Qipchaq linguistic features. Three major classes of complementation will be investigated: direct quotations, propositional-type complement clauses, and state of affairs-type complement clauses. The multitude of surface forms will be encoded into abstract structural types which enable structural comparison. The aim is to establish the inventories of expression types for each class, to give representative examples for each type, and to compare the typological inventories. Besides the formal aspects, semantic issues are investigated as well. The aim of the paper is to provide data for synchronic comparison, and ultimately to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of the variation in clausal complementation among the Modern Turkic languages.

This article investigates complement clauses, i.e., clauses entering an argument slot of a complement taking predicate, in Ötämiš Ḥāǰǰī's Čingiz-nāmä, a 16th century Middle Turkic text from Khiva which demonstrates Qipchaq linguistic features. Three major classes of complementation will be investigated: direct quotations, propositional-type complement clauses, and state of affairs-type complement clauses. The multitude of surface forms will be encoded into abstract structural types which enable structural comparison. The aim is to establish the inventories of expression types for each class, to give representative examples for each type, and to compare the typological inventories. Besides the formal aspects, semantic issues are investigated as well. The aim of the paper is to provide data for synchronic comparison, and ultimately to contribute to our understanding of the evolution of the variation in clausal complementation among the Modern Turkic languages.

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Bu makalede Ötemiş Hacı tarafından 16. yüzyılda Hiva’da yazılmış olan
Cengiznâme’deki tümleç tümcecikleri incelenmektedir. Kıpçak Türkçesi özellikleri  gösteren bu metinde, matris yüklemin ana öğe dilimlerine giren üç tümleç  ulamı dikkate alınmakta: dolaysız alıntılar, önerme türü tümleç tümcecikleri ve işlerin durumu türü tümleç tümcecikleri. Yüzey biçimlerin biçimsel kalabalığı, soyut yapısal türlerle kodlanarak karşılaştırmalı incelemeye tabi tutulmaktadır. Makalenin amacı, üç çatı ulamın ifade türlerinin dizgelerini tespit etmek, her ifade türü için temsil edici örnekler sunmak ve dizgeleri tipolojik ölçütlere göre karşılaştırmaktır. Ayrıca biçimsel boyutun yanı sıra anlambilimsel sorunlar da ele alınmaktadır. Makale, eşzamanlı karşılaştırmalar için de veriler sunarak çağdaş Türk dillerinde tümleç tümceciklerindeki biçimbilimsel ve anlambilimsel çokluğun artzamanlı gelişiminin araştırılmasına da katkı sağlayacaktır

Способы выражения именной множественности в русском жестовом языке * Рассматриваются способы выражения именной множественности в русском жестовом языке (РЖЯ). Показано, что в РЖЯ при помощи морфологических и лексических средств дифференцируются разные типы именной множественности: аддитивная, собирательная, ассоциативная и дистрибутивная. Наиболее регулярно выражаемым значением, кодируемым при помощи специализированных морфологических средств, является дистрибутивная именная множественность, что, по-видимому, объясняется визуально-кинетической природой РЖЯ и важной в нем ролью пространства. Способы кодирования именной множественности в РЖЯ обнаруживают как специфику, обусловленную тем, что информация в этом языке передается при помощи движений и воспринимается зрительно, так и типологическое сходство с одноименными способами в звуковых языках. Ключевые слова: русский жестовый язык, редупликация, модификация жеста, именная множественность, аддитивная множественность, собирательная множественность, ассоциативная множественность, дистрибутивная множественность. Введение Русский жестовый язык (далее-РЖЯ) функционирует как средство коммуникации среди глухих и слабослышащих на территории Российской Федерации. Информация в РЖЯ, как и в других жестовых языках, передается в трехмерном пространстве при помощи жестов рук и немануальных средств-движений головы и корпуса, мимики. Согласно Всероссийской переписи населения 2010 г. число

In both signed and spoken languages, reduplication is a common process in the formation of morphologically complex structures, expressing, e.g., plurality and certain aspectual meanings. A framework in which spoken language reduplication has been formalized frequently is Optimality Theory (OT). While an important attribute of OT-constraints is their universality, to date, the question to what extent such constraints are modality-independent, and thus work for sign language reduplication as well, remains largely unanswered. In the present study, we offer the first OT-formalization of plural reduplication in Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT). The NGT-data reveal that this language features different plural allomorphs, the choice of which depends on phonological properties of the base noun. However, we also identify variation, e.g., all noun types allow for zero marking.In our formalization, we aim to introduce constraints that are maximally modality-independent, using constraint ...

Handshapes are one of the basic parameters of signs, and any phonological or phonetic analysis of a sign language must account for handshapes. Many sign languages have been carefully analysed by sign language linguists to create handshape inventories. This has theoretical implications, but also applied use, as it is important due to the need of generating corpora for sign languages that can be searched, filtered, sorted by different sign components (such as handshapes, orientation, location, movement, etc.). However, it is a very time-consuming process, thus only a handful of sign languages have such inventories. This work proposes a process of automatically generating such inventories for sign languages by applying automatic hand detection, cropping, and clustering techniques. We applied our proposed method to a commonly used resource: the Spreadthesign online dictionary (www.spreadthesign.com), in particular to Russian Sign Language (RSL). We then manually verified the data to be ...

В настоящей статье рассматривается вопрос функционирования контактных глаголов со значением смотреть/katsoa русского и финского языка в спонтанной речи, являющихся в том числе прагматемами,
т. е. единицами, утратившими свое лексическое или грамматическое значение, однако реализующими определенные функции в устном дискурсе. Несмотря на наличие отдельных исследований данной группы прагматем как в финском, так и в русском языках, сопоставительному анализу тенденций их употребления не уделялось достаточного внимания, что составляет актуальность данной работы. Материал для исследования был отобран из числа контекстов, представляющих устную непубличную речь устного подкорпуса Национального корпуса русского языка, а также корпуса ArkiSyn, дающего представление о финской устной речи.
Для обоих языков анализировались формы повелительного наклонения второго лица единственного числа: katso/kato в финской речи, смотри/посмотри в русской. После отбора контекстов был проведен анализ
на предмет реализации следующих функций: 1) маркер старта;
2) навигационный маркер; 3) маркер финала; 4) маркер ренарратива;
5) вербальный хезитатив; 6) маркер поиска. Результаты исследования показали, что в функционировании данных единиц в финской и русской спонтанной речи есть много общего, что говорит о несомненной типологической и структурной близости указанных языковых явлений в исследуемых языках. При этом отмечается большая частотность варианта kato по отношению кatso и смотри по отношению к посмотри. В отношении реализуемых функций можно сказать, что в обеих лингвокультурах частотным является употребление рассматриваемых единиц в качестве стартового, навигационного маркеров и хезитативов. Реже встречается реализация функции финального маркера. Использование в роли маркера ренарратива отмечено не было. В дальнейшем видится перспективным провести подобные сопоставительные исследования для других контактных глаголов русского и финского языков.

In our study, we seek to determine for sign languages the conditions under which a predicate can precede all its arguments. We consider data from the sign languages of Australia, Brazil, Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, examining interviews (informative dialogues) and narratives (monologues). While pressures of visualization converge to make SOV and SVO the unmarked orders in sign languages for most predicates, existential and presentational predicates may appear in sentence-initial position. In such instances, the predicate is a scene-setter, establishing a broad understanding of how we are to interpret the event we are about to visualize. We argue that pressures of visualization are again at work. Since sign languages are largely iconic – where the articulation itself brings up visual images – there is a stronger pressure for them to align articulation with mental visualization than for spoken languages; the goal of clear communication calls for this alignment whenever possible.

The objective of this work is an attempt to show the specificity of deixis of personal pronoun I in the political discourse on the materials of the Czech National Corpus. From a semantic point of view this category attracted a lot of attention, particularly egocentrism and the functional semantic field of personality. First I want to designate the place of the personal pronoun I in the functional semantic field of personality, I want to show their substitutive words components with his specifics in the context of both languages translation and at the same time look at how corpus search engine identifies it. Ключевые слова: русский язык, чешский язык, дейксис, местоимение Я, политический дискурс, эгоцентричность, семантическое поле, Чешский национальный корпус. Резюме: Задача работы состоит в попытке показать специфику местоимения Я в политическом дискурсе на материале Чешского национального корпуса (ЧНК). В статье

В работе анализу подвергаются особенности распределения указательных (дейктических) слов и жестов в полимодальном экспланаторном дискурсе. Для реализации исследования используется собранный корпус речи и жеста, в котором участники поясняли различия между близкими синонимами. В работе применен метод моделирования дейксиса как дискурсивной системы координат, в рамках которой реализуется указание на объекты и ситуации. Показано, что две системы координат, эгоцентрическая и аллоцентрическая, позволяют описать дискурсивные значения речи и жеста на единых основаниях с использованием двух основных координат, «расстояние от говорящего» (ближе к говорящему / дальше от говорящего) и «тип коммуникативно-дискурсивной ситуации» (пространство коммуникации / пространство вне коммуникации). Обнаружено, что во многих случаях различия между двумя системами проявляются не на уровне языка, а на кинетическом уровнев особенностях распределения жестов.

The present study focuses on some issues concerning the theory and methods of cognitive poetics of gestures. It is shown that gesture research can contribute to the multimodal turn in cognitive poetics, as well as to the study of body movements as a special code for expressing ideas in literary and poetic discourse. The impor- tance of studying poetic gestures for cognitive linguistics in general lies in the fact that it can provide insights into the numerous ways mental structures are organized when non-literal meanings are being embodied in discourse. In the present research recitals of poems by actors are analyzed to show what kind of gestures can be used to convey the message of a poem, and what language expressions they co-occur with to create non-literal meanings.
В настоящем исследовании рассматриваются некоторые теоретические и методологические перспективы когнитивных исследований поэтики жестов. Показывается, что данная область представляет интерес не только для расширения когнитивной поэтики в сторону полимодальности, но и для изучения жестов как полноценного, с точки зрения воплощения художественного за- мысла, кода, сопровождающего речь. Для когнитивной лингвистики поэтика жестов важна для более глубокого понимания того, как организуются мен- тальные структуры по ходу построения (воспроизведения) небуквальных зна- чений, воплощаясь не только в словах, но и в движениях тела. На примере жестов актеров, читающих поэтические произведения, рассматривается, какие типы жестов могут использоваться для передачи поэтического замысла, какие языковые выражения они сопровождают и как участвуют вместе с ними в создании переносных значений.

Salience is regarded as one of the key concepts for cognitive studies of language and communication, however there is limited research on how prominence plays out in multimodal discourse. The present study is aimed at investigating how salience comes through in gestures used by simultaneous interpreters. To distinguish between salient and non-salient gestures by the same participant, two groups of observable parameters were chosen – basic and auxiliary. An empirical study was carried out, based on simultaneous interpreting of the audio of a TED talk (English → Russian). The video recordings were integrated into ELAN files and annotated for salient gestures, the functions that were realized by them, and the elementary discourse units (EDUs) that the gestures co-occurred with. It was assumed that, first, salient gestures will be observed less frequently than non-salient gestures; second, prominence in gestures will serve the function of representing various aspects of a situation more often than other functions; third, salient gestures will co-occur more often with elementary discourse units (EDU) containing verb phrases, rather than noun phrases. The hypotheses were partially confirmed via quantitative and qualitative analyses which demonstrated that every third gesture was salient; the representative function came second after the pragmatic functions; there was no significant difference between the number of gestures used with verbal and nominal EDUs, though it was observed that salient gestures tend to co-occur with the verbs of physical actions and negation, as well as with the nouns accompanied by attributes denoting high degree of a quality.

The article reflects the results of a study focused on the variable features of Russian sign language (RSL) in a large region of Eastern Siberia. The work analyzes the modern sociolinguistic landscape of regional variants of RSL and describes the specifics of its functioning in such subjects as Krasnoyarsky Krai, Irkutsk Oblast’, Tyva and Khakassia Republics. The main scientific and practical result of the study of RSL regional variants is presented in the format of developing an electronic multimodal corpus of sign language for a large region of Russia in the amount of 600–800 signs for each territory based on marking the most frequent signs that coincide in the subregions of Siberia, as well as being semiotically differentiated according to the selected territories. Thus, the proposed material summarizes the experience of conducting institutional and linguistic monitoring of RSL representation in the region and creating an electronic platform for the assembled corpus of signs. The...

The article contains an ethnographic description of the conditions governing the use of the regional sign language in Krasnoyarsk Krai within the modern sociolinguistic context. The subject of the discussion is the problem of the linguistic design of sign languages in general, including some features of Russian Sign Language. The study provides statistical information and legal norms for the use of this iconic communication system. A study of the current state of Russian Sign Language functioning in Krasnoyarsk Krai allows us to talk about a change in the status of this sign language, an increasing interest in issues related to its applied significance, and reinforces the need to develop new theoretical approaches to its institutionalization

Based on data from the Russian National Corpus and the General InternetCorpus of Russian, the paper addresses syntactic, sematic and prosodic features of constructions with the demonstrative TOT used as an anaphor. These constructions have gained some attention in earlier studies [Paducheva 2016], [Berger, Weiss 1987], [Kibrik 2011], [Podlesskaya 2001], but their analysis (a) covered primarily their prototypical uses; and (b) was based on written data. The data from informal, esp. from spoken discourse show however that the actual use of these constructions may deviate considerably from the known prototype. The paper aims at bridging this gap. I claim (i) that the function of TOT is to temporary promote a referent from a less privileged discourse status to a more privileged one; and (ii) that TOT can be analyzed on a par with switch reference devices in the languages where the latter are grammatically marked (e.g. on verb forms). The following parameters of TOT-constructions are dis...

Relativization is a robust subordinating type across languages, displaying important typological variability concerning the position of the nominal head that the relative clause modifies, and sign languages are no exception. It has been widely assumed since Keenan & Comrie (1977) that the subject position is more accessible to relativization than object and oblique positions. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the extension of this famous generalization both across modalities (sign as opposed to spoken languages) and across relativization typologies (internally as opposed to externally headed relatives), and to verify how it interacts with age of first language exposure. We here report the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task assessing the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) in three sign languages: French Sign Language (LSF), Catalan Sign Language (LSC), and Italian Sign Language (LIS). The results are that object RCs are never easier to c...

Attitude role shift is a sign language strategy to report someone else’s utterance or thought. It has been analyzed either as a kind of demonstration or, alternatively, as a complex construction involving subordination plus a context-shifting operator. The present work reports the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task developed in three different sign languages (Italian Sign Language, French Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language) with the aim of providing experimental evidence about the nature of role shift. The task assessed the comprehension of indexical first-person pronouns in various syntactic contexts with and without role shift. We showed that constructions with role shift, which require context-shifting for the first-person pronoun, are never easier to comprehend than constructions without role shift that do not require context-shifting. In some cases, they are even more difficult. Additionally, we show that, in Italian Sign Language only, sentences in which the r...

Attitude role shift is a sign language strategy to report someone else’s utterance or thought. It has been analyzed either as a kind of demonstration or, alternatively, as a complex construction involving subordination plus a context-shifting operator. The present work reports the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task developed in three different sign languages (Italian Sign Language, French Sign Language and Catalan Sign Language) with the aim of providing experimental evidence about the nature of role shift. The task assessed the comprehension of indexical first-person pronouns in various syntactic contexts with and without role shift. We showed that constructions with role shift, which require context-shifting for the first-person pronoun, are never easier to comprehend than constructions without role shift that do not require context-shifting. In some cases, they are even more difficult. Additionally, we show that, in Italian Sign Language only, sentences in which the r...

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This paper analyses constructions with proper personal names negated metalinguistically, i.e. the objection is aimed not at the truth of the proposition (ne Vasja, a Kolja), but at the assertability of a linguistic expression (ne Vasja, a Vasilij Pavlovič). Our data from the Russian National Corpus shows, first, that metalinguistic negation constructions with proper names are used primarily to correct the representation of the referent which is associated with the particular form of naming, and the cases of correction of form only, such as linguistic mistakes, are by far less typical. Next, among the additional elements there is a prevalence of temporal markers, which indicates that metalinguistic negation constructions are commonly used to point to the change of the referent with time. Another observation is that the correction towards a more formal way of naming prevails over the opposite direction, showing that the lack of formality is regarded as a more serious mistake that the ...

Automatic Sign Language Translation (SLT) systems can be a great asset to improve the communication with and within deaf communities. Currently, the main issue preventing effective translation models lays in the low availability of labelled data, which hinders the use of modern deep learning models. SLT is a complex problem that involves many subtasks, of which handshape recognition is the most important. We compare a series of models specially tailored for small datasets to improve their performance on handshape recognition tasks. We evaluate Wide-DenseNet and few-shot Prototypical Network models with and without transfer learning, and also using Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML). Our findings indicate that Wide-DenseNet without transfer learning and Prototipical Networks with transfer learning provide the best results. Prototypical networks, particularly, are vastly superior when using less than 30 samples, while Wide-DenseNet achieves the best results with more samples. On the other hand, MAML does not improve performance in any scenario. These results can help to design better SLT models.

Negative polarity items emerge from the interaction between some properties of the semantic module of human language and its lexicon. This leads to the expectation that they should be equally common in spoken and sign language, contrary to what has been documented. We describe the sign UNTIL in French Sign Language, Italian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands. We show that under its punctual reading, UNTIL behaves as a strong negative polarity item, just like English until. We also discuss why more prototypical cases of polarity items like any or ever are much harder to find in sign language.

Во многих современных работах противопоставление между японскими бенефактивными вспомогательными глаголами yaru / ageru / sashiageru 'давать из сферы говорящего' и kureru / kudasaru 'давать по направлению к сфере говорящего' описывается с помощью терминов «инверсив» и «прямое / инверсивное кодирование». Мы сравнили данные конструкции с двумя общетеоретическими описаниями категории инверсива и обнаружили, что японские бенефактивы не укладываются в задаваемые этими описаниями рамки. В эмпирической части мы анализируем корпусные данные на предмет соответствия прямому и инверсивному кодированию и приходим к выводу, что выбор вспомогательного глагола в бенефактивных конструкциях не поддается полному описанию с помощью прямого / инверсивного кодирования, основанного на иерархии лиц. Наиболее адекватное описание распределения лиц участников в бенефактивной конструкции использует понятия «эмпатия» и «иерархия эмпатии». При этом использование иерархии лиц и одушевленности становится избыточным.

Relativization is a robust subordinating type across languages, displaying important typological variability concerning the position of the nominal head that the relative clause modifies, and sign languages are no exception. It has been widely assumed since Keenan & Comrie (1977) that the subject position is more accessible to relativization than object and oblique positions. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the extension of this famous generalization both across modalities (sign as opposed to spoken languages) and across relativization typologies (internally as opposed to externally headed relatives), and to verify how it interacts with age of first language exposure. We here report the results of a sentence-to-picture matching task assessing the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) in three sign languages: French Sign Language (LSF), Catalan Sign Language (LSC), and Italian Sign Language (LIS). The results are that object RCs are never easier to c...