Neg-raising in Russian Sing Language


2024. №3, 140-153

Alena O. Dubyaga
Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, Russia; Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; dubiaga.al@gmail.com

Abstract:

The article is devoted to the primary search for neg-raising in Russian Sign Language. Neg-raising is a phenomenon of syntactic or pragma-semantic nature that occurs when a matrix verb takes over the negation from a dependent clause, while semantically negation pertains to a dependent verb. Neg-raising has been thoroughly studied in sound languages, but sign languages were not previously included in a typological review: there are only four studies that consider the neg-raising phenomenon. A corpus analysis revealed the neg-raising verbs of the propositional attitude WANT, LOVE, NEED. During the experiment, consisting of two diagnostic tests and a questionnaire, the results of the corpus study were confirmed, and THINK was also identified as a verb that can take over the negation from a dependent clause.

Keywords
corpus study
negation
raising
Russian Sign Language

For citation:

Dubyaga A. O. Neg-raising in Russian Sing Language. Voprosy Jazykoznanija, 2024, 3: 140–153.

Acknowledgements:

The work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant No. 22-18-00120). We are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers who pointed out the inaccuracies of the work. We also want to thank the reviewer for the suggestion to conduct a semantic analysis of neg-raising sentences. We hope that we will be able to apply this analysis in our future studies. We would also like to thank E. A. Khristoforova for her help in compiling the experiment and moral support.