Russian Sign Language (RSL) is the
sign language
Sign languages (also known as signed languages) are languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning, instead of spoken words. Sign languages are expressed through manual articulation in combination with #Non-manual elements, no ...
used by the Deaf community in Russia, with what is possibly additional presence in Belarus and Tajikistan. It belongs to the
French Sign Language family
The French Sign Language (LSF, from ) or Francosign family is a language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language.
The LSF family descends from Old French Sign Language (VLSF), which developed among ...
.
RSL is a
natural language
A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...
with a grammar that differs from spoken or written
Russian language
Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...
.
Signed Russian is an artificial form of communication used in schools and differs from RSL in strictly following Russian grammar.
Although RSL is legally recognized in Russia, it does not enjoy state support and there is a lack of skilled RSL interpreters in the country.
History
In 1806, the first Russian deaf school was founded near St. Petersburg. It is believed that RSL belongs to the
French sign language family
The French Sign Language (LSF, from ) or Francosign family is a language family of sign languages which includes French Sign Language and American Sign Language.
The LSF family descends from Old French Sign Language (VLSF), which developed among ...
due to the fact that the first two sign language teachers were from France and Austria.
Beyond a speaker base in Israel,
researchers do not know for sure if RSL is used outside of Russia; it may also be used in Ukraine, Belarus or Tajikistan.
Much of the early research on RSL was done by Galina Lazarevna Zaitseva,
who wrote her 1969 PhD thesis on spatial relationships in Russian Sign Language, and in 1992 devised the now standard term for Russian Sign Language "Russkii Zhestovyi Yazyk" (Russian: Русский Жестовый Язык).
Sociolinguistic status
Most deaf people in Russia are born to hearing families and therefore are not provided the opportunity to acquire a native-like command of RSL. Bilingualism between RSL and written or spoken Russian is very common.
Signed Russian differs from RSL in that it is an artificial form of communication which closely follows Russian word order and adds Russian grammatical features not found in RSL. Sign Russian has a higher social status than RSL because of its association with literacy and higher education. This higher status is due to educational policies, such the near-exclusive use of Signed Russian at deaf schools by teachers.
Many Deaf RSL users see their language as a jargon without grammar.
These social factors have caused RSL to be significantly influenced by Russian in its vocabulary and some syntactic structures as well.
There appears to be a relatively significant amount of regional variation in RSL comparable to regional variants of
Polish Sign Language or
Estonian Sign Language. One study reported lexical similarity between two Russian signers at around 70–80%.
Grammar
Syntax
The basic word orders in RSL appears to be
SVO and
SOV. A 2012 study found that that
subject came before the
predicate 95% of the time. Additionally, the
object
Object may refer to:
General meanings
* Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept
** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place
** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter
* Goal, an a ...
was placed before the verb 74-81% of the time. In situations where the subject and object
can switch places, SVO word order is preferred; the same can be said for sentences with
animate
Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby image, still images are manipulated to create Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on cel, transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and e ...
objects.
Topicalization
Topicalization is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the sentence or clause topic (linguistics), topic by having it appear at the front of the sentence or clause (as opposed to in a canonical position later in the sentence). T ...
, marked either by lowered eyebrows and a head nod or just raised eyebrows, introduces previously mentioned information. Although RSL lacks
determiner
Determiner, also called determinative ( abbreviated ), is a term used in some models of grammatical description to describe a word or affix belonging to a class of noun modifiers. A determiner combines with a noun to express its reference. Examp ...
s, pointing signs can act like
demonstrative
Demonstratives (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic, their meaning ...
s to mark
definiteness
In linguistics, definiteness is a semantic feature of noun phrases that distinguishes between referents or senses that are identifiable in a given context (definite noun phrases) and those that are not (indefinite noun phrases). The prototypical ...
.
Lexical signs may also be doubled in the sentence to add emphasis or to foreground something (see below).
Verbs may take one, two or no
arguments
An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persua ...
at all in RSL. There are also several
alternations that change the argument structure in predictable ways. Examples of this include
impersonal,
reciprocal and
causative
In linguistics, a causative (abbreviated ) is a valency-increasing operationPayne, Thomas E. (1997). Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 173–186. that indicates that a subject either ...
constructions. In this respect RSL is
typologically similar to other languages.
Classifier predicates are highly
iconic verbal signs in which the
handshape represents an object and the movement expresses how the object moves.
RSL classifier predicates use SOV word order
and do not seem to be intrinsically associated with particular argument structures.
Morphology
Whereas
tense is marked
analytically or lexically,
aspectual distinctions are marked
morphologically. Examples of the latter include repeating the sign to indicate
habituality, slow movement for
durativity, and a single quick movement for completivity.
Adjective
An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...
s and temporal
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...
ials along with
negative, tense markers all come after the base of the sign. Question words tend to come at the end of the sentence. The plural may be marked either by doubling the sign or by signing MNOGO 'many' or RAZNYJ 'various' after the base sign. A
dual meaning of the noun can be expressed by signing the predicate with both hands.
Naturally masculine signs are signed at the upper part of the face whereas feminine ones are signed on the lower part of the face.
Phonology
Similar to other sign languages, RSL makes extensive use of
facial expressions
Facial expression is the motion and positioning of the muscles beneath the skin of the face. These movements convey the emotional state of an individual to observers and are a form of nonverbal communication. They are a primary means of conveying ...
for grammatical purposes and signs are either performed with one or both hands. An example of the former include a headshake, furrowed eyebrows and wrinkled nose for negation. This form of negation must include the manual sign NOT, but the facial element may spread to other parts of the sentence.
A 2019 study identified 116
handshapes in a corpus of more than 5000 images, 23 of which were
phonologically
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often prefer ...
distinct.
Legal status
The current legal status of RSL is as follows:
# The Russian Federation provides services for sign language for rehabilitation measures.
# The current status of Russian Sign Language is extremely low. According to article 14 of the Russian Federal Law, entitled "Social protection of the disabled in the Russian Federation", sign language is recognized as a means of interpersonal communication. Although it is recognized, there is no state support, despite Articles 3, 5, 14, and 19 of the Russian Federal Law, which claim to provide necessary services to the deaf.
Valentin Lebedev. In search of a common language (Russian)
/ref>
There are several problems concerning the study and application of sign language in Russia, which Valery Nikitich Rukhledev, President of the All-Russian Society of the Deaf
The All-Russian nation or All-Russian people () or triune Russian people (), also called the triune Russian nation or pan-Russian nation, is the term for the Russian Empire, Imperial Russian and modern Russian Russian irredentism, irredentist id ...
[text/appears/2009/04/214924.shtml verbatim record of the meeting of the Council for the Disabled](_blank)
/ref> cited:
# The instruction of sign language interpreters is an old, long-established program, and they study some gestures, which have long fallen into disuse or have changed in meaning or form. Because of this, interpreters have difficulty understanding the deaf, who try to use their services.
# Until 1990, the sign language interpreter trade unions had 5,500 translators, of whom 1,000 worked in the system of our organization. Now, thanks to the federal target program "Social Support of Disabled," we manage to keep translators at 800. But the shortage of interpreters remains at about 5,000 people.
# Today, the Russian Federation only trains sign language interpreters with the issuance of state diplomas from the inter-regional center for the medical rehabilitation of persons with hearing disabilities center in St. Petersburg. Eliminating the existing deficit of sign language interpreters in a country like Russia is impossible with only one training center. It is necessary to train more specialists and to have them in distant regions of the country.
However, there is hope that the situation can change. On 4 April 2009, at the Russian Council on The Disabled, President Dmitry Medvedev discussed the issue of the status of sign language in Russia. In his closing remarks, the President of the Russian Federation expressed his opinion:
Use in films
*'' Страна глухих (Country of the Deaf)'' (1998)
*'' Свадьба тишины (Wedding of Silence)'' (2004)
*'' Пыль (Dust)'' (2005)
See also
* Russian Manual Alphabet
References
Further reading
*Khristoforova, Evgeniia, and Vadim I. Kimmelman. "Syntax of relativization in Russian Sign Language: Basic features." ''Voprosy Jazykoznanija'' 6 (2020): 48–6
Online access
*Kimmelman, Vadim. 2009. Parts of speech in Russian Sign Language: The role of iconicity and economy. ''Sign Language & Linguistics'' 12.2:161-186.
*Kimmelman, Vadim. 2014. ''Information Structure in Russian Sign Language and Sign Language of the Netherlands.''
Web access
External links
Russian Sign Language Project at Stanford University. – Online Video Glossary
MBDSA
website of the charity that supports the Moscow Bilingual School for the Deaf
SIL report
The Signed Languages of Eastern Europe
{{French Sign Language languages
Languages of Russia
Languages of Moldova
French Sign Language family
Articles containing video clips
Sign languages of Israel