Modality of possibility and necessity in Russian Sign Language

Abstract

The article discusses manual and non-manual means used to express the modal meanings of possibility and necessity in Russian Sign Language (RSL). It is shown that due to the combination of manual signs, non-manual markers, and means of non-concatenative morphology (in particular, manner of movement), RSL is able to express subtle shades of modal semantics. RSL also clearly distinguishes between semantic domains of subject-oriented modality and epistemic modality: the first one is obligatorily expressed by manual signs while the second one is obligatorily marked by non-manuals. The article also discusses the origin of manual markers of possibility and necessity in RSL: some of them are native signs, in which the modal meaning is mainly expressed by the visual metaphor “from image to meaning”, typical for sign languages, while others are lexicalized borrowings from spoken Russian or have been derived from gestures used by hearing people. It is also shown that in the division of the sematic area of modality, RSL differs both from the surrounding spoken Russian language and a number of sign languages.