Figure 1: RSL manual alphabet. The drawing of the hands are made by Anna-Maria Sonnemann
In the project on fingerspelling in RSL, we show that fingerspelling in RSL can be utilized for pragmatic, stylistic and discourse purposes aside from the more generally cited use of cross-modal lexical borrowing (e.g. personal names, technical terms, gaps in the lexicon). Our corpus analysis of fingerspelled items in RSL Corpus has also revealed new typologically interesting features of fingerspelling which have not been previously reported in the literature (i.e. the occurrence of inflected fingerspelling) (Bauer & Poryadin 2019; Bauer & Poryadin, in prep.).
Collaboration with Roman Poryadin
Main outcome:
Bauer, Anastasia & Roman Poryadin. (in preparation). Fingerspelling and its role in Russian Sign Language discourse.
Bauer, Anastasia. 2020. Mouthing and fingerspelling: different contact phenomena, similar function? LSA annual meeting, New Orleans, USA.
Bauer, Anastasia & Roman Poryadin. 2019. The interplay of written and sign language. The first corpus-based analysis of fingerspelling and its functions in Russian Sign Language (RSL). LingCologne19: Multimodality, University of Cologne, 6-7 June, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29857.28005