Reduplication and Conversion in German Sign Language

German sign language (DGS) uses reduplication as a productive means of morphological marking. Reduplication triggers, for instance, a plural interpretation with nouns (cf. 1a), aspectual interpretations with all kinds of verbs (cf. 1b), and a distributive reading with agreeing verbs (cf. 1c). [Notational convention: subscripts and superscripts indicate points in the signing space; subscripts represent movement of the dominant, superscripts movement of the non-dominant hand.] (1) a. BUCH–BUCH–BUCH ‘books’ b. NACHT ICH FAHR–FAHR–FAHR ‘I drive the whole night’ c. ICHGEB1–ICHGEB2–ICHGEB3 ‘I gave each of them’ A particulary interesting case of reduplication in DGS is reciprocal marking, which does not only involve reduplication but also conversion. Moreover, DGS, unlike e.g. English and German, does not have a single means of reciprocal marking. Rather, the specific realization depends on the underlying verb type. In DGS, like in other signed languages, different verb types have to be distinguished according to their morphosyntactic and articulatory properties. On the morphosyntactic side, verbs differ from each other with respect to their agreement properties (agreeing verbs vs. plain verbs; cf. Padden 1988). On the articulatory side, signs that are articulated with one-hand contrast with two-handed signs (Brentari 1998). The examples in (2) – (4) illustrate that reciprocal marking in DGS is affected by the morphophonological form of the verb. A closer examination of reciprocals in DGS reveals that three classes of verbs have to be distinguished: one-handed agreeing verbs (2ab), twohanded agreeing verbs (3ab), and plain verbs (4ab). (2) One-handed agreeing verb a. MUTTER INDx KIND INDy xKÜSSy mother index child index AGR.S-kiss-AGR.O ‘The mother kisses the child.’ b. xWIR-BEIDEy x yKÜSSy x c. * xWIR-BEIDEy xKÜSSyKÜSSx we.two kiss-REC we.two kiss-REC ‘We kiss each other. ’ ‘We kiss each other.’ (3) Two-handed agreeing verb a. ARZT INDx MANN INDy x xHELF