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I studied linguistics in Russia (Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow) and in the Netherlands (MA program "'General linguistics"). Several years ago I got interested in sign languages and especially in finding those properties of Language that are shared by signed and spoken languages, which I am trying to do based on the data from Russian Sign Language (RSL) and Sign Language of the Netherland (NGT). See below for my project description.
Apart from sign languages, I enjoy linguistic fieldwork. Thank to RSUH, I had a great opportunity to participate in several expeditions studying Adyghe, a very complex and mysterious language spoken in Adyghea (Russia).My project
My PhD project is called “Information structure in Sign Language of the Netherlands and Russian Sign Language”. The project’s goal is to analyze the means of expressing Information Structure in the two unrelated sign languages, and to test different formal theories of Information Structure on these data. The research is both empirical (data collection and description) and theoretical (interpretation of data within theoretical models) in nature. In the empirical part, I will provide descriptions of grammatical mechanisms for expressing Information Structure in the two sign languages under investigation. Since all of the influential formal theories of Information Structure have been developed based on spoken language data, it is necessary to investigate whether they can also accommodate data from sign languages. Therefore, in the theoretical part of the investigation I will consider which of the available theories can be most successfully applied to sign languages. It may well be the case that certain properties of Information Structure in sign languages cannot be accommodated by any of the available theories. In that case, I would have to include suggestions for modifications which allow for a modality-neutral account of Information Structure. For more details see the proposal file below.
My research supervisors are prof. dr. Anne E. Baker and dr. Roland Pfau.Proposal
Previous research
CV
Research interests (keywords)
Sign Languages, Russian Sign Language, Sign Language of the Netherlands, Nederlandse Gebarentaal, Information Structure, Grammaticalization, Adyghe, Binding Theory, Russian