Indexicals under role shift in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Abstract

When reporting utterances, signers often use a construction known as quotation roleshift (RS), where the signer embodies the author of the report while making use of adedicated set of non-manual markers (RS-NMMs). First (IX-1) and second (IX-2) personpronouns in those constructions are often observed to shift their meaning to refer to thereported author and the addressee. This article focuses on the behavior of these pronounsin Sign Language of the Netherlands. We designed an experiment targeting theinterpretation of IX-1 and IX-2 under RS-NMMs. Results obtained from 13 participantsshow that, while IX-2 is sensitive to RS-NMMs, the interpretation of IX-1 varies acrosssigners but is not influenced by RS-NMMs. Building upon distinctive phonological, lexicaland interpretive properties of these pronouns, we argue that the interpretation ofIX-2 behaves as a genuine shifted indexical, while IX-1 is better analyzed as a logophor.