A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

Agreement verbs mark agreement with subject and object by a change in path movement and/or in orientation of the hands. Some verbs like explain show object agreement only by changing the orientation of the fingertips which face the syntactic object.

            ₁explain_3a                  

In addition, there are verbs like hate and trust that allow only for object agreement. In most of the cases, these are verbs in which the starting point of the movement involves contact with the body. trust grammaticalized from a plain to an angreement verb and can now encode object agreement. The path movement of trust has a fixed starting point and is signed with both hands next to the head. The endpoint of movement can vary according the location where the object is associated. The subject, however, is expressed by an overt noun or pronoun.

            ₁trust_3a             

         

In DGS, eye gaze seems to be linked to manual agreement, but cannot be considered as an obligatory agreement marker. In some cases, the signer’s eye gaze may be directed towards the object or locative argument as illustrated in the example below.

                                eg-down

            table doll fall

            ‘The doll fell off the table.’