A Grammar of German Sign Language (DGS)

Negative determiners in DGS are: none (kein), nothing (nichts), and no_one (niemand). The negative determiner none is typically used sentence finally, but it can as well precede a predicate.

 

a.         none (kein)

 

 

 

b.         t-i-m siblings none

            ‘Tim has no siblings.’

 

The negative determiner nothing occurs in the sentence final position in DGS. Examples with this negative marker can be seen below in (a-b).

 

 

a.         nothing (nichts)

 

 

 

b.         hey never_mind happen nothing

            ‘Hey you never mind, nothing happened.’

 

 

 

The position of no_one in the sentences is quite flexible. That is, it can appear sentence initially, sentence medially or sentence finally. Some signers of DGS frequently use this sign while others do not use it at all. An example of two phonetic variants of no-one (a-b) as well as its sentential distribution can be seen below (c-d).

 

a.         no.one (niemand)

 

 

 

 

b.         film watch no.one

            ‘No one has watched the film.’

 

 

 

 

c.         no.one film watch

            ‘No one has watched the film.’

 

 

 

d.         film no.one watch

            ‘No one has watched the film.’

  

 

 

Negative adverbials in DGS are: never (niemals), not.yet (noch nicht), without (ohne), no (nein). never is signed one or two handed with a B -handshape as in (a) or ]-handshape as in (b). This adverbial can appear in sentence final, sentence initial or sentence medial positions. In the sentence initial occurrences, never adds additional emphasis on the sentence. This is illustrated in examples in (c-e) below.

 

a.         never1 (niemals)

 

 

 

 

b.         never2 (niemals)

 

 

 

c.         e-v-a tea drink never

            ‘Eva never drinks tea.’

 

 

 

d.         never e-v-a tea drink

            ‘Eva absolutely never drinks tea.’

 

 

 

e.         e-v-a tea never drink

            ‘Eva absolutely never drinks tea.’

 

 

 

Another negative adverbial in DGS is not.yet. It is accompanied with a headshake and the mouthing noch nicht (‘not yet’). This adverbial typically appears sentence finally, but also can occur sentence initially or following the subject of a sentence.

 

                       hs

a.         not.yet (noch-nicht)

 

 

 

                                                   hs

b.         ix₁ shower_take not.yet

            ‘I have not taken a shower yet’

 

 

 

               hs

c.       ix₁ not.yet shower_take

          ‘Until now, I have not taken a shower.’