Two agreement markers in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS)

Abstract

For many of the sign languages studied to date, different types of agreement markers have been described which express agreement in transitive constructions involving non-inflecting (plain) verbs and sometimes even inflected agreement verbs. Austrian Sign Language (OGS) belongs to the group of sign languages employing two different agreement markers ( agrm-bc / agrm-mf ), which will be described in this paper. In an online questionnaire, we focused on two questions: (i) whether both forms of agreement markers are rated as equally acceptable by Deaf OGS-signers and hearing native signers, and (ii) whether there is a preferred syntactic position (pre- vs. postverbal) for these markers. Data analysis confirmed that both agreement markers are accepted by OGS-signers and that both agreement markers are slightly preferred in preverbal position. Further, possible origins of both agreement markers are discussed.