The phonological and semantic bifurcation of the functions of an articulator

Abstract

In this article, we analyse the role of the head in content questions and polar questions in Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili -TİD). We claim that the head not only robustly marks the difference between these two types, but in addition marks an utterance as having interrogative mood. We show that the two functions, the overarching category interrogative mood and the subtypes of interrogatives, have separate phonological exponents, both of which are expressed simultaneously by a single articulator, the head.

Embedded polar interrogatives in Turkish Sign Language

“…This study investigates a specific case of interaction between a nonmanual marker (henceforth NMM) and semantics in Turkish Sign Language (henceforth TİD). The NMM under the spotlight in this study is the HEAD FORWARD, a marker that has previously been associated with syntactic clause-typing of matrix polar interrogatives in TİD (Göksel and Kelepir 2013). In Hakgüder (2015), I found that TİD morphology distinguishes wh-interrogatives that are arguments 1 of intensional verbs from those of extensional verbs by the presence and absence of HEAD BACKWARD.…”

“…She observes widened eyes with eye gaze on the addressee and a forward head position, as well as the manual signs QUESTION.MARK 2 and the PALM-UP. Göksel and Kelepir (2013) find that HEAD TILT is the morphological marker that distinguishes interrogatives from other clause types. They show that it has two morphological manifestations: (i) HEAD FORWARD marks polar interrogatives and (ii) HEAD BACKWARD marks wh-interrogatives.…”

Türk İşaret Dili’nde İlgi Tümceciklerini Belirleme Sorunsalı

“…We have to keep in mind that headshake also has different functions in TİD such as marking negation (in addition to head tilt, e.g. Zeshan (2006)) and content questions (Zeshan (2006), Göksel & Kelepir (2013)). An interaction between the occurrences of the headshake in interrogatives and RCs might be another possible evidence for headshake to have pragmatic function or even being grammaticized into both functions.…”

Strategies to Express Time in a Tenseless Language: Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

“…Moreover, head nod only occurs over UNDERSTAND even though the sentence has three verbs, WATCH, UNDERSTAND, and TELL 3 . To summarize, head nod does not consistently occur with each verb and it may have another function rather than marking tense as seen in ( 4) (Göksel & Kelepir, 2013).…”

“…Furthermore, head nod in the first sentence does not appear on the verb, which should have if it was a tense marker. On the contrary, it appears on TWO and marks the sentence boundary (Göksel & Kelepir, 2013). Based on this, the following question is why head nod does not appear in the third sentence if it marks clause boundary.…”