A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

The handshapes of bodypart classifiers refer mostly to limbs or legs. However, they sometimes  refer to the head of an animate being or to the mouth, or even to the eyelids. Hooked V-handshape (together with the V-handshape) and the Flat-hand are among the handshapes which are used to represent limbs, legged objects and the whole body of the referents.

CL(B):‘man_stand’ 

 ‘A man is standing.’

(Kubus, 2008:103-104)

Four-legged animals in TİD do not have specific classifier handshapes. Furthermore, similar classifiers are used to represent animals without legs (worm, snake), two legged animals (chicken), human beings, and many legged-animals (spider). The classifier handshape used for worms and snakes is the index finger indicating the whole body of the animal, which makes the classifier an entity classifier. 5-handshape, the hooked extended flat hand, the 4-handshape and the 8-handshape are used to represent spiders in TİD. 

TİD makes use of different body parts of the same referent as classifiers depending on the movement of the referent. In the following example, the movement of the cow is represented by different classifiers. 

a-d cow zigzagging through a course with flags

1. CL(Y):'legged_object(cow)'

2. CL(,):'limb_with_a_zigzagging_movement'

3. CL(f):'cow_horn'

4. CL(,):'limb_with_a_zigzagging_movement'              

   (Kubus, 2008:104) 

In this example, the signer uses both the whole body classifier and the limb classifier to represent how a cow zigzagged through the obstacles. The movement begins with walking represented by V-handshape and the signer changes the classifier and represents the zigzag movement through the use of limb classifier. Moreover, TİD makes use of different bodypart classifiers to express manner and path verbs. Figures in (a) and (c) above show the path of the movement through locations whereas Figure (b) and (d) show the manner of the cow’s movement through the inner movement of the hand.

The following table provides a list of bodypart classifier handshapes and their examples.

The list of bodypart classifier handshapes and their examples (r.f. and adapted from Kubus 2008)