A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

Some subordinate clauses are welded with their main clauses by non-manual markers [Syntax - 1.3.2.2.] that spread across clause-boundaries. There are at least three instances of such spreading in TİD. One of these is a single shared non-manual marker that runs over the whole main clause, the non-manual marker ‘static body posture’:

 

_______________________________________________________sbp

hasan know_that [elif horse_ride work succeed work++succeed]

‘Hasan knows that Elif is working on and succeeding at horse riding.’

            (adapted from Göksel & Kelepir 2016: 7; ex. 6b)

 

This sentence does not only exemplify the lack of a break after know, but a dedicated marker that is the indicator of syntactic complexity.

          In the other two cases, spreading is local. One of these occurs in complex clauses with guess as the main verb. The other one occurs when the main verb is negative.

          The verb guess contains a non-manual component, which is squint. When this verb has an object clause as its complement, squint can spread progressively into the first word of the complement clause:

 

                   ________sq

ayşe guess [ülkü sleep]

‘Ayşe thinks that Ülkü is sleeping.’

                      (adapted from Göksel & Kelepir 2016: 15; ex. 21)

 

Alternatively, squint can spread into the last word of a preceding complement clause:

 

                     _______sq

ix₂ [election win] guess who

‘Who do you think will win the election?’

                       (adapted from Göksel & Kelepir 2016: 16; ex. 22)

 

In the case of negation, one of the non-manual markers associated with negation, non-neutral brow position (nbp), can spread into the verb phrase of the subordinate clause:

         

                             ______________nbp       

poss₁ sister_a ix_3a [car drive] like^not

‘My sister doesn’t like driving a car’.             

(adapted from Göksel & Kelepir 2016)