A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

A restrictive relative clause is one which restricts the possible entities that the head noun of the relative clause can refer to. A non-restrictive relative clause provides additional information without narrowing down the set of entities that the head noun refers to. The first example below is a restrictive relative clause while the second example is a potential non-restrictive relative clause:

                                sq

[girl far village in] boy₃ ix₃ love

'The girl who was from a village far away loved the boy.'

(Kubus 2016: 209)

                                                       hs

                                                                  sq

                                                    re                    ht

ix₁ hangman [competition a-b-c] CL:'want_not'

'I didn't like hangman, a game which uses letters.'

 (adapted from Kubus 2016: 340)

The preferred position of a head noun is inside the relative clause in a restrictive relative clause while the non-restrictive relative clauses are mostly observed with an external (postnominal) head noun or a doubled-head noun. The relativization sign does not depend on the semantics of the relative clause with the exception that same is limited to restrictive relative clauses. As for non-manual markers, squint is still the most common non-manual marker for both restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses while there is a small preference for raised eyebrows to be used more frequently with non-restrictive relative clauses. Restrictive relative clauses can occur in fronted (most frequent), embedded and postverbal positions while nonrestrictive relative clauses only occur in fronted or embedded positions in almost the same ratio