Meltem Kelepir | Bogazici University

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https://linguistics.boun.edu.tr/meltem-kelepir

  

Exclusive indefinite arguments in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) and the function of space

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Sign languages are known to exhibit clusivity distinctions in first person plural personal pronouns such as WE and TWO.OF.US where inclusive pronouns include the addressee and exclusive pronouns exclude the addressee (Cormier, 2012: 233). Inclusive pronouns are signed in the central signing space and exclusive pronouns are signed in the lateral signing space.

              In this talk I argue, based on observations on Turkish Sign Language (TİD), that clusivity distinction is not limited to personal pronouns, but should also be extended to indefinite pronouns with the meaning ‘someone’. The contrast in interpretation can be expressed roughly as being between “someone who is other than you and possibly other people in the location of the utterance” vs. “someone who is from among the group of people in the location of the utterance”.

              I show that TİD expresses exclusiveness of indefinite pronouns with two means: lexically, with a determiner glossed as OTHER, and spatially, by signing an indefinite pronoun without such determiner, ONE, in the lateral signing space. This contrasts with the same indefinite pronoun signed in central space, which is interpreted as inclusive. Similar facts are observed with agreement.

One important implication of these findings is that regardless of the context, certain components of signing space function as the implicit restrictions of quantificational elements, in this case indefinites. These observations are discussed in relation to the findings on languages such as ASL and LSC in works such as Barberà (2012) and Davidson & Gagne (2014) (see also Schlenker et al., 2013, for LSF).

 

Barberà, G. 2012. The meaning of space in Catalan Sign Language (LSC): Reference, specificity and structure in signed discourse. PhD dissertation, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Cormier, K. 2012. Pronouns. In Pfau, R., M. Steinbach & B. Woll (eds.), Sign languages. An international handbook, 227-244. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Davidson, K. and D. Gagne. 2014. Vertical representation of quantifier domains. In U.

Etxeberria, A. Falaus, A. Irurtzun, and B. Leferman, Proceedings of Sinn und 31

Bedeutung 18, 110-127.

Schlenker, P., Lamberton, J. & Santoro, M. 2013. Iconic Variables. Linguistics & Philosophy 36(2): 91-149.

 

The SIGN-HUB Project

 

This project aims at preserving, researching and fostering the linguistic, historical and cultural heritage of European Deaf signing communities with an integral resource. To achieve this aim, researchers from France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands and Turkey are building an online platform which will have the following major components:

 

• online grammars of sign languages

• an atlas of sign languages

• tools for sign language assessment

• a digital archive of elderly signers’ linguistic and cultural heritage

 

This is a 4-year project which started in April 2016 and will be completed in March 2020. It is funded by the European Commission within Horizon 2020 Reflective Society 2015, Research and Innovation actions, under grant agreement No 693349. More information can be found here:

http://www.sign-hub.eu/

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