Verbs in Turkish Sign Language: A cognitive linguistic approach

Abstract

Recent studies show that semantic components of event structure are decomposable. In this study, the semantic components of events and event structure constructions will be examined within the framework of Talmy (2000) and Tang & Yang (2007)’s model on sign languages. Our analysis shows that lexical verbs have the same mechanisms with classifier predicates in terms of event structure constructions. Besides, we have determined that semantic components of event structure have an effect on lexicalization which seems to be one of the most important reasons of lexical variations in Turkish Sign Language (TİD).

Keywords

• event structure
• lexical verbs
• sign language
• lexicalization
• templatic morphology