A Corpus-Based Typology of Negation Strategies in Turkish Sign Language

Abstract

This paper investigates the distribution of negation strategies in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) in the light of frequency-based data from a naturalistic TİD Corpus. On the basis of frequency occurrences, this study offers a novel account of negation on typological grounds: (i) by focusing on nonmanual markers, we propose that a clause can be negated with a nonmanual element only – a pattern that has been typologically proposed for other sign languages – while previous studies classified TİD as a manual dominant language in terms of Zeshan’s typology (Zeshan, 2006), (ii) Also, we argue that backward head tilt has a syntactic characteristic, not lexically specified for NOT contrast to Gökgöz (2011), (iii) on the other hand, in line with Pfau (2016), we show that TİD can easily be classified as Non-Strict NC language. In addition, by proposing frequency-based typological distinction, we argue that TİD can be classified a hybrid negating sign language.

Keywords

• sign language
• negation
• typology
• corpus
• negative concord