From questions to relatives in Czech Sign Language

Authors

STRACHOŇOVÁ Hana

Year of publication 2019
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description There are analysis of relativization strategies in some sign languages (e.g. Liddel 1978 for American Sign Language, Pfau & Steinbach 2005 for German Sign Language, Branchini & Donati 2009, Cecchetto et al 2006 or Cecchetto & Donati 2016 for Italian Sign Language), or at least descriptions of relative structures (Sze 2003 for Sign Language of Hong Kong). As for Czech Sign Language (CSL), I am not aware of any work describing the situation. In this talk, I am interested in relative sentences in the context of the implicational hierarchy for the use of wh-words (1. content questions; 2. embedded questions; 3. correlatives; 4. light-headed relatives; 5. free relatives; headed relatives). Thus I will explore the use of wh-words in CSL, first in content questions with the intention to go as far as possible in the hierarchy. This first approach is more of a data description than analysis. Before constructing a theoretical model of relativization in CSL, it is essential to understand well the system of wh-words in this vastly understudied language (at least the definition/detection of wh-words and their syntactic position ). I built on the work that has been done on wh-words in CSL content questions (especially Pospíšilová 2012, Hronová 2002) and I systematize some data elicited from CSL online dictionary. At the end of the talk, I outline the way towards relativization in CSL using preliminary data obtained at my sessions with a native Deaf informant.
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