Publication details
On question words in Czech Sign Language
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Sign language & linguistics |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | odkaz na číslo odborného periodika, které obsahuje článek |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sll.21001.str |
| Keywords | question words; Czech Sign Language; content questions; wh-words; wh-questions |
| Description | This paper investigates content questions and the paradigm of question words in Czech Sign Language (český znakový jazyk – ČZJ). While we are aware of research covering the topic in other sign languages – SLs (Petronio & Lillo-Martin 1997: American Sign Language – ASL; Meir 2004: Israeli Sign Language; Morgan 2006: Japanese Sign Language – JSL, Zeshan 2006: Turkish Sign Language – TID, a.o.), a comprehensive study for ČZJ is still missing. We offer a basic description of the ČZJ interrogative strategies for the content questions and outline three morphological types of ČZJ question words: simple, complex, and derived. In the absence of a representative corpus for ČZJ, we use data from the most extensive electronic dictionary database (Dictio), developed at the Masaryk University in Brno. The paper proceeds as follows: We introduce ČZJ content questions (Section 1). We describe the data collection using Dictio, and the sessions with our consultant (Section 2). We classify ČZJ within the SL typology as a language with a rich paradigm of question words and identify the basic syntactic position of question words as sentence-final (Section 3). We distinguish three morphological types of ČZJ interrogative expressions: simple, complex, and derived (Section 4). We conclude the paper by summarizing the contributions and prospects of the research (Section 5). All elicited expressions and examples are listed in Appendices and accompanied by interactive links. |