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Sign Language Typology Series SIGN LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY SERIES The Sign Language Typology Series is dedicated to the comparative study of sign languages around the world. Individual or collective works that systematically explore typological variation across sign languages are the focus of this series, with particular emphasis on undocumented, underdescribed and endangered sign languages. The scope of the series primarily includes cross-linguistic studies of grammatical domains across a larger or smaller sample of sign languages, but also encompasses the study of individual sign languages from a typological perspective and comparison between signed and spoken languages in terms of language modality, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to sign language typology. Interrogative and Negative Constructions in Sign Languages Edited by Ulrike Zeshan Sign Language Typology Series No. 1 / Interrogative and negative constructions in sign languages / Ulrike Zeshan (ed.) / Nijmegen: Ishara Press 2006. ISBN-10: 90-8656-001-6 ISBN-13: 978-90-8656-001-1 © Ishara Press Stichting DEF Wundtlaan 1 6525XD Nijmegen The Netherlands Fax: +31-24-3521213 email: [email protected] http://ishara.def-intl.org Cover design: Sibaji Panda Printed in the Netherlands First published 2006 Catalogue copy of this book available at Depot van Nederlandse Publicaties, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag (www.kb.nl/depot) To the deaf pioneers in developing countries who have inspired all my work Contents Preface........................................................................................................10 Part I Introduction 1 Design of the volume.........................................................................13 Ulrike Zeshan 2 Negative and interrogative constructions in sign languages: A case study in sign language typology........................................................28 Ulrike Zeshan Part II Studies of negatives and interrogatives in individual sign languages 3 Aspects of interrogatives and negation in New Zealand Sign Language...........................................................................................70 Rachel McKee 4 Interrogatives and negatives in Japanese Sign Language (JSL)..................................................................................................91 Michael W. Morgan 5 Negative and interrogative structures in Turkish Sign Language (TID) ..............................................................................................128 Ulrike Zeshan 6 Questions and negation in American Sign Language.....................165 Susan D. Fischer 7 Questions and negation in Hong Kong Sign Language.........................................................................................198 Gladys Tang 8 Interrogatives and negatives in Flemish Sign Language.........................................................................................225 Mieke van Herreweghe & Myriam Vermeerbergen Part III Flashes from around the world 9 The use of negative head movements in Greek Sign Language.........................................................................................258 Klimis Antzakas 10 Questions in Brazilian Sign Language (LSB).................................270 Ronice Müller de Quadros 11 Interrogatives and negatives in Finnish Sign Language: An overview..........................................................................................284 Leena Savolainen 12 Regional variation in Indo-Pakistani Sign Language - Evidence from content questions and negatives......................................................303 Ulrike Zeshan Appendix Transcription conventions.........................................................................324 Research materials....................................................................................326 Subject index............................................................................................350 References................................................................................................357 Preface During fieldwork in Lebanon in November 2001, I was staying with my husband and my son at the guesthouse of the German Oriental Institute in Beirut. One day I met the director of the institute, who had come up to the general living area to check on the newly acquired television. We started talking about sign languages and deaf communities, and, becoming more and more surprised at all the strange facts I was bringing to his notice, he summed up our discussion with the words: “I only came to find a new television, but I found a whole new world!”. Since 1994, my work in the world of deaf communities in various countries has brought with it a constant stream of memorable moments. A nightly journey in 1998 on a bicycle-rickshaw through a quarter of the old city in Delhi to visit a deaf family, in almost total darkness due to one of the usual electricity cuts. The first Indian conference on bilingualism in deaf education in Hyderabad in 2001. A long evening in Eskişehir learning the local games of chance in the deaf club together with some of my first Turkish signs. A week trapped in snowstorms in the worst Istanbul winter in decades, and severe Monsoon floodings in Mumbai. And above all, the long nights of relentless and addictive signing. Working in developing countries means working under the constant strain of insufficient resources and, at times, personal hardship, but more often than not, this is counterbalanced by the amazing human resources to be found in the deaf communities themselves. I gratefully acknowledge that they have been my main source of inspiration, and so it is to them that I wish to dedicate this volume. On the academic side, I am no less grateful to the many people who have accompanied me on various stages of the journey towards the beginnings of sign language typology. I owe a lot to the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology (RCLT) in Australia, which was my host institution in Canberra and in Melbourne between 1999 and 2003. The framework for a large cross-linguistic study on negatives and interrogatives in sign languages, which has resulted in the present volume, first took shape at the RCLT. The subsequent development of the project is something that still surprises me. Having designed questionnaires and contacted possible collaborators around the world, the sensible expectation, which luckily I was not aware of at the time, would have been to get some basic information from a handful of respondents, if not less. Instead, I received responses for sign languages from 18 countries, varying from a few basic written answers to complete 20-page papers. More often than not, the responses also included pictures or videotapes, and the amount of effort that went into preparing all these resources was truly impressive. A project of this kind would have been impossible without the support of these dedicated collaborators, and so I would like to express my deep gratitude to the people who were part of this unique group effort: Trevor Johnston (Australia), Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen (Denmark), Leena Savolainen, Pia Koivula, Kimmo Leinonen, Kaisa Engman, Karin Hoyer, Anja Malm, and Ritva Takkinen (Finland), Klimis Antzakas (Greece), Gladys Tang and Kenny Chen (Hong Kong), Svandís Svasvarsdóttir (Iceland), Helena Saunders (Ireland), Irit Meir and Meir Etedgi (Israel), Washington Akaranga (Kenya), Ronice Mueller de Quadros (Brazil), Rachel McKee (New Zealand), Michael Morgan (Japan), Sean Witty and Cho Wiyoung Witty (South Korea), Inmaculada Baez, Carmen Cabeza, Ana Fernández-Soneira, Mar Lourido-Francisco, and Juan Valiño-Freire (Spain), Wayne Smith (Taiwan), Nicholaus Mpingwa (Tanzania), Sam Lutalo (Uganda), Myriam Vermeerbergen and Diane Boonen (Belgium). I am also indebted to the dedicated team of people who have contributed to the copyediting, typesetting, design and production of this volume through all its stages, in particular Mona Shah, Pamela Perniss and Connie de Vos, and to my colleagues Sibaji Panda and Waldemar Schwager at our Deaf Empowerment Foundation, of which Ishara Press is a subsidiary. This volume is a direct result of the collaborative project. The majority of chapters have evolved from responses to the original questionnaires, and almost all authors have been involved with the project from the very beginning. All contributors have been extremely helpful with answering follow-up questions and cross-checking the data from their respective sign languages as successive publications were prepared that summarised the first results of the project (Zeshan 2004a, 2004b). This volume provides the opportunity of looking at a representative selection of sign languages from the original cross-linguistic study in much more detail, including many additions and modifications that add to our understanding of the structure of these sign languages. From June 2001 onwards, my work on sign language typology has been supported by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) through a post-doctoral fellowship and subsequent support for heading a junior research group (Emmy-Noether award ZE 507/1-1; 1-2; 1-3). The Research Centre for Linguistic Typology has additionally supported my fieldwork in Turkey, India, Lebanon and Egypt. I sincerely hope that this line of research will continue to be of benefit to the deaf communities involved. My final thanks go to my husband and my son, who have patiently shared with me all the ups and downs, the excitement and hardship, the good times and the bad times in so many
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