This is the pre-print, author accepted manuscript of the paper published in the journal Sign Language and Linguistics 21:2 (2018), 257-283. https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.00020.kel. It is under copyright and the publisher should be contacted for permission to re-use or reprint the material in any form. Agent-backgrounding in Turkish Sign Language * Corresponding Author: Aslı Özkul. [email protected], İstanbul Bilgi University, English Language Teaching Department, Istanbul, Turkey. Author Names & Affiliations Meltem Kelepir Boğaziçi University Department of Linguistics Istanbul, Turkey Aslı Özkul İstanbul Bilgi University English Language Teaching Department Istanbul, Turkey & Boğaziçi University Department of Linguistics Istanbul, Turkey Elvan Tamyürek Özparlak Boğaziçi University Department of Linguistics Istanbul, Turkey List of digital files or other materials (video): - - Agent-backgrounding in Turkish Sign Language Abstract This paper reports our observations regarding the constructions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) in which agents are backgrounded. The data have mainly been elicited based on the questionnaire developed by Barberà and Cabredo Hofherr (see the introduction to this volume) designed to identify strategies and constructions used in sign languages for backgrounding agents. We have observed in TİD many of the agent- backgrounding strategies reported in the literature that signed (and spoken) languages employ. Use of non-specific indefinite pronominals is a major strategy, and this paper is the first study that identifies these forms in TİD. Moreover, we show that TİD, has a special sign that derives exclusive non-specific indefinite pronominals, OTHER. Finally, we argue that in TİD whereas lateral high R-locus is unambiguously associated with non-specificity, non-high (lateral and central) loci are underspecified in terms of specificity. We claim that the R-locus of indefinite pronominals observed in impersonal contexts in TİD in fact consists of two spatial features [+high] and [+lateral] which correspond to the pragmatic features non-specific and exclusive. Keywords: impersonal agents, agent-backgrounding, indefinites, non-specificity, clusivity, high R-locus 1 Introduction Studies which investigate how agents are backgrounded in languages have shown so far that there are four main strategies: (i) valency-reducing operations, (ii) null- subjects of non-finite predicates, (iii) impersonal uses of personal pronouns, and (iv) dedicated referentially deficient pronouns. The strategies in (iii) and (iv) are categorized as R(eference)-impersonals (Siewierska 2011 and Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr this volume). This paper mainly focuses on the strategy in (iv) TİD, namely, dedicated referentially deficient pronouns, but it also contains brief discussions of the other strategies. TİD is widely used by the Deaf in the Republic of Turkey and its speakers are estimated to be around sixty thousand, as stated in the results of Turkish Disability Survey (TDS 2002) (Kemaloğlu & Kemaloğlu 2012:66-67). Miles (2000) reports that a sign language was used in Ottoman palaces and courts, but it is not clear whether the TİD spoken today has descended from that language (Zeshan 2002, 2003). No claim has been made so far regarding the genetic relationship of TİD to any of the sign languages spoken in the rest of the world. Thus, for the purposes of this paper, we assume that it is not related to any of the other languages described in this volume. The data analyzed in this paper have been collected from three native and seven fluent Deaf signers of TİD who reside in Istanbul. Three of them are male and seven of them are female. Their average age at the time of this study was 38. Their education levels range from primary school to university. 1 Data elicitation was mainly conducted following the methodology of the R- impersonals questionnaire adopted by Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr from the Paris-Jena project Towards a typology of impersonal human pronouns. This questionnaire contains different contexts aimed at eliciting different types of impersonal constructions, and the informant is asked to translate the sentence given after the context is provided in written local spoken language in the most natural way into his/her sign language (see Barberà & Cabredo Hofherr this volume). In our study, we adapted these contexts to Turkish culture: some contexts were slightly changed and some new ones were developed. All of these contexts were written in Turkish in a slide presentation file to be presented to the informants on a laptop computer. One of the co-authors of this paper is a fluent Deaf signer of TİD, and she was involved in the development of these written contexts. The elicitation task with contexts was later carried out with the Deaf researcher and eight (one male and seven female) informants, with the following procedure: the informant first read the context provided in Turkish on the slide, and when (s)he understood the context, (s)he moved to the next slide which had a sentence in Turkish and translated it to TİD. When necessary, the Deaf researcher helped the informant understand the context and the Turkish sentence. Their responses were recorded with three cameras. In addition to the elicitation tasks conducted based on the questionnaire, further elicitation and grammaticality judgment tasks were carried out to clarify certain points that came up during the analysis of the data. These later judgements are based on the utterances and judgements of the Deaf co-author of this paper and one male native and one male near-native signer who did not take part in the questionnaire tasks and two female informants who had already taken part in the questionnaire. Agent-backgrounding strategies that we have observed in TİD can be summarized as the following: a. no overt expression of the agent b. null subjects interpreted as impersonal 3rd person plural pronouns c. 1st and 2nd person pronouns with generic uses d. indefinite agents expressed with pronouns and/or verb agreement In Sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 below, each of these strategies is discussed with reference to their frequency of use in the impersonal construction contexts mentioned above. Needless to say, in almost all of the contexts, there was not a single strategy that all the signers adopted. However, some strategies were more predominantly adopted for some of the contexts. We should also note that these preferences were possibly strongly influenced by the strategies used in the Turkish sentences that the signers were asked to translate1. For instance, overt non-specific indefinite pronominals were predominantly elicited when the sentence to be translated contained the Turkish counterpart birisi 'someone'. The findings are summarized and the theoretical and typological implications discussed in Section 6. 2 2 No overt expression of the agent Many of the utterances elicited lacked an overt noun phrase that could be identified as the subject. Since it has been observed that null arguments are common in sign languages, one possible approach to the structure of such sentences could be to analyze them as having null subjects (Özsoy & Branchini (in press)). Note, however, that in sign languages such as American Sign Language (ASL), where the licensing of null arguments has been studied extensively, it has been shown that they have to be anaphoric (Koulidobrova 2017:406), namely, they have to have an antecedent in the discourse (see also Bahan et al. 2000, who argue that only manual/non-manual agreement licenses null arguments in ASL). No analysis of licensing of null arguments in TİD is yet available; however, keeping in mind the possibility that anaphoricity may be a requirement in TİD as well, we divide the sentences in our data with no overt agents into two categories: (i) sentences in which the referents of the unpronounced agents can be recovered from the context, and (ii) sentences in which the referent of the unpronounced agent is less obvious. Examples of the first category are sentences elicited in generic conditionals, locative universals, and contexts that trigger corporate readings. These will be illustrated in 2.1. below. Examples of the second category are episodic sentences elicited in contexts where there is no clue as to the referent of the agent. We discuss these in 2.2. and raise the possibility that these may involve agent- reduction rather than null subjects. Future research on the licensing of null arguments in TİD will hopefully shed more light on the issue. 2.1 Null subjects In our data, null subjects are frequently observed in generic conditionals, locative universals, and corporate readings (see Barbera & Cabredo Hoffher, this volume, for an explanation of these notions). These are illustrated in (1) below. (1) a. Generic conditional Ø ICE-CREAM EAT SICK BE IX2 ‘If you eat ice-cream, you will get sick.’ b. Locative universal FRANCE Ø SNAIL EAT ‘In France, they eat snails.’ c. Corporate reading Ø TAKSIM MOSQUE BUILD ‘They will build a mosque in Taksim.’ These sentences were elicited as translations of active Turkish sentences. Even though there was no antecedent for the null subject in the discourse, one could argue that the referent is recoverable from the given context: in (1a), a generic conditional, the 3 nd consequent clause contains a 2 person singular pronoun, IX2, so the null subject in the antecedent clause can be understood to be co-referential with it. (1b), a generic statement, starts with a locative phrase, FRANCE, and thus, the referent of the subject can be understood to be the people living in France2. Finally, (1c) involves the construction of a new mosque, enabling a corporate reading, and the null subject can be understood to be a government institution responsible for such constructions (see also 2.5 in the introduction to this volume). Note, however, that we represent these examples in (1) as active transitive sentences with null subjects, since (i) they are translations of active transitive Turkish sentences and (ii) the referent of the subject is recoverable.