Relative Clause Constructions in Turkish Sign Language Dissertation zur Erlangung des Grades des Doktors der Philosophie Fachbereiche Sprache, Literatur, Medien I & II der Universität Hamburg vorgelegt von OKAN KUBUS aus Ankara Hamburg, Juni 2016 Hauptgutachter: Prof. Dr. Christian Rathmann Zweitgutachterin: Prof. Dr. Annette Hohenberger Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 30.01.2015 Angenommen von der Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Hamburg am 11.03.2015 Veröffentlicht mit Genehmigung der Fakultät für Geisteswissenschaften der Universität Hamburg am 23.05.2016 ii Türk Sağır topluluğuna To the Turkish Deaf community iii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the relative clause constructions (RCCs) in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). TİD, a recognized natural language, has rich, distinctive linguistic properties, as do other sign and spoken languages. For the analysis of various relativization strategies and discourse functions of RCCs in TİD, the collected data is based on TİD monologues in a small corpus (consisting of approximately three film hours), which has been annotated with special attention to RCC types in various discourse modes (narrative, information, report and description), with a high incidence of narrative passages. The distributions of head noun position, the positions of relative and matrix clauses, the accompanying nonmanual elements, and the relative elements indicated three strategies: (i) head noun exhibited within the scope of nonmanual, (ii) distinctive nonmanual scopes of head noun and modifying clause, and (iii) non-overt head nouns (free RCs). The data reveal that restrictive RCCs strongly favor circumnominal-like constructions, which are generally accompanied by squint, whereas nonrestrictive RCCs in TİD use a variety of strategies. Even though the way that relative clauses in TİD are marked also show a great distribution, the two strategies that were observed the most frequently are (i) no overt relative marker and (ii) clause-final IX (nominalizer). In order to examine the functions of RCCs in a text, the familiarity status of the head-noun and the accompanying modifying clause of RCCs in the corpus is investigated. According to the findings, several important functions of RCCs are realized. The favored function of RCC is to reintroduce both head noun and modifying clause into the text to either disambiguate the referents or to help the addressee to determine the referent. However, another function of RCCs can also be introducing the head noun with an identifiable modifying clause that has not been introduced into discourse earlier, given that the addressee can infer the identity of the referent using this information (shared information). Keywords: Turkish Sign Language, Relative Clause Constructions, Discourse iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Christian Rathmann, my advisor, for his guidance and insight throughout my research, and for guiding me through the entire thesis process from start to finish. Had it not been for his faith in me, I would not have been able to finish the thesis. I am very fortunate to have written my thesis in such an excellent academic milieu as the Institute for German Sign Language at the University of Hamburg. Heartfelt thanks go to Annette Hohenberger for her valuable support and ideas. Thanks also to Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach, Chiara Branchini, Annika Herrmann, Aslı Özyürek, Inge Zwitserlood, Phillippe Schlenker and Trevor Johnston for their academic support and/or for inviting me to colloquia for presenting my thesis and providing invaluable feedback. Thanks as well to Sinan Yıldırım, who has provided me with his insight and comments as a fluent signer of TİD. I appreciate his support, feedback, and most of all, his friendship. This thesis would not be as rich without the help of many Deaf people who participated in the data elicitation tasks and provided their brilliant ideas about TİD: Ercan Çevik, Hayal Yaşam Moran Yıldırım. Special Thanks given to Caitlin Golden who read my dissertation throughout and made useful comments. Thanks given to Dolly Blanck, Konstantin Grin, Kadir Gökgöz, Thora Hübner, Claudia Macht, Derya Nuhbalaoglu, Sedat Özcan, Josefina Safar, Müge Sevinç, Oya Tanyeri, Yasemin Uncu, Agnes Villwock, Mareike Werner and Viktor Werner who were more than very helpful throughout my academic career. I want to take the opportunity to thank Louisa Marie Pethke, Szilárd Rácz- Engelhardt, and Stella von Randow for their special friendship. They were always there for me during the process, whenever I needed advice, or simply to lend an ear. I would not have survived this without their words of encouragement. Last but not least, I offer my heart-felt thanks to my family: My grandparents Melahat and Süleyman Karayeğen for their effort in my social and intellectual development since my birth; my mother Zuhal Çokünal and my aunts, Nuray and Ayşe Karayeğen, who supported me both emotionally and financially. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................ v TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ vi LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................... ix LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................ xii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................. 1 1.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.2. Objectives and Rationale of the Present Research .................................................... 3 1.3. Original Contributions and the Significance of the Thesis ....................................... 4 1.4. Organization of the Dissertation ............................................................................... 5 CHAPTER 2: INTRODUCTION to TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE and the TURKISH DEAF COMMUNITY ........................................................................... 6 2.1. Historical, Sociolinguistic, and Political Aspects of TİD ......................................... 7 2.2. Grammatical Sketch of TİD .................................................................................... 10 2.2.1. The TİD Manual Alphabet ............................................................................... 11 2.2.2. Phonology and Phonetics of TİD ..................................................................... 12 2.2.3. Morphology of TİD .......................................................................................... 17 2.2.4 Lexicon of TİD ................................................................................................. 37 2.2.5 Syntax of TİD ................................................................................................... 41 2.2.6. The Spatial Domain in TİD .............................................................................. 69 2.3. Summary ................................................................................................................. 75 CHAPTER 3: RELATIVE CLAUSE CONSTRUCTIONS: LANGUAGE TYPOLOGY ........................................................................................................... 77 3.1. Typology of RCs ..................................................................................................... 79 3.1.1. Syntactic Typology of RCs .............................................................................. 81 3.1.2. Semantic Typology of RCs .............................................................................. 91 3.1.3. The Treatment of NPrel ................................................................................... 100 3.2. RCCs in the Discourse Representation Theory (DRT, Kamp & Reyle 1993) Framework ................................................................................................................... 108 3.3. RCCs in Sign Languages ....................................................................................... 113 3.3.1. RCCs in American Sign Language ................................................................ 114 3.3.2. RCCs in German Sign Language ................................................................... 121 3.3.3. RCCs in Italian Sign Language ...................................................................... 124 3.3.4. RCCs in Other Sign Languages ..................................................................... 139 3.3.5. Cross-Linguistic Variation of Relativization in Sign Languages .................. 145 3.4. Summary ............................................................................................................... 149 CHAPTER 4: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................ 152 4.1. Data Collection ...................................................................................................... 152 4.2. Data Annotation .................................................................................................... 153 4.2.1. Tier Construction ........................................................................................... 154 4.2.2. The Process of Annotation and the Top-Down Approach ............................. 156 4.3. Research Questions ..............................................................................................