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Morphological Complexity within and across Boundaries: In honour of Aslı Göksel
Edited by Aslı Gürer, Dilek Uygun-Gökmen and Balkız Öztürk
[Studies in Language Companion Series 215] 2020
► pp. 313–352

Aspects of clause structure and morphology in Turkish Sign Language

| Boğaziçi University
| Harvard University
We highlight some aspects of the clause structure of Turkish Sign Language (TİD). There are zero to three-argument predicates in TİD. We divide the paper into chapters according to the number of arguments, but morphological categorization of predicates is instrumental in understanding different members of these groups. Zero-place weather predicates, unaccusatives, unergatives, and transitives can belong to the morphologically plain predicates group. However, there are no plain ditransitive predicates. On the other hand, except for weather predicates which lack an argument to start with, locus and classifier agreement apply to some members of all the predicate groups. Lastly, we show that there is no one-to-one relation between a classifier type and a transitive argument structure.
Keywords: Turkish Sign Language, TİD, argument structure, morpho-syntax, classifiers, agreement
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Morphological categorization of predicates, referential loci, and classifiers
  • 3.Weather Predicates
  • 4.Intransitive predicates
    • 4.1Unaccusative predicates
    • 4.2Unergative predicates
    • 4.3Intransitive predicates and argument realization
    • 4.4Intransitive predicates and nonmanual morphology
  • 5.Transitive predicates
    • 5.1Transitive sentences with plain predicates
    • 5.2Transitive sentences with locus agreement predicates
      • 5.2.1Transitive sentences with single locus agreement predicates
      • 5.2.2Transitive sentences with double locus agreement predicates
      • 5.2.3Transitive sentences with backwards locus agreement predicates
    • 5.3Transitive sentences with classifiers
  • 6.Ditransitives predicates
    • 6.1Ditransitives predicates which agree with the referential locus of the subject and the indirect object
    • 6.2Ditransitives predicates which agree with the referential locus of the source and goal
    • 6.3Ditransitives predicates with an incorporated theme
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Glossing conventions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.215.12gok
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