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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. 353–384

The universal quantifier ‘all’ in Turkish Sign Language

| Boğaziçi University
| Boğaziçi University

This paper discusses four signs in TİD that play a role in expressing universal quantification. We argue that all and the mouthing of the Turkish word hepsi ‘all’ /hepsi/ are universal quantificational determiners. The other two are morphologically complex signs. all_of_those is the product of the cliticization of the mouthing /hepsi/ to a demonstrative determiner those. This sign forms a partitive universal quantifier with the meaning ‘All of those (N)’. all_of_those^same, expresses a proposition whose components are a universal quantifier subject and an adjectival predicate with the meaning ‘All of those are the same’. Our findings have implications on the role of mouthing and on cliticization and incorporation as well as the syntactic typology of quantificational determiners in sign languages.

Keywords: Turkish Sign Language, universal quantifiers, mouthing, cliticization, incorporation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
  • 3.Quantificational nature of all and all_of_those
  • 4.Syntactic properties of all and all_of_those
    • 4.1Syntactic properties of quantifiers in sign languages
    • 4.2Syntactic distribution of all and all_of_those
    • 4.3 all and all_of_those and nominal ellipsis
  • 5.Morpho-semantic properties of all and all_of_those
    • 5.1 all : A simple determiner
    • 5.2 all_of_those : A complex sign
      • 5.2.1Mouthing contributes the universal quantification
      • 5.2.2Space functions in restricting the quantifier domain
        • 5.2.2.1Previous studies on space and restriction of quantifier domain
        • 5.2.2.2The role signing space plays in the meaning of all_of_those
    • 5.3Interim summary
  • 6.A new type of incorporation: all_of_those^same
  • 7.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • Acknowledgement
  • References
Published online: 15 July 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.215.13sar
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