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Article In: Sign Language & Linguistics: Online-First Articles

ve (‘and’) as a multifunctional discourse connective in Turkish-to-Turkish Sign Language simultaneous interpreting

A corpus-based analysis from broadcast news

ORCiD logo with link | Kırıkkale University
 | Ankara University
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Abstract
This study investigates the multifunctionality of the Turkish discourse connective ve ‘and’ in simultaneous interpreting from Turkish into Turkish Sign Language (TİD) in broadcast news. Using a corpus of interpreted news texts, it examines how this polyfunctional connective is transferred across modalities. Drawing on Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion model and the Penn Discourse Treebank typology, the study identifies discourse relations expressed by ve — such as elaboration, temporality, causality, and comparison — and analyzes how they are conveyed in TİD through explicit signs, implicit marking, or omission. Most relations are preserved, though often implicitly, reflecting the economy principle in signed languages. Manual signs used to express ve, including ve-1 and palm-up, vary systematically with relation type. This points to a cross-modal tendency for explicit realization under increased processing demands. As the data derive from hearing interpreters rather than native Deaf signers, the findings reflect interpreter-mediated strategies rather than monolingual Deaf discourse norms.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Discourse annotation frameworks
      • 2.1.1Discourse connectives and realization types
      • 2.1.2Hierarchical organization of relation senses
    • 2.2Turkish connective ve
    • 2.3Connectives in sign languages
      • 2.3.1Multimodal realization of connectives
      • 2.3.2The connective ve in TİD
    • 2.4Discourse connectives in translation and interpreting
      • 2.4.1Discourse connectives across languages and modalities
      • 2.4.2Cohesion and interpreting from Turkish to TİD
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Data
      • 3.1.1Corpus
      • 3.1.2The interpreters and the interpreting context
      • 3.1.3Researcher positionality
    • 3.2Analytical framework
      • 3.2.1Scope and classification
      • 3.2.2Annotation procedures
      • 3.2.3Inter-coder reliability
  • 4.Findings
    • 4.1Types of discourse relation realization in the interpreting data
    • 4.2Realizations of explicit ve in TİD interpretations
    • 4.3Analysis of discourse relations in TİD interpretations
      • 4.3.1Quantitative distribution of sense relations
      • 4.3.2Meaning shifts in implicit realization
      • 4.3.3Summary of findings
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Sign movement and discourse continuity
  • 6.Limitations and future directions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Data availability statement
  • References
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