engleski

Cross-linguistic comparison of interrogatives in Croatian, Austrian, and American Sign Languages

This research compares interrogative structures in two sign languages, Austrian (ÖGS) and Croatian (HZJ), to American Sign Language (ASL). address three areas in this study: (1) word order, (2) the position of interrogative signs, and (3) the non-manuals and their scope. The three sign languages, ASL, HZJ and ÖGS, demonstrate variation in basic word order typology. ASL and HZJ both have SVO, and ÖGS has SOV basic word order. None of the three languages uses word order inversion to create interrogatives. Polar questions in all three languages are essentially indicated by non-manual markers, and not by manual signs. ASL and HZJ do allow an optional polar question sign, QMwg or Q4-BEND in ASL, and JE-LI in HZJ. ASL differs from HZJ and ÖGS substantially in non-manual marking of polar questions. ASL regularly uses ‘brow raise’ to mark polar questions, whereas HZJ and ÖGS use ‘chin down’. Content questions in all three sign languages are indicated by manual content signs, either alone or doubled. These content signs can occur sentence initially, sentence finally, or both. In general, there is an interaction between the non-manual markings and the presence of content signs, with non-manuals less rigid when the content signs are present. The ASL content question non-manual marker is ‘brows down’, and in HZJ and ÖGS, the content non-manual marker is ‘chin up’. A secondary non-manual marker for content questions in ÖGS is ‘head forward’.

Sign language, interrogatives, Croatian, Austrian, and American Sign Language

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