From questions to relatives in Czech Sign Language
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
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| Description | There are analysis of relativization strategies in some sign languages (e.g. Liddel 1978 for American Sign Language, Pfau & Steinbach 2005 for German Sign Language, Branchini & Donati 2009, Cecchetto et al 2006 or Cecchetto & Donati 2016 for Italian Sign Language), or at least descriptions of relative structures (Sze 2003 for Sign Language of Hong Kong). As for Czech Sign Language (CSL), I am not aware of any work describing the situation. In this talk, I am interested in relative sentences in the context of the implicational hierarchy for the use of wh-words (1. content questions; 2. embedded questions; 3. correlatives; 4. light-headed relatives; 5. free relatives; headed relatives). Thus I will explore the use of wh-words in CSL, first in content questions with the intention to go as far as possible in the hierarchy. This first approach is more of a data description than analysis. Before constructing a theoretical model of relativization in CSL, it is essential to understand well the system of wh-words in this vastly understudied language (at least the definition/detection of wh-words and their syntactic position ). I built on the work that has been done on wh-words in CSL content questions (especially Pospíšilová 2012, Hronová 2002) and I systematize some data elicited from CSL online dictionary. At the end of the talk, I outline the way towards relativization in CSL using preliminary data obtained at my sessions with a native Deaf informant. |
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