Commands in Turkish Sign Language

Abstract

This paper focuses on the properties of command constructions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD). The nature and function of nonmanual markers as well as the manual signs in command constructions in TİD are investigated to determine the prosodic, morphological and morphophonological properties of TİD commands. Cross-linguistically, the verb signs in command constructions have been observed to be tenser and more abrupt than their counterparts in declarative constructions. Morphologically some sign languages have been noted to exhibit agreement reduction in the marking of addressee-agreement in verbs. Among the properties commonly observed in command constructions of a number of sign languages is the manual sign ‘PALM UP’ occurring utterance finally. The paper provides a detailed linguistic description of the TİD command construction.