<p>Modal notions have been an intriguing topic in terms of capturing their crosslinguistic behaviors which have been analyzed as quantifiers (Hacquard, 2006; Kratzer, 1977), free choice items (Rullmann et al., 2008), or degrees (Lassiter, 2017). These typological patterns become more interesting when the simultaneous nature of sign languages has been added to the typology. By adding another dimension to the crosslinguistic patterns, sign languages have been reported to have different realizations for modals. Some of them have nonmanual markers alone for epistemic modals (Bross, 2018; Herrmann, 2013) while some have both manual signs and nonmanual markers (Karabüklü et al., 2018; Shaffer, 2004).</p> <p><br></p> <p>Bringing new data for the modal typology in spoken and sign languages, this dissertation analyzes the functions of modal signs and cooccurring nonmanual markers in Turkish Sign Language (TID). Even though manual signs and nonmanual markers appear together in modal sentences, nonmanual markers are shown to be neither lexical nor structural parts of modal signs. Manual signs are analyzed for their modal force and flavor with experimental studies. Results have shown that TID shows two typological patterns in its modal system: modals with specified modal force and flavor, and modals with specified force and unspecified flavor.  </p> <p><br></p> <p>One of manual signs, lazim ‘necessary’, along with epistemic signs were further investigated for their evidential requirement in epistemic contexts. Results showed that lazim requires a strong inference to be felicitous in epistemic contexts. Different than other languages, LAZIM in TID requires not only the right kind of context, but also the right morphological combination. It is interpreted as a deontic sign when it appears after verb by itself. In order to be interpreted as epistemic, it needs to appear after another sign ol which encodes the change of state.</p> <p><br></p> <p>Effects of nonmanual markers are investigated on perception of the signer’s certainty with an experimental study. Signer certainty is rated lower when the squint accompanies the sentence. In contrast, it is rated higher when head nod accompanies the sentence. The effect of increased perception of certainty with head nod is argued to result from the focus on the verb or the modal, yielding verum focus. Squint is analyzed as the uncertainty marker which can be anchored to the signer, the subject, or the addressee based on the structure in which it appears. Systematic analysis of nonmanual markers brings a new piece of evidence to the long-lasting discussion on where nonmanual markers function in sign languages’ grammars.</p>

This thesis aims at investigating the grammatical relations in Turkish Sign Language (TiD). For this aim, word order, nominal morphology, and agreement morphology of verbs are examined. TiD lacks morphological case, but it has a very rich pronominal system like other sign languages. Verbs are classified according to their morphosyntactic features. With this classification, we can observe the effect of word order and agreement morphology on the grammatical relations. Combinatory Categorial Grammar as a lexicalized grammar encodes word order, morphological case, and agreement features in the lexicon. Hence, it has the tools for testing any lexicalized basic word order hypothesis for a language based on the gapping data. Gapping data based on grammatical judgments of native signers indicate that TiD is a verb final language. Syntactic ergativity seems to be prevailing in coordination of a transitive sentence and an intransitive sentence where the single argument of the intransitive clause or one of the arguments of the transitive clause is missing. TiD also shows a tendency for ergativity in lexical properties such as agreement and pro-drop.

This thesis examines the phonology and morphology of Turkish Sign Language (TiD). TiD, being considered a full-fledged language, has a rich phonological and morphological system, as other sign and spoken languages do. For the purpose of this thesis / empirical data have been collected by means of a corpus study and various data elicitation tasks. As a main result of my study of TiD phonology, I propose a complete inventory of handshapes as well as a set of unmarked handshapes which are unique to TiD. I discuss the interaction between TiD finger-spelling and TiD phonology showing that well-formedness conditions constrain the use of finger-spelled letters in lexical signs I also discuss psycholinguistic evidence that sign languages have phonological systems, among them phonological effects on working memory and slips of the hand In the domain of TiD morphology, I investigate the three main morphological processes: inflection, derivation and compounding. Verb classification, plural properties, compounding, and reciprocals in TiD are investigated in detail. I argue that some TiD reciprocals use &ldquo / reciprocal neutral signing space&rdquo / whereby agreement becomes neutralized. TiD makes wide use of classifier constructions as for plural marking and for expressing movements of various human and non-human agents. The thesis indicates that TiD has its own grammar, including rich and diverse systems of phonology, morphology, and classification. Thus, TiD may have had a long historical development. The comparison between TiD and other sign languages shows that TiD has exclusive linguistic properties. The comparison of TiD as a visual-gestural system and Turkish as an auditory-vocal system helps to better understand the impact of modality on language phonology and morphology.

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