Emre Hakgüder (UChicago) will be presenting in Rosenwald 215 at 9:30am on Thursday, 3/1. See below for details:

Word order and intonation in embedded polar interrogatives in TiD

Recursion is considered a universal property of Language. Different structures of the grammar can be embedded within different positions that serve different grammatical purposes. In this study I explore polar interrogatives embedded as the complement of a verb in TiD (Turkish Sign Language). I specifically look at word order in the embedded and matrix contexts, and also study the non-manual marking found in both environments. Sign languages sometimes rely on non-manual markers to mark certain structures and the manual component may not be used altogether for that purpose. Complementizers are one such component commonly found in spoken languages that sign languages tend to express non-manually. With this study I aim to reveal the differences and similarities found among embedded polar interrogatives, wh-interrogatives and declaratives, and the crucial role non-manual markers and the absence of complementizers play in distinguishing these structures as well as the non-manual component’s relevance to semantics.