A phonological and morphological analysis of instrumental noun-verb pairs in Turkish sign language (TİD)

Abstract

This study investigates the differences between instrumental N/V (insN/V) pairs in TİD through phonological and morphological parameters. Length, repetition and mouthing have been examined as the phonological criteria for insN/V distinction. Additionally, classifier types, iconicity and use of space have been investigated as morphological criteria and their contribution to insN/V distinction has been evaluated. We used pictures of objects and action videos in experimental settings to collect the data. The final analysis was made on the 120 N/V pairs elicited from four signers. We observed how nouns differ from verbs in terms of six criteria and concluded that mouthing and iconicity are the two prominent criteria to distinguish nouns from verbs in TİD. Then, we compared TİD to other sign languages in the light of the previous studies on the subject. The discussion focuses on the presence of lexical categories (mainly nouns and verbs) in TİD and universality of these categories with respect to examples from TİD. The elaboration was made on the most suitable approach to lexical categorization for TİD according to its specific characteristics. Lastly, we outlined its contributions to thestudies on sign languages and drew attention to limitations of our study.|Keywords: Turkish Sign Language, Phonology, Morphology, Lexical categorization, Noun-verb distinction.