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Volume 24, Issue 1
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Abstract

Abstract

This paper contributes to the typological debate of whether sign languages should be divided into manual versus non-manual dominant languages, w.r.t. negation, a distinction that has recently been challenged (Johnston 2018) or argued to be too radical (Oomen & Pfau 2017), by providing a characterization of negation in South African Sign Language (SASL). It has also been observed in several sign languages that a construction which consists of a yes-no question followed by a negative fragment answer, both produced by the same speaker, can be used to negate a proposition. While this question-answer pair construction has received attention in the recent sign language literature, it is only mentioned in passing in the literature on negation. In this paper, I provide an analysis of these polar question-answer clauses as a grammaticalized negation strategy in SASL, following Caponigro and Davidson’s (2011) analysis of this construction in ASL.

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2020-12-15
2024-04-19

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Negation and polar question–answer clauses in South African Sign Language
Sign Language & Linguistics 24, 63 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.19014.hud
/content/journals/10.1075/sll.19014.hud
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): headshakes; negation; non-manual marking; question-answer pair; sign language; South African Sign Language; syntax

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