ON WH-COMPLEMENTS IN TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE

EMRE HAKGÜDER Boğaziçi University

The purpose of this study is twofold: while (i) describing embedded content questions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD), (ii) it aims to explain why and how TİD distinguishes between wh-complements embedded under different types of verbs. Embedded questions comprise a broad area of research in any language. This study, however, will give the center stage to the description of the syntactic and prosodic properties of wh-complements embedded under two semantically distinct environments: verbs of retaining knowledge such as know, remember and forget, and inquisitive verbs such as ask, wonder and investigate (Karttunen 1977), while discussing the theoretical implications of the differences. Two central findings of my inquiry are that (i) the syntactic distribution of wh-items in embedded content questions differs from the syntactic distribution of wh-items in simplex questions (for the latter see Makaroğlu 2012, İşsever & Makaroğlu 2013, and Göksel & Kelepir 2013), and (ii) the relationship that holds between an inquisitive verb and its wh-complement is not the same as the relationship between a verb of retaining knowledge and its wh-complement. This will become apparent by two crucial findings: (a) the presence of a specific non-manual marker in the former verb type, associated with the clause-typing of content questions in TİD (Göksel & Kelepir 2013), as opposed to the absence of it in the latter, and (b) the preferred position of wh-complements with respect to different types of matrix verbs. After a thorough examination, we shall see that both complement types obey the same embedded clause-internal syntactic restrictions while they differ from each other with respect to their position in the matrix clause and their prosodic properties. Although throughout the literature there is a tendency to study the [+wh] complements of all types of embedding verbs uniformly, this study highlights the necessity to further classify these wh-complements depending on the type of the matrix verb that they are embedded under.

1. Introduction

The motivation behind this research topic is enrooted in the course of understanding complexity in TİD. This study aims at shedding light on three issues relating to the syntax of constructions with an embedded content question: (i) whether the preferred matrix word order is different with different types of verbs, (ii) the position of the wh-item in embedded questions, (iii) whether embedded content questions have the same syntactic derivation as their matrix counterparts. I shall further discuss the implications of these syntactic issues and their prosodic properties, for the information structure of TİD. Two major constructions will be under the spotlight: (i) content questions embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge as exemplified in (1) and (ii) content questions embedded under inquisitive verbs as in (2).

Verb of retaining knowledge:

(1) IX-1 KNOW [KUNTAYa IX-3a ELVANb IX-3b WHO a-CHEAT.ON-b] IX-1 KNOW

“I know who Kuntay is cheating on Elvan with.”

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Inquisitive verb:

(2) JALEa IX-3a BILGEb a-ASK-b [IX-1 WHEN BORN]

“Jale asked Bilge when I was born.”

The paper is organised as follows: Section 1 gives an overview of the issue and introduces some of the data. Section 2 introduces the reader to the research done on simplex questions in TİD (Göksel & Kelepir 2011, 2013; Makaroğlu 2012; İşsever & Makaroğlu 2013), American Sign Language (ASL) (Aarons et al. 1992; Aarons 1994; Neidle et al. 1994a,b; Petronio & Lillo-Martin 1997) and Brazilian Sign Language (LSB) (Nunes & Quadros 2004, 2006) and on embedded questions in ASL and LSB (Petronio & Lillo-Martin 1997; Nunes & Quadros 2006 respectively) as well as Spanish (Plann 1985, Suñer 1993), and syntactic subcategorization and complement selection (Grimshaw 1979). Section 3 introduces the data and the analysis with regards to the syntax and the prosody of the constructions. Section 4 draws on the issues related to the analysis put forth so far and their implications. Section 5 concludes the paper. Methodology and data collection procedure are described in the Appendix.

2. Background

In the first part of this section, I wil briefly touch upon simplex content questions in TİD, as well as ASL and LSB. The second subsection will report the relevant parts of the observations and claims of Petronio & Lillo-Martin (1997) and Nunes & Quadros (2006) for embedded questions and focus in ASL and LSB respectively. The last part will briefly present the literature on embedding and verb types that will be crucial for the argumentation made here for different types of wh-complements in TİD.

2.1. Simplex Content Questions in TİD

Question formation in ASL has been in the center of fervent debate concerning its syntax. While one group of researchers (Aarons et al. 1992; Aarons 1994; Neidle et al. 1994a,b) claims that [spec, CP] is in the right periphery, another group (Petronio & Lillo-Martin 1997) claims that ASL patterns with the universal tendency, i.e. it has a left-branching [spec, CP]. While the former group of researchers’ claim finds its roots in the widespread occurrence of rightward wh-items in ASL, the latter claims it is an illusion created by independently motivated syntactic or discourse factors. In the following, we shall see that both leftward and rightward movement analyses have been put forth for the syntax of TİD simplex questions in a single study (İşsever & Makaroğlu 2013).

As for the argumentation of simplex questions in LSB, Nunes & Quadros (2006) follow Petronio & Lillo-Martin (1997)’s left-branching [spec, CP] position. They part ways with Petronio & Lillo-Martin’s discussion in that while ASL has a head-final CP projection, LSB has a head-initial one. Petronio & Lillo-Martin (1997) claim that right peripheral occurrences of wh-items in ASL are due to base-generated wh-words in the C0 of a head-final CP, while Nunes & Quadros (2006) attribute right peripheral occurrences to the movement of the remaining part of the TP (remnant-movement) from which a wh-item would be extracted and moved to the designated position in the head-initial CP, to a higher projection. Both ASL and LSB occurrences of rightward wh-words result from focus motivated movement phenomena (Nunes & Quadros 2004). This allows for the grammaticality of questions where a rightward wh-word and a higher wh-phrase can co-occur:

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Nunes & Quadros (2006) ex. (11)

(3) [JOHN BUY WHICH BOOK YESTERDAY] [WHICH] LSB Which book did John buy exactly yesterday?

As for TİD, a number of studies on the prosody, syntax and information structure of simplex questions have been conducted, as well as the interaction of these three components. Both1 Makaroğlu (2012) and Göksel & Kelepir (2011, 2013) analyze simplex content questions and polar questions in TİD with respect to their prosodic properties in detail, however, the part of these studies that is related to my analysis here lies in the contradicting observations between the two: while the former study claims that BROW LOWERING marks simplex content questions, the latter claims it is the HEAD BACKWARD that marks these constructions. Göksel & Kelepir (2013) report that non-neutral brow position does not systematically occur in their data and thus according to their observations it cannot be the actual marker of simplex questions. My analysis of embedded content questions provides an observation in favor of Göksel & Kelepir (2013)’s claim regarding the phonological expression of the clause-typer of content questions in TİD and hence contradicts with that of Makaroğlu (2012). In line with my prior anticipation, I observed that TİD marks wh-complements embedded under inquisitive verbs with HEAD BACKWARD. We shall come to this peculiar behavior of TİD in the following section.

The syntax of TİD simplex questions have been studied by Göksel & Kelepir (2011, 2013), Makaroğlu (2012) and İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013). Göksel & Kelepir (2011) propose that in TİD simplex questions, there is a syntactic head which is the location of the interrogative force and that the lexical content of that item is intonation. They call this syntactic head QM (question mark, following Higginbotham 1993) and claim that QM is the prosodic contour expressed as HEAD TILT. My analysis here will be centered around their claim. Makaroğlu (2012) claims that wh-items in TİD simplex questions are licensed in situ and word order variations are motivated by information structural phenomena, following Lillo-Martin & Quadros (2008) and Nunes & Quadros (2006). He argues that the four-layered information structural model put forth for ASL and LSB in those studies can effectively account for the word order variations in TİD simplex questions. However, in the following section we shall see that this model for simplex questions below cannot be implemented for embedded content questions in TİD:

The Four-Layered Information Structure Model

(4) Topic-CommentP

Informational-FocusP

TopicP

Emphatic-FocusP

TP

1 See also Gökgöz (2010a) and Gökgöz & Arık (2011).

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Makaroğlu (2012) observes that there are four configurations in TİD simplex questions in which wh-items can occur: (i) left peripheral wh-item, (ii) right peripheral wh-item, (iii) in situ and (iv) in situ - right periphery double construction. With respect to the structure in (4) above, configuration (i) results from the movement of the wh-item out of the TP to the specifier position of the Informational-FocusP, configurations (ii) and (iv) are derived identically by means of the movement of the wh-item out of the TP to the specifier position of the Emphatic-FocusP, and the remnant movement (in the sense of Nunes & Quadros 2006) of the TP to TopicP. While configuration (iv) retains a copy of the wh-item in the TP, configuration (ii) deletes it.

A study independent of Makaroğlu (2012)’s observations is İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013) where it is argued that the multiple configurations in which wh-items in simplex questions can occur are due to a wh-movement mechanism in TİD where wh-words move to a rightward C0 while wh-phrases move to a leftward [spec, CP], because phrasal categories cannot occupy head positions. According to their analysis wh-phrases can occur in situ or in the left periphery, while rightward occurrences can only be wh-words located in the C0 and they may or may not co-occur with an in situ phrasal copy. Göksel & Kelepir (2013) also observe wh-items in various positions and state that TİD can possibly be considered to be a subtype of wh-in-situ languages where an argument question word usually occurs where it is interpreted.

In short, wh-items in TİD simplex questions are found in four different configurations and there are two contradicting observations with respect to the phonological expression of the clause-typer of simplex questions in TİD.

2.2. Embedded Content Questions in ASL and LSB

Embedded questions in sign languages have been examined to some extent in two insightful lines of research on questions in ASL and LSB. Petronio & Lillo-Martin (1997) claim that wh-complements2 in ASL differ from simplex questions in that the non-manual marker which they claim is the realization of the [+wh, +F] features of simplex content questions is not observed with embedded content questions because while simplex questions are [+wh, +F] wh-complements are only [+wh]. It follows from this claim that the embedded CP does not contain a FocP and that in ASL only one focus per sentence is allowed, and it must be a root phenomenon. Their claim regarding the lack of the [+F] feature of wh-complements makes three predictions all of which are borne out: (i) wh-doubles should be prohibited and, (ii) ex situ sentence final wh-items should be ungrammatical and (iii) question intonation should not be observed in embedded content questions. All three phenomena are attested properties of embedded content questions in ASL and are attributed to the lack of the [+F] feature. In section 4, we shall discuss how TİD differs from ASL with respect to these three phenomena. Grammatical constructions in ASL embedded content questions constitute (i) clause-initial wh-items (5a) and (ii) in situ wh-items (5b). Doubling of an embedded wh-item is prohibited (5c), so is an ex situ clause-final wh-word (5d):

2 They call every wh-complement that come after a verb such as KNOW, WONDER, DON’T KNOW, CURIOUS an indirect question. For the sake of the argumentation put forth in this paper, I will refer to all complements bearing a wh-item wh-complements. The term ‘indirect question’, in this study, is a marked term refering to reported questions in indirect speech.

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Petronio & Lillo-Martin (1997) ex. (82a), (83), (81) and (84c)

Clause-initial wh-item:

_____________________________________hn3 (5) a. MOTHER CURIOUS [WHO YOU LIKE] ASL

“My mother is curious who you like.” In situ wh-item: __________________________hn b. I KNOW [YOU LIKE WHO]

“I know who you like.”

Double construction:

__________________________hn c. *I KNOW [WHO WIN WHO]

“I know who won.”

Clause-final wh-item:

_________________________hn d. *BOB KNOW [WON WHO]

“Bob knows who won.”

As for LSB, Nunes & Quadros (2006) claim that LSB wh-complements differ from ASL wh-complements in that while LSB wh-complements can bear a focus, ASL wh-complements cannot. They observe that a clause-initial wh-item can be accompanied by a clause-final wh-item in swh-complements, supporting their proposal that wh-complements must also have the option to contain focus, given duplicated wh-items are there for focus reasons. Therefore, they posit that while ASL can only have one focus per matrix sentence; LSB sentences can have one focus in the root clause and one focus in the embedded clause.

In the following section, however, we shall see that the grammatical configurations in TİD with respect to the position of the wh-item in the embedded question differ from those in both ASL and LSB. This observation will raise the question whether TİD can have a focus position in embedded clauses, which will be discussed in section 4.

2.3. Embedding and Verb Types

It is a well-known fact that while some verbs such as (i) WONDER and ASK only subcategorize for a [+wh] complement, verbs such as (ii) THINK only subcategorize for a [-wh] complement. Another group of verbs containing (iii) KNOW and REMEMBER can subcategorize for either [+wh] or [-wh]

3 Abbreviations and Conventions: non manual markers: hn HEAD NOD, hs HEAD SHAKE, hf HEAD FORWARD, hb HEAD BACKWARD, br BROW RAISE; ASL American Sign Language, LSB Brasilian Sign Language, TİD Turkish Sign Language; suprasegmental lines such as ______hn above examples indicate the spreading domain of nonmanual markers.

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complements. In this study, only the [+wh] complements of types (i) and (iii) will be in the center of discussion. Although a further distinction will be made between the [+wh] complements of the first type and the third type of verbs by the end of the paper, I will refer to both complement types as wh-complements throughout the study whenever a uniform reference is necessary.

Grimshaw (1979) puts forth a two-variable mechanism for complementation in languages and bases her argumentation on examples from English. Unlike previous analyses where sentential embedding was merely seen as dependent on syntax, i.e. on the subcategorizational features of verbs, Grimshaw’s analysis adds a second layer of filtering, i.e. complement selection. According to her analysis, while syntactic subcategorization filters out an NP or a PP as a potential complement for a verb like know and only allows for an S(entence), semantic selection decides whether what know will take as an S-complement will be a P(roposition), a Q(uestion) or an E(xclamation). This insightful argumentation accounts for English sentential embedding data but because it treats the wh-complements that know-type verbs and ask-type verbs take equally, it falls short of explaining Spanish wh-complements, which I will turn to below.

Plann (1985) and Suñer (1993) argue that Spanish wh-complements cannot be accounted for uniformly and a further distinction is required. While verbs such as ASK require a that-complementizer, namely que, before their wh-complement, verbs such as KNOW prohibit it4. This grammaticalization of que in Spanish cuts through a number of theories concerned with treating wh-complements and corresponding direct questions uniformly from a semantic point of view (Hamblin 1973; Karttunen 1977; Bennett 1979; Belnap 1982; Groenendijk & Stokhof 1982, 1984, 1989 as cited in Suñer 1993). Suñer (1993) calls the wh-complements of ASK-type verbs ‘true indirect questions’, while calling the other type ‘semi-questions’.

We shall see that in TİD, although the two wh-complement types obey the same syntactic restrictions, they differ in terms of their nonmanual markings. Moreover, what marks Suñer (1993)’s ‘true indirect questions’ in TİD is actually the question intonation/clause-typer itself put forth by Göksel & Kelepir (2013).

In this section, I presented the required background information as found in the literature on question formation strategies and their information structural properties in TİD, ASL and LSB as well as the properties of embedded content questions in ASL and LSB. I also reported Grimshaw (1979), Plann (1985) and Suñer (1993)’s argumentation on complement selection and different types of wh-complements which will become useful in understanding TİD embedded content questions later in this article.

3. Wh-Complements in TİD

The first part of this section addresses my observations on (i) the distribution of wh-complements in TİD with respect to different matrix verb types and (ii) the distribution of wh-items in wh-complements. The second part will report my observations on the prosodic properties of wh-complements embedded under different semantic types of verbs in TİD and will prepare the ground for the discussion in the following section.

4 (i) Sue preguntó que cuantas charlas planeaban los estudiantes. Sue asked how many talks the students were planning. (ii) Bri sabía (*que) cuantas charlas planeaban los estudiantes. Sue knew how many talks the students were planning.

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3.1. The Syntactic Distribution of Embedded Content Questions in TİD

In this subsection, I share my observations and the results of a grammaticality judgment test5 I conducted in order to describe the syntactic distribution of wh-complements with regards to the position of the wh-complement in the matrix clause and the grammatical wh-configurations in those wh-complements. The results are presented under each example with a mean out of 5.

3.1.1. The Position of the Wh-Complement in the Matrix Clause

Göksel & Kelepir (in press) observe that in complex structures certain matrix verb-complement order asymmetries are present with different types of verbs, although the basic word order of TİD has been claimed to be SOV in a number of studies6 (Açan 2001; Zeshan 2003, 2005; Sevinç 2006; Kubuş 2008; Gökgöz 2009 as cited in Göksel & Kelepir in press). They claim that while the matrix word order with WANT-type verbs is SOV, the preferred7 word order with KNOW-type8 verbs is SVO. This dual nature of the position of the sentential complement with respect to the matrix verb has also been attested in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Geraci et al (2008) report that while control constructions allow for an SOV order, other constructions cannot afford the processing cost of center embedding. Later, Geraci & Aristodemo (2014) report new findings on how LIS sentential complements can afford center embedded (SOV) sentential complements under certain circumstances. In the following we shall see that the preferred position of a wh-complement with respect to a verb of retaining knowledge does not pattern with that of a wh-complement in indirect speech with respect to an inquisitive verb.

My data is in line with Göksel & Kelepir (in press)’s observation in that wh-complements embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge9 are preferred when they occur after the main verb, yielding an SVO order (6):

SVO:

_____br ______hn _____hs

(6) IX-1 KNOW [KUNTAYa IX-3a ELVANb a-CHEAT.ON-b WHO]

“I know who Kuntay is cheating on Elvan with.”

M: 4.5010

Another preferred order is SVOsV11 (7). Göksel & Kelepir observe that with KNOW-type verbs matrix subject pronoun copy cannot follow the copied verb. This is also evidenced by the ungrammaticality of (8):

5 See appendix for methodology and data collection procedure. 6 These studies also report that they encountered word orders other than SOV in TİD. But they conclude that SOV is the underlying word order. 7 Some informants, Göksel and Kelepir report, accept SOV order with KNOW-type verbs as well. 8 WANT-type and KNOW-type are terms used by Göksel and Kelepir (in press) to refer to two sets of verbs with different properties. The former type contains verbs such as WANT, LIKE, KNOW.HOW.TO, MAKE.AN.EFFORT.TO and the latter contains verbs such as THINK, UNDERSTAND, KNOW. 9 In accord with Göksel & Kelepir’s KNOW-type verbs. 10The mean (out of 5.00) of the total score acquired from 8 informants, as mentioned earlier in the methodology. 11The little ‘s’ stands for matrix subject pronoun copy. Subject pronoun copies have been widely observed in a number of sign languages and since they come after the object of the root clause, they are considered to be a diagnostic of embedding in sign languages (Liddell 1980; Padden 1988a,b)

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SVOsV:

______squint/furrowed brows ____br ______hn ____hs __________hn

(7) IX-1 KNOW [KUNTAYa IX-3a ELVANb WHO a-CHEAT.ON-b] IX-1 KNOW

“I know who Kuntay is cheating on Elvan with.”

M: 4.37

*SVOVs:

(8) *IX-2 FIND.OUT [EXAM PASS WHO] FIND.OUT IX-2

“Did you find out who passed the exam?”

M: 1.75

However, SOV order has also been found grammatical with verbs of retaining knowledge although in a fewer number of cases:

SOV:

___________hf ________________br ________hs ___hn

(9) IX-2 [EXAM PASS WHO] FIND-OUT

“Did you find out who passed the exam?”

M: 5.00

The sentence in (9) is a matrix polar question with a content question embedded under a verb of retaining knowledge, showing that the wh-word WHO takes embedded scope, which is evidenced by the presence of HEAD FORWARD over the matrix verb, the polar question-related NMM (Göksel & Kelepir 2013). Note that this example displays both HEAD FORWARD (Göksel & Kelepir 2013) and BROW RAISE (Makaroğlu 2012), the NMMs associated with polar questions. Therefore it does not pose a problem for either one of the two accounts. The important point here is that we do not observe any NMM related to clause-typing simplex content questions in TİD over the wh-complement embedded under FIND-OUT. However, in the following section we shall see that this generalization does not hold for the wh-complements of inquisitive verbs.

Coming back to matrix word order, we see a different pattern with the wh-complements of inquisitive verbs: wh-complements in indirect speech seem to prefer an SOV12 order (10) while wh-complements in direct speech favor both SOV and SVO(V) orders, (11) and (12) respectively:

12 This is an observation made so far, further research is required to see whether SVO order with wh-complements in indirect speech is as commonly found as the SOV order.

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SOV (wh-complement in indirect speech):

(10) GIRL JALE [IX-POSS-1 MOTHER NAME WHAT] BILGEa ASK-3a

“Jale asks Bilge what my mother’s name is.”

SOV (wh-complement in direct speech):

(11) GIRL JALEa ELVAN [WHAT SCHOOL^HIGH GO] BILGEb a-ASK-b

“Jale asks Bilge: ‘Which high school did Elvan attend?’”

SVOV (wh-complement in direct speech):

(12) GIRL JALEa BILGEb a-ASK-b IX-1 FOR [WHERE BORN] ASK-b

“Jale asks Bilge about me: ‘Where was she born?’”

This pattern is in line with Kelepir & Göksel (2013) on reported utterances in TİD. They claim that while verbs of cognition and control verbs have different matrix word orders, both VO and OV orders are possible with verbs of saying. For a more detailed discussion see Göksel & Kelepir (2013).

3.1.2. The Position of the wh-item in the Embedded Clause

Recall that Makaroğlu (2012), İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013) and Göksel & Kelepir (2013) observe wh-items in simplex questions in four configurations: (i) in situ, (ii) in the left periphery as a phrase, (iii) in the right periphery as a head and (iv) in an in situ-right periphery double construction. Makaroğlu (2012) claims that the options (iii) and (iv) are identical with respect to their interpretation and syntactic derivation, and are actually emphatic focus constructions. In our data however, only two positions are available for an embedded wh-item13: the in situ (13) and the embedded right periphery (14). This means that of the two allegedly identical simplex constructions with regards to their syntactic derivation and interpretation, that is emphatic focus, only the right peripheral occurrence is found grammatical in the embedded environment, while the double construction is not (15).

In situ wh:

______br _______hn ______hs ________hn (13) IX-2 FORGET [IX-DUAL-1 WHEN MARRY] FORGET

“You forgot when the two of us got married.”

M: 4.25

13 Note that left dislocated wh-items and double constructions are also attested in our simplex content question data. However, these two constructions in embedded environments are not accepted by our informants.

(i) [BOOK WHAT] IX-2 READ WHAT? (ii) IX-2 READ BOOK WHAT?

İşsever and Makaroğlu (2013) claim that wh-phrases in the right periphery of a direct question (ii) is not grammatical (as opposed to wh-words). In our data however, it received a mean of 5.00 out of 5.00 from our informants.

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Right peripheral wh:

_____br ______hn _____hs

(14) IX-1 KNOW [KUNTAYa IX-3a ELVANb a-CHEAT.ON-b WHO]

“I know who Kuntay is cheating on Elvan with.”

M: 4.50

Double contruction:

(15) *IX-2 FORGET [IX-DUAL-1 WHEN MARRY WHEN] FORGET “You forgot when the two of us got married.” M: 1.75

Left peripheral wh-items (Makaroğlu 2012’s informational focus constructions) in embedded content questions are not accepted by our informants, as illustrated in (16):

Left peripheral wh-item:

(16) *IX-2 KNOW [WHAT IX-1 YESTERDAY EVENING EAT] IX-2 KNOW “You know what I ate yesterday evening.” M: 1.62

Furthermore, in cases where the embedded wh-item takes matrix scope, yielding an information-seeking question, the wh-item can be doubled in the right periphery of the matrix clause (Hakgüder, in progress). This shows that wh-doubling, regardless of what information-structural function it serves, is a root phenomenon:

Embedded wh- taking matrix scope (in situ and matrix right periphery copies):

(17) BERK GOLD [WHERE HIDE] WANT WHERE “Where does Berk want to hide the gold?” M: 4.62

These examples pretty much delineate the syntactic restrictions on the position of the wh-item in embedded questions. It is, therefore, safe to assume that embedded questions have different syntactic properties than simplex questions. Only two out of four possible configurations relating to the position of the wh-item in simplex questions observed by Makaroğlu (2012), İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013) and Göksel & Kelepir (2013) are reflected in embedded questions. Therefore, this raises the question whether the two superficially identical constructions in embedded questions and simplex questions, i.e. right peripheral wh-items, overlap in terms of their syntax. Or is it only a surface similarity?

Recall Makaroğlu (2012) and İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013)’s claim that the right peripheral occurrences of wh-items in simplex questions are identical in meaning and in syntactic dervation to the double constructions. At this point we can conjecture that either (i) their generalization is incorrect with respect to the identicality of the two structures, or (ii) the right peripheral occurrence of a wh-item in an embedded question is not actually identical to that of one in a simplex question. The former explanation if true, would have the following implication: the right peripheral occurrence of a wh-item in a simplex question and a simplex double construction do not have the same function and therefore do not have the same syntactic derivation. The latter explanation, on the other hand, has to account for a superficially

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identical but actually distinct construction. The first part of the following subsection will be concerned with this issue.

3.2. Non-Manual Marking in Embedded Questions and its Semantic Implications

It has been claimed that some nonmanual markers bear linguistic relevance such as marking the restriction of an operator (Wilbur & Patschke 2009, Wilbur 2011) or the c-command domain (Neidle et al. 2000, Pfau 2002, Wilbur 2011, among others). TİD patterns with other sign languages in that some NMMs are systematically found in some specific constructions (Gökgöz 2011).

Let’s have a closer look at İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013)’s right peripheral and doubled wh-items in simplex questions, which they claim are identical in terms of their syntactic derivation and interpretation:

Double construction: _______________________wh

(18) a. IX-2 WHATi READ WHATi?

Right peripheral wh-item: _________________wh b. IX-2 ti READ WHATi?

Wh-in-situ: _________________wh c. IX-2 WHAT READ?

They observe that each one of these constructions, despite some syntactic differences, share the same non-manual markers and identical spreading domains. Now, let’s compare this to the nonmanual markings of my data of embedded content questions where only right peripheral and in situ wh-items are allowed. The visuals of object clauses can be seen after each example:

Wh-in-situ:

______________hb, br _______hn _______hs

(19) a. JALEa IX-3a BILGEb a-ASK-b [IX-1 WHERE WORK] a-ASK-b “Jale asked Bilge where I work.”

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________________________________hb, br ________hs [IX-1 WHERE WORK]

Right peripheral wh:

_______hb, br _______hn ______hs

b. JALEa IX-3a BILGEb a-ASK-b [IX-1 BORN WHEN] a-ASK-b ‘Jale asked Bilge where I was born’.

_______hb, br _______hs [IX-1 BORN WHEN]

Sentence (19a) illustrates a wh-complement whose wh-item is in situ and (19b) a right peripheral embedded wh-item. Notice that the spreading domain of HEAD BACKWARD is not identical in these two cases. While in the former example HEAD BACKWARD spreads over the entire wh-complement (excluding the first person indexical), in the latter it is solely over the wh-item, excluding the rest of the wh-complement, namely the VP.

Comparing the sentences in (18) to the ones in (19), one can argue that the verb BORN in (19b) has undergone movement from its base-generated position to a higher embedded position thereby escaping the spreading domain of HEAD BACKWARD whereas the verb WORK in (19a) is still withing the spreading domain of HEAD BACKWARD. This observation shows that the two right

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peripheral occurrences of wh-items (i.e. simplex (18b) and embedded (19b)) could not have resulted from the same syntactic derivation. It is also evidenced by the fact that wh-doubles are not accepted in embedded clauses. If İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013)’s observation that right peripheral wh-items and doubles share the same function is true, the occurrence of a right peripheral wh-item in embedded clauses must be the result of a distinct function and a distinct syntactic derivation. However, I do not have an explanation for this at the moment. This issue will be addressed in more detail in Section 4. This observation also casts doubt on the presence of a focus position in embedded clauses in TİD which will also be discussed in Section 4.

The second crucial point regarding nonmanual markers is the absence of HEAD BACKWARD in wh-complements embedded under the verb KNOW (example (14) repeated here in (20)), as opposed to the examples in (19) where HEAD BACKWARD (hb) is clearly exhibited.

Wh-complement embedded under a verb of retaining knowledge:

_____br ______hn _____hs

(20) IX-1 KNOW [KUNTAYa IX-3a ELVANb a-CHEAT.ON-b WHO]

“I know who Kuntay is cheating on Elvan with.”

M: 4.50

_____br _____hs [KUNTAYa ELVANb a-CHEAT.ON-b WHO]

Although the two constructions seem to obey the same syntactic restrictions with respect to the position of the wh-item as discussed earlier in the previous subsection, intonation distinguishes between the two semantically-distinct environments. This observation has two desirable outcomes: (i) TİD distinguishes between wh-complements embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge and wh-complements embedded under inquisitive verbs, and (ii) while Makaroğlu (2012)’s question clause-typer HEAD FORWARD is absent in the latter type, Göksel & Kelepir (2013)’s clause-typer HEAD BACKWARD14 is present. It follows from this that HEAD BACKWARD is related to the information-seeking nature of content questions. But how? Plann (1985) and Suñer (1993) argue for Spanish that a wh-complement embedded under the verb KNOW will be different from a wh-complement embedded under the verb ASK. While the latter type requires a preceding que, the former type does not (Section 2). In our case TİD distinguishes between the two types of complements in terms of intonational

14 Ishihara (2003) observes that Japanese indirect wh-questions are marked with falling intonation after a peak on the wh-word, within the boundaries of the wh-complement in a similar fashion to TİD data. If TİD data patterned with spoken language data a less prominent, less robust question intonation would be expected.

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properties15. This is in line with Groenendijk & Stokhof (1982)’s theory that wh-complements entail their that-complement counterparts. But this seems to be the case with only KNOW-type verbs. Wh-complements of ASK-type verbs do not entail any that-complement counterparts; according to Groenendijk & Stokhof, this is due to the fact that KNOW-type verbs are extensional (they only care about the answer to the question the wh-complement denotes) while ASK-type verbs are intensional (they pay attention to the question itself). The absence of HEAD BACKWARD with KNOW-type verbs in contrast to ASK-type verbs in TİD can therefore be attributed to the extensional nature of the former type. This distinction provides further support in favor of Göksel & Kelepir (2013)’s account related to the role of the head in questions. However, further research is required to test whether polar questions in embedded environments are also subject to this distinction.

Summary

In the first part of this section, I showed that (i) the wh-complement of a verb of retaining knowledge prefers to follow the matrix verb whereas the wh-complement of an inquisitive verb in indirect speech prefers to precede the matrix verb and (ii) there are only two possible configurations in which wh-items can occur in embedded questions. Although the wh-complements of both verbs of retaining knowledge and inquisitive verbs obey the same syntactic distribution of wh-items, this distribution does not pattern with what Makaroğlu (2012), İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013) and Göksel & Kelepir (2013) claimed for simplex questions.

In the second part, I shared two crucial observations: (i) while wh-complements embedded under inquisitive verbs are marked with the content question intonation/clause-typer HEAD BACKWARD (put forth by Göksel & Kelepir 2013), those embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge are not, and (ii) the spreading domain of HEAD BACKWARD in wh-complements with an in situ wh-item does not pattern with that of a right peripheral wh-item in the embedded question, hinting at the possibility of the displacement of the VP to a higher position than the position of the wh-item in the embedded question. The former observation supports the claim that simplex content questions are clause-typed by HEAD BACKWARD (Göksel & Kelepir 2013) while putting doubt on Makaroğlu (2012)’s claim that simplex questions in TİD are distinguished from declaratives by utilizing non-neutral brow position. This observation in favor of Göksel & Kelepir (2013) is further supported by Groenendijk & Stokhof (1982)’s theory on the semantics of embedded questions. From the second observation it follows that the wh-item in the right periphery of an embedded question is not located in the same respective matrix CP position a right peripheral wh-item in a simplex question would occupy since İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013) observe that both in situ and right peripheral wh-items pattern with respect to the spreading domain of the question-related nonmanual markers.

5. Discussion

In the first part of this section I will discuss how the distinction between direct speech and indirect speech and the conditions put forth on the sytactic derivation of wh-complements under different semantic environments relate to complexity. In the second part I will address the theoretical implications of the observations I presented in the previous section. I will discuss how a right peripheral wh-item in an embedded clause might be derived and what that potential explanation implies regarding the information structure of embedded clauses and the prosodic properties of questions in TİD. The third and last discussion will address whether TİD embedded questions have a focus position.

15 Whether question intonation over wh-complements embedded under ASK imposes a layer of interrogative force over the embedded wh-complement, i.e. rendering the embedded question information-seeking, is subject to further research.

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5.1. Indirect vs. Direct Speech and Complexity in TİD

The majority of the initial data which came from scanning old transcriptions were constructions with matrix inquisitive verbs and verbs of saying. Most of the potential embeddings I found were wh-complements clearly exhibited in direct speech, thus I was unsure whether or not to call these embedded under the verbs of inquisition/saying in their close proximity; while at the same time it was clear that for the syntactic requirements of the matrix verbs to be satisfied i.e. their requirement of an internal argument, they were supposed to be embedded under those verbs. The next step I took was to elicit data similar to those I found by scanning old transcriptions, but with one key difference: they had to be in indirect speech. What I mean by indirect speech is partially explained in Butters (1976) for English. English clearly distinguishes between direct16 and indirect content questions by means of using do-support and inversion in the former and declarative order in the latter. Another obvious distinction between a direct question and an indirect question is that in indirect questions the pronominals used for the 1st and 2nd persons, temporals and locatives are unambiguously coindexed with present discourse referents (the speaker him/herself who reports an utterance and the addressee him/herself to whom the speaker reports an utterance, as well as temporal and locative expressions), while deictic pronominals in direct speech refer to referents of the reported discourse. My aim during this step was to elicit indirect questions where no reference shift17 would be observable.

At the earlier stages of this study, I expected to find different syntactic properties between the wh-complements of verbs of retaining knowledge and those of inquisitive verbs in indirect speech since the two wh-complements occur in semantically distinct environments. The former expresses the subject’s knowledge of an issue and can be replaced by a declarative embedded clause, while the latter is concerned with reporting a question and cannot be replaced by a declarative. However, this did not turn out to be the case. Both complements seem to obey the same clause-internal syntactic phenomena with respect to the position of the wh-item. In both environments, the wh-item can occur in situ or in the right periphery. But, I pointed out that the two types of wh-complements are actually distinguished by intonation and the preferred position of the wh-complement in the root clause with respect to the matrix verb. While the former type of verbs lacks question intonation, the latter retains it. The important thing here is that although wh-complements of inquisitive verbs in indirect speech retain the question intonation, they pattern with wh-complements of verbs of retaining knowledge in terms of the internal distribution of embedded wh-items. This means that, even though the sources of the two wh-complements are different, they pattern alike in terms of the distribution of wh-items. In other words, while an inquisitive verb’s wh-complement actually reports a simplex question in indirect speech, the wh-complement of a verb of retaining knowledge does not have that option, i.e. it does not report a question. This will also be addressed in the following subsection while discussing the semantics and the prosodic properties of wh-complements. Because (i) the syntax of a wh-complement of an inquisitive verb in indirect speech is not similar to that of a simplex content question but (ii) patterns with that of a wh-complement of a verb of retaining knowledge, I can conjecture that TİD displays a full-fledged

16 A terminological clarification: the direct-indirect distinction in questions may refer to two separate sets of distinctions: (i) a direct question may typologically refer to an interrogative clause, i.e. the wh-item takes matrix scope, regardless of whether it is base-generated in the embedded clause or in the matrix clause. Therefore, those questions are uttered by the speaker with an intention to elicit an answer from the addressee; in other words, they are information seeking. The other distinction is (ii) between direct speech vs. indirect speech. A question that is semantically dependent on a verb might either be in direct speech or in indirect speech, and it might either be syntactically embedded under a verb of inquisition/saying or adjacent to one but not necessarily embedded under it. If at least a semantic dependency between the question and the verb of inquisition/saying is established, these questions are interpreted as non-information seeking (leaving aside certain pragmatic conditions where the speaker uses an embedded question and expects an answer to it from the addressee). In other words, a direct question might be directly quoted but non-information seeking. 17 Reference shift refers to the phenomenon in directly quoted speech where the references of deictic expressions used do not relate to present discourse referents. In other words, in a sentence like “He said “I love you”, “I” does not refer to the speaker of that utterance but to the speaker of the reported utterance.

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embedding mechanism that provides further support for research in complexity (Göksel & Kelepir, in press).

5.2. TİD Information Structure and the Prosody-Semantics Interface

In the previous section I have shown that from a structural point of view a right peripheral wh-item in a wh-complement of an inquisitive verb might be different from a right peripheral wh-item or a double construction in simplex questions. If this observation were true, the actual question that needs to be asked should be how a rightward wh-item in an embedded clause is derived. I showed that the VP would be excluded from the spreading domain of HEAD BACKWARD in the case of a right peripheral wh-item (19b), repeated below:

_______hb, br (19) _______hn ______hs

b. JALEa IX-3a BILGEb a-ASK-b [IX-1 BORN WHEN] a-ASK-b ‘Jale asked Bilge where I was born’.

This hints at the possibility that the VP could have undergone movement in the embedded CP. However, this explanation needs to account for how the wh-item WHEN occurs after the VP in the string. We could say that the wh-item first moved out of the VP and the remaining part of the VP then underwent movement to a higher position than the new position of the wh-item. According to the information structural model used by Makaroğlu (2012), this configuration is only possible if the wh-item undergoes movement to [spec, Emp-FocP] and the remaning part of the VP undergoes movement to [spec, TopP]. However, if this were the case we would also expect to find embedded wh-double constructions. Another essential problem lies in the position of the HEAD BACKWARD in the syntactic tree. Göksel & Kelepir (2011) locate the QM (in this case the HEAD BACKWARD) in Force0. Therefore, because ForceP is the highest projection in a syntactic tree the HEAD BACKWARD should be located somewhere lower than the ForceP in order to allow space for the VP to land. Krifka (to appear) claims that following Emonds (1969) and Ross (1973)’s observations that there are some clauses that cannot occur embedded under other clauses, some speech acts such as information seeking questions cannot be embedded under KNOW-type verbs18, while ASK-type verbs have the option to embed either question speech acts or question radicals. Therefore, ASK-type verbs may or may not allow for main clause syntax of their wh-complements depending on the information seekingness of the embedded clause. In cases where embedded questions are not information-seeking, we do no expect to find a ForceP projection, which is a root phenomenon and where the speech act of the sentence is encoded. Therefore, HEAD BACKWARD although in a non-information seeking environment19 must be located low enough in the syntactic tree to allow the remnant VP to undergo movement to a higher position, so that it can escape the c-command domain of HEAD BACKWARD. This is not surprising, considering the fact that embedded questions cannot be information seeking and that inquisitive verbs’ wh-complements are intensional, i.e. they are about the question itself, in the sense of Groenendijk & Stokhof (1982, 1984). Although this approach does not offer an exhaustive explanation at this point to the nature of the HEAD BACKWARD or the derivational path of right peripheral wh-items, it shows

18 He calls the wh-complements embedded under KNOW-type verbs ‘question radicals’. 19 It might as well be the case that HEAD BACKWARD in wh-complements embedded under inquisitive verbs is a morphological relic in the sense of Haspelmath (2010). It might be a semantically-vacuous morpheme that retains its form but not its function. We know this phenomenon through cases in a number of languages such as Turkish.

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that from a structural perspective embedded right peripheral wh-items differ from the superficially similar simplex questions.

The last question this study raises is whether there could be an embedded focus position in TİD similar to LSB, keeping in mind the findings of this paper regarding the differing observations between simplex content questions and embedded content questions. Although this study addresses only embedded questions in TİD, it has some implications for other types of embedded clauses with respect to the existence of an embedded focus position. Makaroğlu (2012) following Nunes & Quadros (2006) claims that right peripheral wh-items either in single or double constructions occupy the specifier of an emphatic-focus phrase. In this study, however, we have seen that right peripheral embedded wh-items cannot be related to those in simplex questions because they do not share identical prosodic and syntactic properties as discussed above. Recall that Petronio & Lillo-Martin (1997) observes lack of question intonation in embedded content questions in ASL. Their examples comprise both inquisitive verbs (in this case CURIOUS) and verbs of retaining knowledge (KNOW). They observe that even with an inquisitive verb, CURIOUS, the question intonation is lacking. This might be attributed to Krifka’s explanation of embedding questions that ASK-type verbs have the option to take question radicals, instead of question speech acts. They attribute the lack of question intonation to the lack of a focus position in embedded clauses. For TİD, however, I showed above that question intonation is observed with embedded questions of inquisitive verbs. However, this does not mean that the question intonation is related to focus in TİD. Although my study seems to hint at the absence of both an embedded informational-focus position and an embedded emphatic-focus position so far given that embedded wh-doubles and left peripheral wh-items are prohibited and that right peripheral embedded wh-items do not seem to pattern with those in simplex questions, it is still too early to make such a strong claim. Further research is required in order to grasp a better understanding of what information-structure in TİD looks like.

6. Conclusion

The main goal of this study was to describe embedded content questions in TİD while providing some of the missing information regarding what the embedded information structure in TİD might look like. I also provided content question embedding data and discussed its implications to strategies question formation in TİD employs. In doing so, I hope to have shed light upon a number of surrounding issues relating to the syntax and prosody of complexity and questions in TİD. First of all, I showed that content questions embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge prefer to follow the verbs they are embedded under; while the ones embedded under inquisitive verbs do not have a fixed word order. Matrix subject pronoun copy is only allowed if it comes right before the sentence-final copy of the matrix verb. These three observations are in line with Göksel & Kelepir (2013, in press). Secondly, I showed that embedded content questions differ from direct content questions in terms of both prosodic and clause-internal syntactic properties. While Makaroğlu (2012), İşsever & Makaroğlu (2013) and Göksel & Kelepir (2013) report their observations on four possible wh-configurations in direct content questions in TİD, only two of them are possible in embedded content questions: namely the in situ and the right peripheral configurations. I further conjectured that the embedded right peripheral wh-configuration might be displaying only a superficial similarity to the simplex right peripheral wh-configuration and that the derivational paths of right peripheral simplex wh-items and right peripheral embedded wh-items might not be identical. I supported this claim by comparing both constructions with respect to their syntactic and prosodic properties. And lastly, I provided empirical and theoretical evidence in favor of the status of HEAD BACKWARD as an interrogative clause-typer as put forth by Göksel & Kelepir (2011, 2013). While HEAD BACKWARD is absent in wh-complements of verbs of retaining knowledge, it is present in those inquisitive verbs. Although this study provides empirical evidence for its arguments, it requires and paves the way to further research in a number of fields such as topic, focus, questions and complexity in TİD.

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Acknowledgments:

I’d like to express my gratitude to my thesis co-advisors, Meltem Kelepir and Aslı Göksel for our endless discussion sessions and their patience with me; our project leader A. Sumru Özsoy for her guidance; our interpreters and annotators Gül Yiğit, Elvan Tamyürek Özparlak and Jale Erdul, as well as our informants without whose support the project would be bereft of a backbone; and my colleagues (project assistants) Derya Nuhbalaoğlu and Hüner Kaşıkara, as well as Serpil Karabüklü for their support. This paper is supported by TÜBİTAK project number 111K314.

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APPENDIX

Methodology and Data Collection Procedure

There are 3 datasets in this work:

(i) The transcriptions of naturalistic data from the recordings for a number of other research projects. In this dataset there are constructions that can be potentially considered to contain embedded questions:

(21) PICTUREa IX-a WHAT THERE.IS IX-1 KNOW^NOT

‘I don’t know what is in the picture.’

(ii) Elicitation of indirect speech. The resons for this are explained in section 4.

I designed a two-step task which consisted of the interaction of three informants. During the first step of the task, informant A asked informant B personal questions about informant C in his/her absence. Informant B was required to answer these questions to the best of his/her knowledge20. During the second step, informant C entered the laboratory and was asked to watch the questions of informant A about him/herself one by one and report to our TİD-Turkish bilingual interpreter. Informants C reported questions about themselves either in direct speech or in indirect speech.

(iii) This step consisted of three sub-steps: (i) a set of data depicting wh-complements embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge were elicited by giving our bilingual interpreter carefully set up contexts and (ii) the two data sets containing verbs of retaining knowledge (set A) and verbs of inquisition (set B) were syntactically adjusted with respect to (a) the relative position of the matrix O (the wh-complement, that is) to the matrix V, (b) the presence or absence of a matrix pronoun copy and its position in the sentence with respect to the matrix V and (c) the position of the wh-item in the embedded clause as well as the possibility of duplicating it. (iii) A grammaticality judgment test was conducted with these data shuffled and blended with a number of fillers among them. 8 informants were asked to rate the sentences on a scale from 1 to 5. The mean is presented in the paper alongside each example from that test.

The informants who took place in this research were aged between 20-55, all of which were current residents of Istanbul during the time of recordings and all acquired TİD before the age of 5. The data was collected using SONY Handycams, recorded in HD format and shot from three different perspectives in order to understand prosodic properties better.

20 These answers, since they did not contain any wh-item were not related to my research here.