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Article published In: Sign Language & Linguistics
Vol. 24:1 (2021) ► pp.63–86

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Negation and polar question–answer clauses in South African Sign Language

 | Stellenbosch University
Published online: 15 December 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.19014.hud
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, Trevor. 2018. A corpus-based study of the role of headshaking in negation in Auslan (Australian Sign Language): Implications for signed language typology. Linguistic Typology 22(2). 185–231. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) or argued to be too radical (Oomen, Marloes & Roland Pfau. 2017. Signing not (or not): a typological perspective on standard negation in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Linguistic Typology 21(1). 1–51. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), 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, Ivano & Kathryn Davidson. 2011. Ask, and tell as well: Question-answer clauses in American Sign Language. Natural Language Semantics 19(4). 323–371. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar analysis of this construction in ASL.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1Negation in South African Sign Language
    • 2.2Question-answer clauses
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Results
  • 5.A brief analysis of polar question-answer clauses in SASL
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (56)
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Wehrmeyer, Ella
2025. Structure of simple declarative clauses in South African Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 28:1 ► pp. 104 ff. DOI logo
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