What about? Fictive question-answer pairs across signed languages
Temas
Detalles
This chapter deals with the multifunctional use of the question-answer sequence, which constitutes a prototypical conversational and intersubjective structure, across signed languages. Specifically, I examine the use of polar and content questions, and their subsequent answers, for the expression of non-information-seeking functions, namely topicality, conditionality, focus, connection, and relativization. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of Catalan Sign Language and published data on 30 signed languages. The analysis shows that the question-answer sequence has been grammaticalized and constitutes the unmarked or by-default option to encode these linguistic functions. I argue that the pattern forms a highly schematic symbolic unit and that the specific linguistic constructions, which are instances of fictive interaction, form a complex network.
En: Esther Pascual y Sergeiy Sandler (eds), The conversation frame: forms and functions of fictive interaction (2016), pp. 171-192