From gesture- and sign-in-interaction to grammar: Fictive questions for relative clauses in signed languages

Abstract

We discuss the use of the question-answer pattern for relativization across signed languages, with special attention for Catalan Sign Language. These are cases in which grammatical features of the interrogative construction used for genuine information-seeking questions also appear as the most unmarked, frequent, or only linguistic means of expressing restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses, as well as appositives. This is intriguing, since relative clauses occur within one sentence and thus within one conversational turn, whereas the question-answer structure is prototypically dialogical, representing the turn-taking between addresser and addressee. We analyze such interrogative-like constructions as involving fictive interaction, the use of the conversation frame to structure cognition, discourse, and grammar (Pascual, 2006, 2014). We further suggest that the non-manual feature of eyebrow raising, which marks both information-seeking questions and relative clauses in Catalan Sign Language, became grammaticalized from a common non-obligatory gesture in the spoken Catalan of the surrounding hearing community. Hence, a gesture accompanying spoken language became a linguistic marker in a signed language, illustrating transfer between languages of different modalities. This is also presented as showing the emergence of grammar from situated intersubjective interaction (Li and Thompson, 1976; Sankoff and Brown, 1976). We make a case for the understanding of grammatical structure as primarily reflecting its mode of usage rather than some sui-generis Universal Grammar. This paper is based on the bibliographic study of 17 signed languages from different families and the qualitative analysis of own Catalan Sign Language data from different discourse genres.