The purpose of this study is to provide a formal description of polar interrogatives clauses in LSC and, moreover, propose a syntactic analysis that can take account for any form this kind of structure can acquire. This study includes an overview of what is known so far about polar interrogatives in both oral and sign language modalities, paying especial attention to those linguistic devices that are used to mark this sentence type. LSC is not out of ordinary: as a SL, nonmanual marking is required in order to perform the sentence. Furthermore, a Q-sign (i.e. YES-NO) can be add sentence-finally to explicitly mark the utterance as a polar interrogative. Notwithstanding, this Q-sign carries some pragmatic meaning. Therefore, in order to provide a syntactic analysis that could explain polar interrogatives in LSC, the proposals which have tried to explain the same sentence type and carried out by Wilbur & Patsche (1999), Šarac & Wilbur (2006) and Šarac et al. (2007) for ASL, HZJ and ÖGS polar interrogatives; and Neidle et al. (1996, 2000) for ASL, are presented. Thus, some important information about the analysis of Pfau & Quer (2002, 2007) for negative constructions in ASL, LSC and DGS; and the analysis of Prieto & Rigau (2007) for polar interrogatives in Catalan are provided; since they support the proposal provided on this work for LSC polar interrogatives. Thus, it stands that the feature [+y/n Q], realized through NMMs, is a featural affix that needs to be attached to manual material; moreover, the Q-sign is located inside Cº. In any case, this work represents an undeniable contribution to SLs knowledge, while it is contributing to the debate of typological variation within SLs. In addition, it can be conclude that polar interrogatives could be an area of macrotypological variation between oral and signed languages. Notwithstanding, in order to determine this, further research needs to be done.

Treball de fi de màster en Lingüística Teòrica i Aplicada

Tutor: Josep Quer Villanueva