Correlation between focus and the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language
Keywords: focus, NSR, sign language, information structure
TL;DR: HKSL displays a preference to locate non-subject focus in the clause-final position. By adopting Zubizarreta (1998), I argue that this preference is driven by prosody.
Abstract: This study investigates the correlation between focus and the clause-final position in Hong Kong Sign Language (hereafter HKSL). How languages encode information structure notions (e.g. focus, topic) has been a widely discussed topic across spoken languages, much less so in sign languages that adopt a visual-gestural modality. In many sign languages, focus-sensitive elements often occur in the clause-final position across many sign languages, including wh-elements (Zeshan 2004b; 2006; Neidle et al. 1996; Cecchetto et al. 2009, a.o.), the A(nswer)-clause of a clausal Question-Answer-Pair (QAP) (Wilbur 1996; Caponigro and Davidson 2011; Branchini 2015, a.o.) (a construction in sign languages that shares similarities with wh-clefts in spoken languages), sentential negative markers (Zeshan 2004a; Quer 2012; Pfau and Quer 2007), and ‘Only’-phrases (Kimmelman 2017; Herrmann 2013). HKSL displays similar patterns for all these categories. The correlation between word order alternation and information structure has been attested in different spoken languages (Neeleman and Vermeulen 2012; Kiss 1995; Bobaljik 2023; Borise 2023, a.o.). HKSL also allows word order alternations: while the default word order is SVO (Sze 2000), SOV, OSV, and VOS are attested. In this study, by examining word orders of declarative root sentences, I show that HKSL displays a preference to locate non-subject focus in the clause-final position. By adopting Zubizarreta (1998), I further argue that this preference is driven by prosody, in that focus prefers to occur in the clause-final position where it can obtain the sentential stress.
Submission Number: 79
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