Imperatives in sign languages .1 Non-manual markers.1 Non-manual markers

Comparatively little is known about imperatives in sign languages. The avail-able descriptions, however, clearly indicate that the main marker of imperatives is non-manual in nature. For many sign languages, this seems to be done with the eyebrows. In Italian Sign Language the non-manuals consist of furrowed brows and tensed eyes, in Catalan Sign Language furrowed brows, and in French Sign Language raised eyebrows (Donati et al. 2017) (for Italian Sign Language see also Brunelli 2011). The same source (i.e., Donati et al. 2017) mentions that Icelandic, Norwegian, and Turkish Sign Language use similar non-manual markers, but unfortunately no further details are mentioned. In Turkish Sign Language both raised and furrowed brows seem to occur in imperatives (Özsoy et al. 2014). For some sign languages, for example Italian Sign Language, furrowed brows seem to be the general marker of imperatives, regardless of whether a sentence is used as an order, a suggestion, or an invitation (see the data in Quer et al. 2017: 306–307).

However, as withwh-question marking, there seems to be variation. For exam-ple, Brentari et al. (2018) only report brow-raise as an upper-face non-manual marker of imperatives in American Sign Language (cf. also the video material accompanying Brentari et al. 2018).

In addition to furrowed brows, some sources mention direct eye contact as a characteristic of imperatives (e.g., Valli & Lucas 2000: 143 for American Sign Language or Johnston & Schembri 2007: 201 for Australian Sign Language; both sources also mention brow-furrows). As an additional non-manual pattern, the gestural force of the signs is often mentioned. This means that the force used to articulate the signs is stronger in imperatives than in other sentence types. This stronger gestural force is usually associated with a shorter temporal duration of signs in imperatives (and especially in imperatives used as commands) compared to other sentence types (Brentari et al. 2018).

3.9.2.2 Manual imperative signs

For some sign languages, an additional manual imperative marker was described.

Italian Sign Language, for example, makes use of a palm-up index sign in or-ders, invitations, suggestions, permissions, instructions, and recommendations.

Another sign, glossed moveimp (signed with a G-handshape), that is in comple-mentary distribution with the aforementioned palm-up sign, is used in the same language when the directive implies a movement of the addressee. A similar man-ual imperative sign is found in French Sign Language (Donati et al. 2017). Again, these markers occur in a clause-final position (cf. the Italian Sign Language ex-ample in (138)).

3.9.2.3 Morpho-syntactic properties

Concerning the cross-linguistically stable patterns found in spoken language im-peratives, there are also a few things mentioned in the literature on sign lan-guages. The points I will briefly discuss are subject drop, negation in imperatives, the fact that many languages make use of minimal verbal morphology, and word-order changes. As with sign language declaratives, sign languages allow subject drop in imperatives (Özsoy et al. 2014; Donati et al. 2017). This is, however, not surprising, as sign languages make frequent use of null subjects – also in other sentence types. Italian Sign Language shows an interesting behavior, as it allows for proper names in imperatives, as shown in the example in (138) from Donati et al. (2017: 134).

(138) Italian Sign Language

carlo wake-up b-index hide moveimpimp

‘Carlo wake-up! Go and hide!’

Donati et al. (2017: 134), however, assume that carlo in the example in (138) is not a subject, but a vocative. The evidence they provide for this claim is that it is not possible to have a quantified NP in this position, as shown in (139).

(139) *Italian Sign Language

*every soldier hide b-index^imp

*‘Every soldier hide!’

It has to be noted, however, that quantification seems not to be a suitable crite-rion for identifying vocatives. As long as the addressee can be derived from the

utterance, quantification of a vocative NP is possible in many languages (Pots-dam 1996: 194–197; Croitor & Hill 2013: 815–816).²⁹

Concerning negation, Donati et al. (2017) report that the non-manual mark-ings in negated imperatives differ from the non-manuals used in declaratives in Italian Sign Language: While negation in declaratives is accompanied by fur-rowed brows, they observe raised brows in negated imperatives. For Australian Sign Language, Johnston (1989: v196–197) mentions that negative imperatives are signed by the insertion of a manual negator. This contrasts with negation in declaratives which is expressed via a head shake. In other sign languages, the negation strategy between declaratives and imperatives does not differ. This is the case, for example, in Turkish Sign Language (Özsoy et al. 2014).

Concerning the minimal verb morphology, the literature on imperatives in sign languages has surprisingly little to say. It seems, however, that sign lan-guages make use of verbal agreement in imperatives as in other sentence types.

Johnston (1989: 195) gives the following example of an imperative in Australian Sign Language (without discussing the verbal agreement).

(140) Australian Sign Language:

imp 2look₁

‘Look at me!’

From Johnston’s glosses we can infer that the verb in Australian Sign Language imperatives at least agrees with the addressee and the signer. This is, however, weak evidence that verbal morphology is not as impoverished as in imperatives in many spoken languages. Clear evidence that the verbal agreement system is not altered comes from Turkish Sign Language. Özsoy et al. (2014) report that they found no differences between verbal agreement in declaratives and imper-atives in Turkish Sign Language.

Interestingly, there are also reports of word-order changes in imperatives: Do-nati et al. (2017) report that Catalan Sign Language, an SOV language, displays VO-order in imperatives. This is rather surprising as similar word order changes for clause-typing purposes seem not to be a standard mechanism in sign lan-guages.

Next, I will discuss imperatives in DGS. Again, I will start the discussion by outlining the non-manual markers, then I will discuss a possible candidate for

29With some exceptions, it seems not to be possible to use bare quantifiers as vocatives. This is especially true for negative quantifiers (see Portner 2007: 414–415; Hill 2013: 58–59).

Figure 3.21: The non-manual markings used in imperatives.

a manual imperative sign, subject drop, the imperative verb morphology and negation in DGS imperatives.

3.9.3 Imperatives in DGS