Results based on non-manuals

The examined data turned out to be favoring R2 interpretations and one of the factors triggering this tendency seems to be a covariate verb type (see Section 3.3.4). Another co-variate in the stimuli is the non-manuals co-occurring with referents and IX signsof the same stimulus item. As was mentioned in Section 3.1.2, the aim was to create as natural as possible contexts, hence non-manuals were controlled only minimally (i.e. eye gaze, head and body movements directed towards the signing space). The question then arose whether, and to what extent, the freely occurring non-manuals might have contributed to participants’

lang

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tendency to select R2. Therefore, in this part a closer look is taken at the non-manuals in the stimuli sentences with a particular focus on the eyebrow raise and the squint because an eyebrow raise is shown to mark more accessible referents, such as topics (Janzen 1997), while a squint is observed to mark less accessible referents in sign languages (Dachkovsky

& Sandler 2009).

It should be noted that this section presents a quantitative analysis that includes a small number of uncontrolled occurrences; I will discuss these in the context of my current analysis. This section also contains some speculative comments which, as they have yet to be tested with a more controlled dataset focusing on the interaction of manual and non-manual markers in the contexts of reference resolution of pronominal IX, must be regarded as conjecture.

The analyses in this section are built on the assumption that co-occurrence of a particular non-manual on one of the referents and IX might create some kind of non-manual co-referential link between the two items leading to a particular interpretation⁵⁷. Item analysis was based on the frequency of occurrences of the non-manuals accompanying the referential expressions (i.e. referent signs and IX) in each of the stimulus sets in addition to the referent selections made for IX and all of these occurrences were calculated for DGS and TİD separately.

For both DGS and TİD, three groupings of interest were determined: (i) co-occurrence of a non-manual on one of the referents and IX; (ii) appearance of a non-manual only on one of the referents; and (iii) appearance of a non-manual only on IX. After

57So far literature on sign languages, does not contain explicit information about such kind of visual links and their importance for reference resolution, hence one of the aims of the current section is to open up such aspect for the follow up research.

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determining these co-occurrences, the frequency of the referents selected for the IX of each of these items were calculated. This was done in order to see whether any referent in particular was chosen due to the presence of a non-manual marking. For instance, whether R1 or R2 was selected in the cases where eyebrow raise occurred on both a referent and IX

of the same items (A full list of non-manual distribution accompanying referential items for each stimuli item per language as well as the frequency of referent selections for each stimuli item are given in the Appendix C). Note that single occurrences of non-manuals, as well as the non-manuals not relevant for the reference resolution (e.g. furrowed brows which occurred due to phonological spreading) but observed in the stimuli, were also included in the list.

For DGS, Table 3.8 shows referent selections for each of the items containing (co)-occurrence of non-manuals shared between one of the referents and IX as well as on either one of the referents and IX, with the frequency and percentage of the most selected referent for IX occurring within that particular item. Eyebrow raise was observed to co-occur with one of referents (i.e. R1) and IX in two of stimuli items (2/40). In six cases, (6/40) eyebrow raise occurred only on R1. There was only one case where IX appeared with eyebrow raise and one case where IX occurred with squint.

To sum up the findings for DGS: (i) it is not clear whether an occurrence of an eyebrow raise on both R1 and IX promotes the interpretation of R2; (ii) an eyebrow raise on R1 does not seem to affect IX to be interpreted as R1 even though it is marked with this non-manual, a typical topic marker; and (iii) a few instances of eyebrow raise and squint on IX

do not show evidence for preference of one or the other referent. Additionally, given the unsystematic occurrence of non-manuals, it is not possible to see a clear identification of IX

as one or the other referent.

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Table 3.8: Frequency of the items containing non-manuals on R1 and IX, R1 only and IX only, in DGS

aEach item name corresponds to the video name of the stimuli items, coding the final verb of the first sentence and direction of the IX sign in this item (eyebrow raise = ebr, squint = sq).

In TİD data (see Table 3.9), eyebrow raise was observed to co-occur with R2 and IX

in three cases (3/40) of the stimuli items. In a single case (1/40), eyebrow raise occurred only on R2. There were seven cases (7/40) where only IX appeared with eyebrow raise. The facts for TİD can be listed as following: (i) it might be the case that occurrence of eyebrow raise on both R2 and IX promotes interpretation of R2; (ii) eyebrow raise on R2 only, might influence IX to be interpreted as R2 but one occurrence does not provide clear evidence; and (iii) in majority of the cases eyebrow raise on IX seems to go hand in hand with this pronoun to be interpreted as R2, but consider items occurring with the verb KISS,in which R1 was preferred. A general speculation might be that in TİD given the class of agreement verbs, an occurrence of an eyebrow raise on R2 and IX, R2 only or IX only might increase the prominence of R2. However, whether this is due to the sole presence of agreement verb or its co-occurrence with eyebrow raise, is yet to be further examined.

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Table 3.9: Frequency of the items containing non-manuals on R1 and IX, R1 only and IX only, in TİD

domain of NMM stimuli item name mostly selected # of selections referent

b Each item name corresponds to the video name of the stimuli items, coding the final verb of the first sentence and direction of the IX sign in this item (eyebrow raise = ebr).

To recap, it is not clear whether non-manual cues occurring on referential items in the stimuli, i.e. eyebrow raise, were used to increase the prominence of the referential items on their own or together with the presence of certain types of verbs. Being used inconsistently and in the context of plain (DGS) and agreement (TİD) verbs, which appeared to promote R2 interpretation, it is not easy to say whether non-manuals fulfilled one or the other purpose or whether they have had an effect on pronominal interpretation in general.