Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of English Linguistics A LINGUISTIC STUDY ON THE SYSTEM OF PERSONAL NAME SIGNS IN TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE (TİD) Abdullah Topraksoy Master’s Thesis Ankara, 2015 A LINGUISTIC STUDY ON THE SYSTEM OF PERSONAL NAME SIGNS IN TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE (TİD) Abdullah Topraksoy Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of English Linguistics Master’s Thesis Ankara, 2015 KABUL VE ONAY Abdullah Topraksoy tarafından hazırlanan "A Linguistic Study on the System of Personal Name Signs in Turkish Sign Language (TİD)" başlıklı bu çalışma, 11.06.2015 tarihinde yapılan savunma sınavı sonucunda başarılı bulunarak jürimiz tarafından Yüksek Lisans Tezi olarak kabul edilmiştir. Yrd. Doç. Dr. Zeynep Açan Aydın (Danışman) _____ ,,,, Prof. Dr. Işıl Özyıldırım Doç. Dr. ÇiğZSağın Şimşek Yrd. Doç. Dr. Zeynep Doyuran Yukarıdaki imzaların adı geçen öğretim üyelerine ait olduğunu onaylarım. Prof. Dr. Yusuf Çelik Enstitü Müdürü To my Precious parents who was always, and Still with me And To my Love with whom I feel spirit and prime of my life ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study has been carried out thanks to TÜBİTAK’s (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) scholarship program for MSc students (2210-National Scholarship Programme for MSc Students ). I would like to thank to my supervisor Assist. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Açan Aydın for her help and contributions from the beginning till the end of the study. I wish to express my deep gratitude to Prof. Dr. Nalan Büyükkantarcıoğlu, Head of the Department of English Linguistics and to the members of my thesis committee for their positive feedbacks in the organization and finalization of this study. Special thanks go to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emine Yarar and Assist. Prof. Dr. Zeynep Doyuran who have always supported me throughout the preparation of this thesis with their helpful comments. I owe special thanks to Assist. Prof. Dr. A. Zeynep Oral and to the members of Ankara Deaf Association for their valuable contributions during the data collection stage of the study. I owe appreciation to my dear friends Res. Assist. Ruhan Güçlü and Muhammet Ali Arık for their moral support. Finally, I would like to express my sincere and endless feelings for my family and my Sweetheart who have always lent a hand to me with their profound affection, encouragement and with their patience in all my life. iii ÖZET TOPRAKSOY, Abdullah. Türk İşaret Dili (TİD)’ nde Kişi Özel Adları Üzerine Dilbilimsel Bir Çalışma, Yüksek Lisans Tezi, Ankara, 2015. Kişi adları; dil, kültürel ortam, toplumsal sınıf, etnik yapı vb. etmenlere bakılmaksızın dünyanın her yerinde kullanılmaktadır. Ancak, bu adların nasıl kullanıldığı ve nasıl ifade edildiği dile ve kültüre bağlı olarak değişebilmektedir. İşiten bireyler kendi kişi adlarını kullanıp duyabilirken; sağır bireyler bu adların yerine işaret adlarını kullanırlar çünkü kendi kişi adlarının sesletimini dahi duyamadıklarından ve adlarının toplumsal ve dilbilimsel öneminin kendilerine öğretilmesinin oldukça güç olmasından dolayı kişi adları işaret dillerinde erişilebilir değildir. İşaret adlarının algılanması, oluşumu ve sınıflandırılması; görsel bilgiye, sağır toplumdaki kültürel inanışlara ve dilsel ifade etme yoluna bağlıdır. Bu çalışma, Türk İşaret Dili(TİD)’ nde işaret adlarının oluşumunu inceleyen ilk çalışma olmasıyla birlikte, Türk İşaret Dili’nde işaret adlarına ilişkin sistemi incelemeyi ve ad verme davranışını, kategoriler ve oluşturma yöntemleri bakımından tanımlamayı amaçlamaktadır. Bu amaçla, anadili TİD olan ve Ankara’da işitme engelliler derneklerine mensup olan 25 sağır kişi çalışmanın katılımcıları olarak belirlenmiştir. Bu katılımcılara, kişisel yaşamları ve kendi işaret adları hakkında bilgi edinmeyi amaçlayan birtakım sorular içeren bir anket işaret dili tercümanı aracılığıyla bireysel olarak uygulanmıştır. Ardından, her bir katılımcıdan kendi işaret adını işaret ederek göstermesi istenmiş ve bu süreçte katılımcılardan görüntü kaydı alınmıştır. Daha sonra, aynı katılımcılardan kendi işaret adlarının yanı sıra, yerli/yabancı bazı ünlü kişiler ve karakterler için de işaret adlarını göstermeleri istenmiş; yine bu süreçte de katılımcılardan görüntü kaydı alınmıştır. Veri değerlendirme aşamasında, katılımcılardan işaret adlarıyla ilgili alınan veriler, işaret parametrelerine göre sistemli düzenlilikleri ve farklılıklarına bakılarak yüzdelik değerleri hesaplanıp çözümlenmiş ve işaret adları belirli kategorilere ayrılmıştır. Çalışmanın sonuçları, Türk İşaret Dili’nde dört farklı işaret ad grubu olduğunu göstermiştir. Bu kategoriler, diğer işaret dillerinde iv bulunan kategorilerle benzerlik taşımaktadır. İşaret parametrelerine göre yapılan inceleme sayesinde, Türk İşaret Dili’ndeki kişi işaret adlarının kurala dayalı ve sistemli örüntüler olduğu ortaya çıkmıştır. Bunun yanı sıra, çalışmada Türk İşaret Dili’nde ad verme davranışının, sağır kimliği ve toplulukla olan ilişki bakımından önemli kültürel değerler taşıdığı ortaya konulmuştur. Sağır toplumun, diğer kültürlerde olduğu gibi doğru ad seçimi, adın özgünlüğü gibi temel değerleri bulunmaktadır. Alanyazında benzer birkaç çalışma ile birlikte bu çalışma, adbilim alanına yeni bir çalışma konusu sunmaktadır. Son olarak, sağır toplumu özgün bir kültürel grup olarak anlamanın yanında, bu çalışma, gelecekte oluşturulması muhtemel bir TİD isim envanteri oluşumuna katkı sağlayacak ilk ve önemli bir basamak olarak değerlendirilebilir. Anahtar Sözcükler: İşaret dili, Türk İşaret Dili, kişi işaret adları, işaret parametreleri, sağır kültür, sağır kimlik v ABSTRACT TOPRAKSOY, Abdullah. A Linguistic Study on the System of Personal Name Signs in Turkish Sign Language(TİD), Master’s Thesis, Ankara, 2015. Personal names are used throughout the world irrespective of language, cultural setting, social class, ethnicity, and etc. However, how these names can be expressed and used can differ depending on both language and culture. Moreover, while hearing individuals are able to use and hear their personal (phonetic/official) names, Deaf individuals use name signs, particular signs associated with the individuals’ names, as a way to indentify themselves to others particularly within the Deaf community because personal names are not accessible in sign languages: it is difficult to teach social and linguistic significance of personal names to Deaf people, as they cannot hear the pronunciation of these names. The perception, formation and categorization of personal name signs is based on visual information, cultural beliefs of the Deaf community and linguistic means of expression. Present study which is a preliminary one for the formation of personal name signs in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) aims at investigating the system of personal name signs and describing the naming behavior in TİD with reference to the categories and to the methods of forming personal name signs. To that end, twenty-five native Deaf signers of TİD have been selected as the participants of the study. A questionnaire, including a number of questions related to background information about their personal life and to their personal name signs, has been applied to each participant individually via a sign language interpreter. Afterwards, each participant has been requested to sign his/her name sign(s) and each individual has been recorded by a video camera during the signing process of their own name sign(s). In addition to their own name signs, the same participants have also been asked to demonstrate name signs for some public figures and popular characters from the hearing community individually and this procedure has also been recorded by a video camera. In order to evaluate the data, personal name signs of the participants have been sorted out and they have been vi split into categories based on their frequencies and percentages. Moreover, personal name signs have also been examined in terms of the parameters of sign structure so as to account for associating systematic patterns. The results of the study have shown that there are four categories of personal name signs in TİD: Descriptive, Arbitrary, Initialised-descriptive and Loan/borrowed name signs. These categories are the same or similar to those found in other sign languages such as ASL, BSL, ESL and NZSL. Thanks to the analysis of personal name signs according to the parameters of sign structure, results have also shown that the personal name signs in TİD observed in the study have rule-governed and systematic patterns. In addition, name sign practices in the present study illuminate certain important cultural values in regard to deaf identity and connection with the group. The deaf community has, as in any other cultural group, basic values and customs that most members follow such as uniqueness of name signs, name signs as identity and picking the right name signs. Along with a few more studies of its kind in the sign language literature, this study contributes to the field of onomastics in offering a rather novel topic of study. Finally, this study can be regarded as an initial and a significant step as a contribution to the creation of a prospective corpus of name inventory in TİD as well as understanding Deaf community as s distinct cultural group in Turkey. Keywords: Sign language, Turkish Sign Language, personal name signs, signing parameters, Deaf culture, Deaf identity. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS KABUL VE ONAY…………………..………………………………………………i BİLDİRİM…………………………………………………………………………....ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………...iii ÖZET…………………………….…………………………………………………...iv ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………….vi TABLE OF CONTENTS…………………………………………..………………viii LIST OF TABLES…………………………………………………………………..xii LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………..……………………….xiii LIST OF CHARTS………………………………………………………………….xv CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION……………………….…………………………....1 1.1. THE NEED FOR THE STUDY…....……………………..………....…...….4 1.2. PRESENTATION OF THE STUDY………….…….………………………5 1.2.1. Aim of the Study.………………………………………………………....5 1.2.2. Basic Assumptions and Research Questions………………………….…..6 1.2.3. Boundaries of the Research…………………………………………….…6 1.2.4. Methodology ……………………………………………………………..7 1.2.4.1. Means of Data Collection……………….………………………….7 1.2.4.2. Evaluation of the Data……………………………………………...8 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………………10 2.1. LINGUISTICS AND SIGN LANGUAGE…...…………....………………10 2.1.1. Presenting Sign Languages……………………………………………….10 2.1.1.1. Some Misconceptions Regarding Sign Languages………………....11 viii 2.1.1.1.1. Sign language is not universal……………………………………….11 2.1.1.1.2. Sign languages are not invented by hearing people……………...12 2.1.1.1.3. Sign languages are not simply pantomime and gesture………….12 2.1.1.1.4. Signed languages are not always iconic…………………………...13 2.1.1.1.5. Sign languages are not simpler forms developed out of coexisting spoken languages………………………………………………………14 2.1.1.2. The Internal Structure of Signs……………………………………..15 2.1.1.3. A Brief History of the Study of Sign Languages…………………...19 2.1.1.4. Deaf community and Identity……………………………………....20 2.1.1.4.1. History of the Concept of Deaf Community…………………...22 2.2. TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE (TİD) AND DEAF COMMUNITY IN TURKEY…………………………………………………………………...24 2.2.1. A History of Deaf Existence in Turkey…………………………………...25 2.2.1.1. Deaf Identity in Turkey…………………………………………........27 2.2.2. Deaf Population and Deaf Education in Turkey……………………….....28 2.2.3. Current State of TİD……………………………………………………...31 2.2.4. Some Aspects of TİD Grammar………………………………………….35 2.2.4.1. Sign Structure………………………………………………………..37 2.2.4.2. Number and Time Reference Incorporation……………………........39 2.2.4.3. Classifiers………………………………………………………….....40 2.3. PERSONAL NAMING…………….………….…………………………....42 2.3.1. Personal Naming in Spoken Languages………………………………….43 2.3.1.1. The Study of Personal Names……………………………………….43 2.3.2. Functions of Personal Naming…………………………………………...45 ix 2.3.3. Personal Names in Sign Languages………………………………….…..46 2.3.3.1. Name Sign Systems in Sign Languages…………………………….49 2.3.3.1.1. Categories of Personal Name Signs in Sign Languages……...49 CHAPTER III: LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS……………………………………….54 3.1. THE CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL NAME SIGNS IN TİD …….......54 3.2. PERSONAL NAMING IN TID IN TERMS OF THE PARAMETERS OF SIGN STRUCTURE……………………………................................64 CHAPTER IV: DISCUSSION……………………………………………………..73 4.1. THE CATEGORIES OF PERSONAL NAME SIGNS IN TID………...73 4.2. PERSONAL NAMING IN TID IN TERMS OF THE PARAMETERS OF SIGN STRUCTURE.………………………………………………...76 4.3. PERSONAL NAME SIGNS ATTRIBUTED TO HEARING AND DEAF COMMUNITY MEMBERS………………………………….................83 CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION……………………………………………………85 5.1. LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF NAME SIGNS IN TİD…………………..86 5.2. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF NAME SIGNS IN TİD……………………..….91 5.3. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH AND IMPLICATIONS…………………………………………………………93 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………….94 APPENDIX 1. TİD Handshape Inventory and Definitions……...……………...109 APPENDIX 2. List of Classifiers in TİD……………………………….………..117 APPENDIX 3. The Questionnaire ………………………………………………119 x APPENDIX 4. Thesis/Dissertation Originality Report …………………….…..120 APPENDIX 5. Ethics Board Waiver Form For Thesis Work………………….122 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The frequency and rate of each category for personal name signs Table 2: Sub-groupings of descriptive name signs Table 3a: Categories for personal name signs of Deaf participants Table 3b: Categories for personal name signs of public figures Table 4a: Sub-groupings of descriptive name signs for Deaf participants Table 4b: Sub-groupings of descriptive name signs for public figures Table 5a: The frequency and percentage of the use of locations in personal name signs Table 5b: Locations in personal name signs of Deaf participants Table 5c: Locations in personal name signs for public figures Table 6a: Handshape frequency in personal name signs Table 6b: Handshape frequency in personal name signs of Deaf participants Table 6c: Handshape frequency in personal name signs of public figures Table 7a: Movement analysis in personal name signs for Deaf participants and public figures Table 7b: Movement analysis in personal name signs for Deaf participants Table 7c: Movement analysis in personal name signs for public figures Table 8a: Orientation frequency in personal name signs for Deaf participants and public figures Table 8b: Orientation frequency in personal name signs for Deaf participants Table 8c: Orientation frequency in personal name signs for public figures xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Two signs that lack a form-meaning relationship in Auslan Figure 2: Handshape, location and movement direction in a simple sign in Auslan Figure 3: Signing Space Figure 4: İŞARET ‘sign’ Figure 5: Distribution of deaf students in deaf elementary schools and high schools by city (2005-2006) Figure 6: Overview of the studies carried out in TİD Figure 7: The Manual Alphabet of TİD Figure 8a: ‘FESTİVAL / FESTIVAL’ Figure 8b: ‘DÜĞÜN / WEDDING’ Figure 9: Arbitrary name sign illustration of Ravio Kurg in ESL Figure 10: Descriptive ASL name sign illustration of a person having protruding ears Figure 11: The visual representation of formation of the initialised-descriptive name sign for Obama in ASL Figure 12: Loan/borrowed name sign representation for KUUSK [SPRUCE] Figure 13: Loan/borrowed name sign representation for LIND [BIRD] Figure 14: A descriptive name sign in TİD Figure 15: Arbitrary name sign for Tansu Çiller in TİD Figure 16: A descriptive name sign based on personal characteristics in TİD Figure 17a: First part of the name sign based on the political status Figure 17b: Second part of the name sign based on the political status Figure 18: A descriptive name sign based on a behavioral feature xiii Figure 19: A descriptive name sign based on an inherited feature Figure 20a: First part of an initialised-descriptive name sign for Obama Figure 20b: Second part of an initialised-descriptive name sign for Obama Figure 21: A loan/borrowed name sign with partial homonym in TİD Figure 22a: First part of a loan/borrowed name sign in TİD Figure 22b: Second part of a loan/borrowed name sign in TİD xiv LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: The Categorization of Personal Name Signs in TİD Chart 2: Sub-categories of Descriptive Name Signs in TİD Chart 3a: Instances of the use of hand locations in TİD personal name signs Chart 3b: Gender distribution on the use of locations of hand in TİD personal name signs Chart 4: Summary of the handshape frequency in personal name signs in TİD xv CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION The nature of personal names has been cogitated in linguistics within the context of onomastics - the scientific study of names-. A person's name is associated with several legal and cultural norms. Perceptions on attributing personal names vary according to the society, but certain common features are evident, such as choosing the right name, the uniqueness of the name, and the name as an expression of personal identity (Paales 2010: 319). Ancient Estonians believed that a mysterious connection existed between people and their names because one's name was seen as an integral part of one's soul, containing certain elements of one's personality (Loorits 1990 in Paales 2010:318). When considering personal names in terms of onomastics, their classification is determined by various features. In general, naming behaviour is bound to the language and culture, and personal names are presented and used in many ways. For instance, in most cultures it is customary for individuals to be given at least two names: one is the first name or given name and the other is the second name or surname. However; there are some exceptions to this custom: Westerners often insert a third or more names between the given name and surnames; Chinese and Hungarian names have the family name preceding the given name; females often retain their maiden names (their family surname) or combine, using a hyphen, their maiden name and the surname of their husband; some East Slavic nations insert the patronym1 between the given name and the family name; in Iceland the given name is used with the patronym, or matronym2 and surnames are rarely used (Nomenclature, 2014). The name category is linguistically universal and thus is also present in sign languages. Different sign languages have developed their own personal naming systems. Undoubtedly, Deaf 3 people have their own phonetic (official, verbal) names. Just like any hearing children; deaf children are also named with a phonetic name by their 1 Patronym refers to a name derived from the first name of the father. 2 Matronym refers to a name derived from the first name of the mother. 3 The capitalization of Deaf has become a convention within both the Deaf studies literature and the Deaf community for referring to people who not only have a hearing loss but also identify themselves as “Deaf” socially, linguistically, and culturally with other Deaf people who use sign language. This spelling is in contrast to deaf, which denotes hearing loss but not necessarily a cultural or linguistic identity as being a part of a signing community. 1 parents after birth. However; as researchers of name signs from New Zealand have pointed out, phonetic names are not accessible in the signed discourse: it is difficult to teach their social and linguistic significance to Deaf children, as they cannot hear the pronunciation of these names (McKee & McKee 2000: 9 in Paales 2010: 326). Therefore, apart from their phonetic names, there is a common tendency to attribute personal name signs (person-denoting name signs) to the Deaf and hard of hearing people in Deaf communities. Moreover, name signs in sign languages represent a viable tradition regarding language and heritage; their formation and perception is based on visual information, historic cultural space, cultural beliefs of the group, and linguistic means of expression (Paales 2011: 47). In addition, name signs have been defined as part of Deaf folklore and a type of playful language creation (Klima & Bellugi 1979: 319–339; Rutherford 1993: 129–135; Carmel 1996: 197–200). The pioneer of name sign research, Deaf linguist Samuel J. Supalla studied the personal name signs of American Deaf people (Supalla 1992). In different sign languages, onomastic studies were mostly related to personal name signs (Rainò 2000, 2004, 2005 for Finnish Sign Language; Hedberg 1994 for Swedish Sign Language and Delaporte 2002 for French Sign Language). Less attention has been paid to place name signs and other name signs (e.g. ethnonyms). Apart from their official names, the tendency of Deaf to attribute distinctive name signs to the other members of the Deaf community reflects the idea of “Deaf culture”. In various Deaf communities, as in Estonia, the process of name sign formation involves reference to a person’s notable visible features such as a mole, scar, missing limb, freckles, etc (Paales 2011: 49). As a hearing person, a name researcher should not be prejudicial and judgmental or should not decide, based on such personal name signs, that Deaf people are insensitive and rude. Personal connotations embedded in name signs derive from the peculiarity of the world perception of a Deaf person and do not necessarily mean that they should be interpreted as negative or mean (McKee & McKee 2000: 26). Paales (2011:49) states that if you ask whether a Deaf person “prefers” his/her official name or name sign, then the preference is undoubtedly given to his/her name sign as it is a symbol of his/her own Deaf culture and identity. 2 Generally speaking, a personal name sign and a personal name can be used to identify and differentiate people and their names from other people; but personal name signs have an additional function to emphasize the feeling of togetherness. Indeed, personal name signs are not used to address a person in the course of a conversation. Rather, a name sign has the function of indicating identity and solidarity among the members in a Deaf community. Further, personal name signs reflect whether one belongs to the Deaf community or has some relationship with it. The members of Deaf communities conventionally use appropriate personal name signs to denote their friends and others. Personal name signs represent a lexical group within sign language, which has major importance for the development of a Deaf person's self-esteem and for intra-group communication (Paales 2010: 319). There are cultural differences in the social values incidental to the practice of forming and using name signs in different communities. Thus, on the one hand, the moment of attributing a personal name sign signifies the entry of that person into the sign language community, by creating a connection with the history and language of the group. On the other hand, a name sign is a linguistically efficient personal denotation; a cultural anchor for coping both in the sign language community and hearing society (Paales 2011:49). Personal name signs are mostly signed near the head, face, or chest; if a particular name sign has not yet been developed, finger spelling of the given name and / or surname is used, as Paales (2011:49) reports. One significant thing distinguishing the naming behaviour in western hearing communities from Deaf communities is that usually Deaf children are given their personal name signs by their Deaf contemporaries at school. For example, Chinese researchers Yau & He (1990:245 in Paales 2011:50) describe a situation in which the newcomers are given a name sign by older co-students at the school for Deaf in China. Meadow (1977: 240 in Paales 2011:50), referring to the American Deaf community, points out three periods when a Deaf person is most likely to obtain a personal name sign: 1) in childhood (Deaf children of Deaf parents); 2) at a special school for Deaf (contemporaries); 3) in high school (Deaf co-students). Another important point is that it is more difficult to change one’s name sign in a Deaf community than to change a personal (phonetic) name on their identity card. Thus, for instance, it is rather complicated for Deaf individuals in some Deaf communities, like in China, to change their name signs and in most cases the personal name sign obtained at 3 school will accompany a Deaf person throughout his or her life (Yau & He 1990: 249– 250). In the same vein, changing of name signs is not common in the Palestinian Deaf community (Strauss-Samaneh 2001: 595). However; as Paales (2010:328) put forths, “Deaf communities in the United States and Europe appear to be more flexible in the alteration of name signs”. For these communities, a change of a personal name sign is possible in connection with a reference person’s different stages of life. For example, in the case of women, the name sign may change when they get married. Apart from this, changing a name sign and getting a new one may also arise when a Deaf person gets involved in a different Deaf community or takes on a new role in the same community in relation to a group of signers, such as getting a job as a teacher in a Deaf school. In this sense, name signs are like nicknames in that they both develop in social groups and mark in-group social statuses and social relationships among the members of the community (Morgan et al. 1979 in McKee & McKee 2000: 24). Moreover, like nicknames in spoken languages, name signs incapsulate the people’s entry to socialization in the signing community. On the contrary, Meadow (1977:243) and Mindess (1990: 14) point out that name signs and nicknames have a slightly different function. For the clarity between name signs in sign languages and nicknames entitled in spoken languages, McKee & McKee (2000: 25) states: However, unlike most nicknames, name signs remain the primary identity symbol for Deaf people throughout life because participation in the “closed” social system of the sign language community is likely to continue and to remain of primary significance in Deaf people’s identity. . 1.1. THE NEED FOR THE STUDY As noted earlier, name signs represent a viable tradition with respect to language and heritage; their formation, perception and attribution is based on visual information, historic cultural space, cultural beliefs of the Deaf community, and linguistic means of expression. The practice of using and forming name signs can vary among Deaf communities. What is more, the formation and attribution of a new name sign shows that the person has joined a sign language community, i.e. a sort of initiation. Although some studies have been done on personal name signs in different sign languages and researchers have described sign name customs in various Deaf communities including 4 the United States (Meadow 1977; Mindess 1990; Supalla 1990, 1992), China (Yau & He 1989), Sweden (Hedberg 1994), New Zealand (McKee & McKee 2000), Greece (Kourbetis & Hoffmeister 2002), France (Delaporte 2002), Belgium (Van Mulders 2005) and Estonia (Paales 2010, 2011); little or no information has been found on personal name signs in Turkish Sign Language (TİD henceforth) 4. Descriptions of personal name sign systems in countries stated above and the gap in the TİD literature regarding personal name signs became the motivation behind carrying out the present study. Carrying out such a study and the prospective collection of personal name signs in TİD can allow access to the name heritage of Deaf people in Turkey. Further, by doing so, this study can be seen as a contribution to the prospective establishment of a comprehensive corpus regarding personal name signs of the Deaf community in Turkey. Last but not least, studying personal name signs in TİD can shed light on the understanding of the cultural heritage as well as in-group attitudes of Deaf having their own linguistic and cultural identity in Turkey. 1.2. PRESENTATION OF THE STUDY 1.2.1. Aim of the Study Noticing the gap in the literature on studies concerning personal name signs in TİD, this study aims to describe the personal naming system in TİD with a linguistic viewpoint. More specifically, this study aims to describe personal naming system of TİD and methods of forming personal name signs with reference to naming categories and to the parameters of sign structure, and also to contribute to the further studies on TİD by being the first attempt on the linguistic analysis of personal name signs in TİD. 4 As Açan (2007: 2) states, “ ‘TİD’ is an acronym representing the initial letters of each word in ‘Türk İşaret Dili’. Using acronym as this one is a widespread convention and points out that the sign language in question is a somewhat standard code being different from ‘home signs’ or ‘contact codes’ used among smaller Deaf groups.” 5 1.2.2. Basic Assumptions and Research Questions The use of personal name signs can be regarded as an important part of Deaf culture. Not only does it identify an individual to others but it also means that fingerspelling one's name is not always necessary when conversing, thereby sometimes making it faster and easier for people in the Deaf community (Name Signs, 2013). Seeing that there are systems or ways of forming personal name signs in various sign languages aforementioned, this study has been projected to find out the formation and use of personal name signs in TİD and to categorize them in the light of these research questions: 1) Assuming the naming behaviour is a culture- and language-specific practice, what is the general pattern of personal naming system in TİD? a) In what categories personal name signs are formed in TİD? b) Does the naming behaviour in TİD have systematic patterns in terms of the parameters of sign structure? 2) Are there any similarities and/or differences in the formation of personal name signs attributed to the hearing vs Deaf community members? 1.2.3. Boundaries of the Research There are some restrictions on the content and the results of the study owing to the following facts: 1. The research has been carried out in Ankara, and is restricted to the data collected from a limited number of subjects who are native speakers of TİD. 2. As the investigator of the study is not a competent sign language user, all the communication with the Deaf subjects has been carried out with the researcher and with the help of sign language interpreters who are competent both in TİD and Turkish. 6 3. Due to the lack of previous linguistic research and published material on the subject in TİD, this study is restricted to the description, formation and the use of personal name signs in TİD. Sociolinguistic variables such as age, sex, socio-economic background and etc. of the subjects were not taken into consideration in this study. 4. Parameters of non-manual signals were not taken into consideration during the evaluation of the personal name signs obtained. 5. The findings presented in this study are to be regarded as a preliminary basis for future research on personal naming process in TİD and are open to every kind of reasonable suggestions. 1.2.4. Methodology 1.2.4.1. Means of Data Collection A total of 43 name signs have been collected from twenty-five (13 of which are male and 12 of which are female) adult native Deaf signers of TİD. These participants have been selected from a Deaf local in Ankara and they have been voluntarily committed to the study. The data have been collected via interviews with the participants. A participant, a sign language interpreter and the researcher have been present in each interview. Each participant was directed a questionnaire including questions about their personal information and their personal name signs. The signers were assisted by the interpreter while they were filling in the questionnaire. On the one hand, questions related to their personal information were designed to learn about participants’ official names and whether there are any other Deaf people in their family. On the other hand, questions regarding their personal name signs were created in order to reveal what the meanings of the name signs of the participants are, when these were given and who gave these name signs to the participants. Subsequently, each participant was requested to sign his/her name sign(s) and each individual was videotaped during the signing process of their own name signs. The video recordings were made from the front side of the participants during the signing process in order to observe the whole signing procedure 7 clearly and properly. The researcher conducted the study getting in face-to-face interactions with the participants in their daily environments with the aim of obtaining natural data. In addition to their own name signs, the same participants were asked to demonstrate sign names for public figures and popular characters individually. This section was also recorded by a video camera during the participants’ signing process. These public figures and popular characters were selected from various domains such as football, politics, cinema, music, cartoon character and etc. Inclusion of these public figures and popular characters, as they are from hearing community, into the data of the study may give opportunity to compare the formation process of name signs attributed to both mediums of communities (Deaf community vs hearing community) and may help to answer whether there are different formations of personal name signs according to the people from hearing community versus Deaf community. The questionnaire which was utilized during the personal interviews with the participants is given in Appendix 3. 1.2.4.2. Evaluation of the Data In the general sense, personal name signs obtained from the participants in the present study were analyzed by applying the model of signing parameters (Handshape, Location, Movement) developed by Stokoe (1960) with the addition of Orientation parameter put forward by Battison (1978). These parameters were utilized in the analysis of the personal name signs in the present study since these parameters underly the internal structure of signs in sign languages. More specifically, bearing the fact in mind that most personal name signs are performed using handshapes and these handshapes may vary from a sign language to another, the handshape inventory of TİD and the manual alphabet5 of TİD both presented by Kubuş (2008) were utilized in order to have scientific and systematic base for the analysis of personal name signs in the present study. Later, personal name signs gathered have been sorted according to their categories of formation by calculating their percentages and frequency of use, and by considering 5 As seen in studies on personal name signs in sign languages apart from TİD, some arbitrary name signs are created not by using handshapes but by using letters in the manual alphabet of the sign language in question. Thus, in addition to the handshape inventory, the manual alphabet of TİD was also utilized in the present study. 8 systematic regularities and differences among them after seeing that there are same or similar categories found in the examination of personal name signs on the basis of previous studies in different sign languages like ASL, BSL, ESL, NZSL and etc. Name signs for public figures and popular characters were also analyzed on the basis of signing parameters and they were also split into the same categories after their percentages and frequencies of use were calculated and systematic regularities and differences among them were considered. The results obtained for the name signs regarding Deaf participants and public figures/characters were compared so as to understand whether there are either same or different formations of name signs attributed to the people from hearing community versus from Deaf community. 9 CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. LINGUISTICS AND SIGN LANGUAGE In its general sense, linguistics tries to find out the rules that explain what language users know, so that we can understand how language works. More precisely, linguistics may be described as the scientific study of language. Here, linguistics is referred to as scientific because (a) linguists adopt an objective view of language and (b) they use scientific methods such as the use of observation, description and explanation in their study of language (Finch, 2000). One of the aims of the field of linguistics is to understand exactly what language is. For a working definition of language, Baker and Cokely (1980) states: “a language is a complex system of communication with a vocabulary of conventional symbols, signs and grammatical rules that are shared by members of a community and passed on from one generation to the next, that changes across time, and that is used to exchange an open-ended range of ideas, emotions and intentions.” This extensive definition of language draws on a number of key features that were proposed by Charles Hockett (1960) to be central aspects of language structure and function, such as the use of arbitrary symbols and signs, grammaticality, discreteness, duality of patterning, cultural transmission, inter-changeability, reflexiveness, displacement and creativity (see Johnston & Schembri, 2007: 1-8). However, some of these features are shared by human languages and other communication systems, while others may be unique to human language. 2.1.1. Presenting Sign Languages A sign language is a system of communication which is composed of gestures made through the hands and other parts of the body in order to meet the basic functions of every aspect of face to face communication (Crystal, 1992:353). At this point, it is not wrong to state that a sign language is a non-verbal and visual medium of communication widely used among prelingually deaf and hearing-speech impaired people. Although some definitions present languages as vocal-auditory means of communication, the above stated definition of language in section 2.1.2 and the studies 10 carried out on sign languages since 1960s show that languages do not have to be oral mediums only. By virtue of the sign language studies (Deuchar 1984; Yule 1985; Kyle and Woll 1988; Isenhath 1990; Valli and Lucas 1992; Asher and Simpson 1994; Liddell 2003), it has become prominent that sign languages bear some kind of systematic and conventional rules similar to those of spoken human languages. Thus, studying spoken languages alone is not enough to explore human communication systems because studies to be carried out on sign languages can offer new striking and gripping insights into human languages. 2.1.1.1. Some Misconceptions Regarding Sign Languages Since sign languages have not been studied extensively until 1960s, they have been treated as far from being full-fledged and natural languages, and therefore, some wrongly held views have become popular. Among these are the following:  There is only one sign language all around the world.  Sign languages are invented by hearing majority in the society in order to help speech and hearing impaired people.  They are simply pantomime and gesture.  Sign languages are completely iconic.  They are the reduced and simpler forms of the coexisting spoken languages of the majority in the same community. All of these misconceptions and the facts against these wrongly held opinions will be discussed in the following sub-sections. 2.1.1.1.1. Sign language is not universal In late eighteenth-century Europe, it was sometimes assumed that sign languages used by deaf people were a form of universal language. The Abbé de l’Epée, for example, who established one of the first public schools for deaf children in the world in 1760, believed that the sign communication used in his school in Paris could serve as the basis 11 of universal language (Kendon, 2004). However, sign language is not a universal language. Studies (Jordan and Battison, 1976; Siple, 1978; Klima and Bellugi, 1979; Wilbur, 1979; Tanokami, Peng, Maeda and Mori, 1976; Ahlgren and Bergman, 1980) have clearly put forward that there are many different sign languages around the world, and many of these have developed independently of each other with differing grammar and vocabulary. For instance, although American and British communities speak English with some dialectal variation, the language of American and British Deaf speech communities -ASL and BSL, respectively- are quite distinctive codes which are mutually unintelligible (see Deuchar, 1984: 106). 2.1.1.1.2. Sign languages are not invented by hearing people That any single individual, hearing or deaf, invented natural sign languages such as Australian Sign Language (Auslan), BSL, ASL, French Sign Language (LSF) and etc. has not been evidenced so far. Sign languages appear to have been in use among deaf people elsewhere in the world before schools for deaf children were established in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition, there are references to the use of sign language by deaf people in the writings of Plato (Rée, 1999). 2.1.1.1.3. Sign languages are not simply pantomime and gesture It is sometimes believed that communication between signers is achieved by simply pointing at objects, drawing pictures in the air or by acting out descriptions of events. “People often use the term ‘sign language’ to refer to this kind of improvised visual- gestural communication that occurs when two people who are not deaf and do not speak each other’s language meet” (Johnston and Schembri 2007: 14). In short, this misconception results from the confusion between ‘sign language’ and ‘non-verbal communication’ and ‘body language’ a sort of “ad hoc gesture system used to communicate with people whose language one does not speak” (Deuchar,1984: 3-4). Gestures such as body language or non-verbal communication are manual or bodily actions which only accompany language having limited expressive and communicative 12 functions relying mostly on immediate context (i.e. pointing out objects) and having no grammatical function. However, sign languages are not restricted to such immediate context and there seems to be no limits to what signers can communicate through sign language. Although Crystal’s (1992) definition of sign language includes the term ‘systems of gestures’, it is completely different from that of used among people who do not share a language or that of used to accompany speech. Signing is much more systematic than gesturing and this idea is supported by what Asher and Simpson (1994: 3890 in Açan 2013:78) state: “signs are distinguished from gestures by having an internal structure composed of elements which form a system of contrasts, and whose usage is rule-governed”. 2.1.1.1.4. Sign languages are not always iconic Languages involve iconic elements as well as arbitrary ones, and cases of onomatopoeia in spoken languages can be regarded as examples of this kind of elements. However, the presence of iconicity in sign languages should not be overemphasised (Woll, 1990). There are instances in which signs have no apparent iconic, but arbitrary, relationship to their meanings. In Auslan, for instance, the signs for ‘BEACH’ and ‘LIBRARY’ lack an iconic form-meaning relationship in Figure 1. below (Johnston and Schembri 2007: 15) : LIBRARY BEACH Figure 1. Two signs that lack a form-meaning relationship in Auslan. 13 Therefore, it is not wrong to state that the formation of signs in sign languages is never determined solely by their resemblance to an object or action. Moreover, an evidence from experimental studies of short-term memory and language production errors (‘slips of the hand’) suggests that signers use the structural components of handshape, orientation, location and movement when remembering and producing signs rather than their iconic properties alone (Emmorey, 2002). In addition, as Deuchar (1984: 16, 20) puts forth: “it is important to realize that while iconicity means non-arbitrariness, it does not necessarily mean non-conventionality. The iconicity in sign languages does not result in a complete freedom; iconic signs too, are determined culturally”. Sign languages seem to display three types of signs, namely, (i) symbolic –which are arbitrary in terms of their connection to their referents; (ii) indexic –which directly point out their referents; and (iii) iconic –which resemble, or depict their referents (see Dobrovolsky, 1997: 591-592; Deuchar, 1984: 13-15). At this point, it is important to note that ‘iconicity’ and ‘tranparency’ should not be taken as identical and interchangeable terms. Although there are considerable amounts of iconic or indexic signs in sign languages, many of them cannot be interpreted unless one knows their meanings beforehand. 2.1.1.1.5. Sign languages are not simpler forms developed out of coexisting spoken languages Although sign languages are seen as the reduced forms of coexisting spoken languages, sign languages of deaf communities are not based on spoken languages. Emergence of this misconception may simply be based on the idea that these languages are often later- developed when compared to the coexisting spoken language of the majority and thus they are associated with a sort of poverty of complexity. Nonetheless, some investigations (Deuchar, 1984; Isenhath, 1990; Valli and Lucas, 1992; Asher and Simpson, 1994; Kyle and Woll, 1998; Liddell, 2003) have already clearly made evident that sign languages are rule-governed systems of communication and have a structure of comparable complexity to spoken human languages, comprising similar rules and performing similar range of functions. Just like natural spoken languages, they have 14 grammatical levels of phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics as well as a rich lexicon. In addition, sign languages seem to exhibit defining aspects of language (arbitrariness, duality, discreteness, productivity, displacement and cultural transmission) that were proposed by Charles Hockett (1960), and sign languages perform similar range of communicative functions (functional properties) offered by Jacobson (1973: 53-55 in Açan, 2001: 38) such as referential, conative, emotive, phatic, metalinguistic, and poetic functions. The descriptions of these properties are given below: 1. Referential function, which has to do with conveying information 2. Conative function, which has to do with getting other people to do things 3. Emotive function, which has to do with conveying feelings 4. Phatic function, which has to do with signalling contact between people 5. Metalinguistic function, which has to do with talking about language yourself 6.Poetic function, which has to do with using language for aesthetic or literary purposes Like spoken languages, all of these properties seem to be carried through by sign languages except poetic function. Açan (2001: 39) states the study on poetic function in sign languages is quite restricted. However, it is known that British Sign Language (BSL) is used for story-telling and jokes (see Deuchar, 1984: 23 for details). As sign languages have similar processes that are found in spoken languages, sign languages must be learnt in early ages. If the speech impaired children do not learn any sign language until the ages of 5 or 6, it becomes more difficult for them to learn not only sign languages but also spoken languages later (İşaret Dili Nedir ?, 2004). 2.1.1.2. The Internal Structure of Signs The similarities between the linguistic uses of sounds in spoken languages and of gestural elements in sign languages were recognised recently. William C. Stokoe (1960) was the first researcher to demonstrate that the signs used by deaf people actually had 15 internal structure in the same way as the words in spoken languages. Before Stokoe started to study the sign structure, signs had been generally regarded as simple, unanalysable gestures with no internal organisation, rather like those used in gesticulation (Bloomfield, 1933). However, with the publication of Sign Language Structure in 1960, Stokoe showed that many signs of ASL were produced using a limited number of gestural features just as hundreds of thousands of English words are produced using a very small number of different sounds. Then, Stokoe found that the action of a sign had three main aspects or parameters: a handshape oriented in a specific way, at a specific location and with a specific type of movement. He proposed that these parameters be known as cheremes, which is analogous with the phonemes of spoken languages. Handshape refers to the shape of the hand used in a sign. As possible shapes, hand may be closed into a fist, or the fingers may be spread out or held together. The hand may be bent at the wrist, or the fingers may be bent at the knuckles or joints. The thumb may be extended, held parallel to the fingers or held across the palm. The index, middle, ring or little finger may be extended, bent, or may be in contact with each other. However, “despite the great number of possible hand configurations that can be produced, each particular sign language tends to use only a limited number of handshapes to create signs in the core lexicon” (Johnston and Schembri 2007: 79). Location refers to the position of the hand on the body or in the space around the signer. Like handshapes, there are a great number of different locations on the body and in space that may possibly be used but locations used when signing are limited just as there are limited number of handshapes when signing. Movement covers hand movements such as straight, arc, circular directions and many others. In other words, the hand may move away from the body (of signer), towards it, upwards, downwards, forward and back or vice versa, in an arc, a circle, or spiral directions when signing. “In general, sign languages have two kinds of movements: path movements and internal movements. Internal movements can be either “handshape changes” and/or “orientation changes” (Sandler and Lillo-Martin, 2006: 197 in Kubuş 2008: 38).There are also secondary movements which include the repetition of handshape or wriggling of fingers. Like handshape and location, only a limited subset of 16 all of those movements of the fingers, hands and arms are used when signing. The significance of movements comes from the fact that signs are not well-formed without them (Brennan, 1990). The movements in the signs of natural sign languages are an intrinsic part of the signs. Of course there may be possibility to perform signs without movements but such signs are not generally observed in natural sign languages. Signs with movements are different from transitional movements in regard to phonetics, and they also carry lexical and morpohological contrasts. To understand the three parameters mentioned so far, a sample sign ‘NOT KNOW’ from Auslan is given in Figure 2 below (Johnston and Schembri 2007: 80). NOT KNOW Figure 2. Handshape, location and movement direction in a simple sign in Auslan For the handshape regarding the above sign ‘NOT KNOW’, the fingers of the hand are held flat and close together. The hand is held near the forehead as the location in the same sign above, and the hand moves away from the signer in regard to the movement parameter. As a contribution to Stokoe’s study of sign structure, Battison (1978) put forward that orientation, which refers to the direction of the palm and fingers when signing, is as important as the other three parameters (handshape, location and movement) in sign phonology. A specific handshape can be oriented in a number of different ways in relation to the signer’s body. For instance, the palms and fingers may be oriented left, right, up, down, towards or away from the signer. In the sign NOT KNOW in Figure 2. above, the palm of the hand faces toward signer. 17 Although hand orientation was previously regarded as a seperate parameter, sign language linguists now generally include orientation in their descriptions of signs and many appear to agree that it counts as one of the four (with handshape, location and movement) most basic building blocks in sign structure (Woll, 1990). There is one more significant constraint to be mentioned in the production of signs, the sign space. The signing space refers to an area which “extends from approximately just above the head to the waist, and in width from elbow to elbow when the arms are held loosely bent” (Brennan 1992: 22) and sign language users tend to use only those parts of the body and locations in space during the production of signs (see Figure 3 below) Figure 3. Signing Space (Pfau and Steinbach 2006 p.27) Apart from the parameters above mentioned, sign languages convey much of their prosody through non-manual signs. Postures or movements of the body, head, eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, and mouth are used in various combinations to show several categories of information, including lexical distinction, grammatical structure, adjectival or adverbial content, and discourse functions. Grammatical structure that is shown through non-manual signs includes questions, negation, relative clauses (Boudreault and Mayberry, 2006), boundaries between sentences (Fenlon et al.,2008) and the argument structure of some verbs (Thompson, Emmorey and Kluender, 2006). ASL and BSL use similar non-manual marking for yes/no questions, for example. They are shown through raised eyebrows and a forward head tilt (Baker and Cokely, 1980). Moreover, some adjectival and adverbial 18 information is also conveyed through non-manual signs, but what these signs are varies from language to language. For instance, as Sutton-spence and Woll (1998: 89) asserts, in ASL a slightly open mouth with the tongue relaxed and visible in the corner of the mouth means 'carelessly,' but a similar sign in BSL means 'boring' or ‘unpleasant’. 2.1.1.3. A Brief History of The Study of Sign Languages Recognition of sign languages may be traced back to the work of Plato in Ancient Greece. In his philosophical work Cratylus (written in 360 BC), “Plato wrote that if we had no voice or tongue, ‘should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hand and head and the rest of the body?’ ” (Johnston and Schembri 2007: 21). According to Descartes, in the eighteenth century, sign languages of deaf people represented examples of true human languages. Similar beliefs were shared by nineteenth-century scholars such as Edward Tylor in Britain, Wilhelm Wundt in Germany and Garrick Mallery in the United States of America (Kendon, 2004). Modern sign language linguistics is often considered to have begun in 1960 with the publication of Sign Language Structure by William Stokoe, a hearing lecturer at Gallaudet College in Washington DC. His study became popular as the first analysis on sign languages and he analyzed ASL structure using linguistic methodology, then, he presented persuasive evidence that ASL was indeed a language with a grammar and vocabulary independent of English. In fact, Stokoe’s publications were preceded by a work published by a Dutch linguist Bernard Tervoort. As a doctoral dissertation, he described the signed communication used by deaf children in a residential school in Netherlands (Johnston and Schembri 2007: 22). Tervoort recognised this signing as a language, but his study was less influential than the later work by Stokoe. After some years, in 1965, Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles was published by Stokoe, Casterline and Croneberg. Nonetheless, despite these premier studies, sign language research in 1960s aroused little interest and some members from Gallaudet University, where Stokoe and his colleagues were carrying out research on sign language, maintained a stance against sign language studies claiming that sign languages were not ‘real’ languages and they questioned the value of these researches (Maher, 1996). In ten years time, interest in ASL began to grow with the leadership of researchers Klima and Bellugi at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. They recognised that the study of 19 human language would be incomplete without research into the visual-gesture communication of deaf communities, and they trained a whole generation of deaf and hearing sign language researchers in their sign language laboratory in San Diego (Emmorey and Lane, 2000). Later, sign language research began to spread out across the world: such studies started in Europe in the mid 1970s, and began in Australia in the 1980s. In the following years after 1980s, signed language research has begun to become a seriously international field of research, with research papers published on sign languages from South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America. Subsequent research has aimed to establish the validity of the linguistic universals in sign languages although these universals were originally proposed for spoken languages. Other research has attempted to determine the impact of modality on language structure (e.g., Meier, Cormier, & Quinto-Pozos, 2002),namely, to what degree sign languages are different from spoken languages. The differences such as the grammatical use of non-manual features and space in sign languages have been perceived as additional special characteristics peculiar to language in the visual-gestural modality. Moreover, how to interpret the emerging facts of sign language description and integrate them into an overall and coherent model of human language has been a recent inquiry. 2.1.1.4. Deaf community and Identity With regard to a definition of ‘Deaf community’, Baker and Padden (1978: 4) states that “the deaf community comprises those deaf and hard of hearing individuals who share a common language, common experiences and values, and a common way of interacting with each other, and with hearing people”. Ladd (2003: 43) put forths the following: Deaf communities differ from other linguistic minorities in one crucial aspect - their language and culture can be transmitted down the generations only by the 5–10% with Deaf parents. For the other 90% of Deaf children, born to hearing parents, access to a sophisticated language and its traditions can only be gained by attending Deaf schools. It is generally agreed that Deaf schools and Deaf clubs form the foundation stones of the Deaf communities. Deaf schools make newly entering Deaf children socialised, enabling Deaf norms, values and traditions to develop and to be passed down from 20 generation to generation. Likewise, Deaf clubs provide a crucial central focus for Deaf adult life by maintaining the language and culture of childhood, as well as extending the Deaf experience into all of the organizational forms required in maturity. Records indicate that in the Western and Middle Eastern worlds, sign language-using Deaf people have gathered together for at least 7,000 years, and evidence for the existence of sign communication in various first nations indicates a Deaf presence which may be even older (Woll and Ladd 2003: 151). Most of the historical description and sociological research data as well as theories about Deaf communities has belonged to European and North American Deaf gatherings for the last two decades. Gaining formal acceptance of the term “Deaf community” has not been unproblematic. Nonetheless, its vernacular use spread widely in time and the concept of ‘Deaf community’ has almost completely replaced the older term ‘Deaf world’. Recent literature on Deaf communities (Bahan and Nash, 1996; Lane, Pillard, and French, 2002; Ladd, 2002) offers conceptual frameworks and models for various manifestations of Deaf existence. Bahan and Nash (1996) describes the type of community found in industrialized societies where Deaf people form a small percentage of the population and where Deaf community life is organized separately from the hearing community as a ‘suppressing’ community. The taxonomy made by Bahan and Nash suggests that Deaf communities are formed in ways that correlate with how Deaf people have been treated and how sign languages have been viewed by majority societies or majority communities. Researchers have discussed for many years how Deaf people join together in order to create social groups and Deaf identities (Flournoy, 1856; Erting, 1978; Markowicz & Woodward, 1978; Higgins, 1980; Lawson, 1981; Lane, 1984; Padden & Humphries, 1988; Ladd, 1998). For these researchers, Deaf people create communities based on three factors: deafness, communication, and mutual support. In another study, Johnson (1994) reviews how these three factors lead to “communities of communication”, “communities of ethnic identity, and “communities of solidarity”(see Johnson, 1994). As previously mentioned above for the taxonomy of Bahan and Nash, the existence of Deaf communities, the identity of Deaf people, and the experience of Deafhood is mainly determined depending on the Deaf people’s experiences in majority societies. 21 However, without interaction with community members across generations and participation in the various activities and structures of the community, it may be difficult for Deaf individuals to develop an awareness, acceptance, and celebration of both individual and collective Deaf self. An important point is that the main difference between the lives of majority society and those of Deaf community is the form of communication they adopt: spoken language in majority society and sign language in Deaf community. At this point, for the significance of sign language, Woll and Ladd (2003: 153) asserts: The centrality of a sign language is reflected not only in the social and political organization of these communities, but in their strong cultural tradition of sign- play, jokes, storytelling, and poetry. In the most practical sense, then, the central fact of Deaf community membership is seen as linguistic membership Another point that should be taken seriously is that the membership within Deaf communities is also seen as determined, not by audiological measurement, but by self- identification as Deaf and reciprocal recognition of that identification, and Baker and Cokely (1980) refer this demeanor as ‘attitudinal deafness’. In other words, individuals with minor hearing losses may feel full membership of the Deaf community, while other individuals with profound hearing losses may not identify themselves with Deaf community. Many Deaf people don’t see themselves as handicapped (Lane, 2002) but rather consider themselves members of a linguistic minority with its own culture, values, customs, traditions and with its own language distinct from those of the hearing community. In short, both the linguistic and attitudinal differences reinforced by restricted access to society underpin a Deaf solidarity, Deaf culture and a sense of identification among Deaf people who share similar experiences (Ladd, 1998). 2.1.1.4.1. History of the Concept of Deaf Community Deaf people have been present from the beginning of humanity, and the first written evidence of their existence can be found at the rise of the Mediterranean societies in the fifth century BC. In the process of time, Greek philosophers like Herodotus, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, and their equivalents in Roman and Jewish society philosophized about the nature of Deaf people’s presence and their place in society. 22 From the fifteenth century onward, two characteristics of Western approaches are considerably significant for the existence of Deaf people. One is the positive view of Deaf potential regarding ‘groups’ of Deaf people; and the other is the negative view that only notices Deaf ‘individuals’ isolated from their peers. Van Cleve and Crouch (1989) note that the positive viewpoint for Deaf groups is found in Judaic/Old Testament writings and the negative one arises from Christianity’s view of Deaf individuals. The positive view prioritizes Deaf people’ s ability to make sense of the world through their own visual skills, their ability to communicate with each other, and the communicative power found in sign language, and perceives them as constituting a community of their own with the potential to administer their own affairs while achieving degrees of participation in the majority society. On the contrary, the negative viewpoint regards Deaf people essentially as ‘empty vessels’ that could be made to resemble “normal” humanity in external appearance. However, with the arrival of Renaissance, Deaf people have become more respected. Achievements by Deaf individuals and groups in business domains are noted by Zwiebel (1994). Moreover, there were networks of Deaf artists and their Deaf friends during that period (Plann, 1998), or even the beginnings of small Deaf communities which may be considered as proto-Deaf (which means existing before deaf education) communities. The clearest evidence for the existence of proto- Deaf communities comes from the Ottoman court from the fifteenth century onward. During that time, successive Sultans took as many as 200 deaf people into service with various responsibilities, including teaching sign language to the rest of the court (Miles, 2000). In addition to this, several deaf people were among the Sultans’ closest companions and the reason behind this convention is that speech was seen as an undignified method of communication in the presence of the Sultan, and sign language was felt to be more appropriate. Sign languages began to flourish when Deaf educational establishments started to bring together large numbers of Deaf children and Deaf adults during the mid eighteenth century (see de L’Epee, 1984). When Deaf people graduated from deaf schools, Deaf meeting places such as large numbers of clubs and religious societies were consequently established across Europe and the United States and many of them were founded by Deaf people (Lysons, 1963). By the early nineteenth century, Deaf graduates attained professional positions for the first time, and Deaf magazines and newspapers were 23 developed to facilitate regional and national communication. Later, these developments were enhanced in 1867 by the establishment of Gallaudet College in the United States. Documents from the era show high levels of Deaf self-confidence, including beliefs that sign language was a“universal” language, which underpinned their conviction that hearing people could learn from their example (see Mottez, 1993). During this era, struggles were made to formalize the concept of an independent Deaf-Mute Nation, both in France and in the United States (Van Cleve & Crouch, 1989). In addition to these developments, while the stream of oralism sought to remove sign languages and deaf teachers from the schools and to replace them by advocating the sole use of spoken communication, Deaf communities responded to oralism by founding national organizations such as the National Association of the Deaf in the United States in 1880, and the British Deaf and Dumb Association in Britain in 1890. During the twentieth century, Deaf communities continued to exist and grow but with low rates of literacy beacuse of the effects of oralism. Toward 1970s and 1980s, some factors including Deaf activist organizations like National Union of the Deaf in Britain; linguistic recognition of sign languages and their restoration to a place in deaf education; Deaf visibility in the media; rediscovery of Deaf history and the development of Deaf studies as an academic discipline contributed partly to Deaf revival. In short, a rise in Deaf confidence and pride has taken place since the 1980s thanks to the revelation of the linguistic complexities of sign languages. On the contrary, there has been limited consideration of social and cultural issues and of the internal and external factors responsible for creating, maintaining, and changing Deaf communities compared to the amount of linguistic research carried out. 2.2. TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE (TİD) AND DEAF COMMUNITY IN TURKEY Turkish Sign Language (TİD) is the sign language used by the Deaf community in Turkey. Much of the research on Turkish Deaf people has been conducted by either governmental institutions related to disability or by medical institutions with the aim of providing health services. Research on the linguistic structure of Turkish Sign Language has been a recently undertaken phenomenon. 24 2.2.1. A History of Deaf Existence in Turkey Accounts of existence of deaf people in Anatolia can be grouped into three main periods: the Hittites (Soysal, 2001; Murat, 2008), the Ottoman Empire (Miles, 2000, 2009; Selim, 2006; Batır, 2008) and the Republic of Turkey (Zeshan, 2002, 2003; Kemaloğlu & Kemaloğlu, 2012). Soysal (2001) clearly presented that deaf men and women were working in Hittites’ religious ceremonies by using sign language. In addition, Murat (2008) reports a Hittite city as ‘the city where deaf people talk’ near ‘Hakmis’ (today called ‘Amasya’ – a city in northern Turkey). In spite of the fact that there is not much data found yet on what ‘deaf people talk’ mean in the ancient sources, one shouldn’t overlook the fact that this city might have hosted the oldest signing community which is in some ways similar to the Martha’s Vineyard Island in the United States (Ladd, 2003), Yucatec Maya village in Mexico (Johnson, 1991) and Desa Kolok in Indenosia (Marsaja, 2008). Moreover, Nearly 2700 years after the Hittites, we find the earliest established sign language community in Constantinople, namely, the capital of the Ottoman Empire (Miles, 2000). From 15th century onward, we see ‘mutes’ in the Ottoman court, along with the dwarves and other entertainers, as the daily companions of Sultans. Many deaf and mutes were hired at the Sultan’s court and they were endowed with some missions such as as convenient and secretive servants, guards, executioners and couriers between the years 1500s to 1700s (Miles 2009: 24,31). Especially, around late 16th century the mutes and dwarves even had their own quarter in the seraglio. In the Ottoman palace, those people were named as ‘Dilsiz’ (‘dil’ in Turkish means that both ‘language’ and ‘tongue’; hence ‘dilsiz’ can refer to ‘without tongue’, ‘without language’ or ‘speechless’). What is more, the signing system of these mutes or dilsiz staff which was handed down from one generation to the other, became popular among the hearing people in the palace, especially among successive Sultans (Fisher & Fisher, 1987; Miles, 2000). However; although it is known that sign language in the Ottoman court was capable for discussing many topics and was transmitted to the next generations, there was no evidence regarding whether TİD originated from the Ottoman court. In spite of the fact that Deaf and mutes in the Ottoman Seraglio created a small Deaf community before the emergence of educational institutions for the deaf, Deaf histories 25 usually begin in educational institutions because such establishments provide the language and social opportunities for deaf people who would otherwise be isolated as individuals. Studies indicate that Turkish deaf education began in two metropolitan cities, İstanbul and İzmir respectively (Ergin, 1939; Yıldırım, 1997; Zeshan, 2003; Batır, 2008). The first school for the deaf, Yıldız School for the Deaf and Blind, was founded in İstanbul by an Austrian merchant Grati Efendi around 1889 (Ergin, ibid). However, due to the disrupted instruction and lack of funding during the decline of Ottoman Empire, that school had to be closed down in 1926 and the students were transferred to the İzmir Deaf School founded in 1923. Sign language used and instructed in these two Deaf schools was most probably originated from French Sign Language (LSF), and used by adding some extra finger positions to demonstrate Arabic letters and Turkish vowels of the Ottoman Turkish. As an evidence for this assumption comes from Haydar (1925): He notes in his study that Grati adapted French fingerspelling to Ottoman script in order to aid teaching at the Deaf school. It was a one-hand alphabet as in LSF and ASL. Turgut and Taşçı (2011) reported that this alphabet was used in the deaf schools in İstanbul and İzmir till the Alphabet revolution in 1928 after foundation of Republic of Turkey, then a two-hand alphabet, which is almost similar to contemporary TİD alphabet, became popular in the Deaf community. In addition to these schools, there were some other deaf institutions. In 1944 Süleyman Sırrı Gök, who is a key figure in the establishment of deaf education in the early Turkish Republic, founded a deaf association in Aksaray along with a school for the deaf where he taught sign language both to deaf students and hearing teachers (Gök, 1958). Also, it should be noted that Gök’s three books6 written on the deafness and deaf education in Turkey (Gök, 1939; 1940; 1958) are of great significance in regard to the Deaf population since his books encompassed the daily activities and significant problems of deaf in Turkey compared to the situation for the deaf people in Europe. However, with the foundation of a deaf school in Ankara in 1952, Gök’s private school for the deaf was taken over by the state government in 1953. Although there is a belief that sign language use was banned at deaf schools in 1950s in Turkey (Özyürek et al. 2004), the following excerpt from İlkbaşaran (2013: 29) may be regarded as an opposition to that belief: 6 For more descriptions of these books see İlkbaşaran & Taşçı (2012: 1775). 26 My interviews with former teachers of the deaf from İstanbul in 1980s confirm that the teachers were not aware of such a ban and that they in fact commonly used signs to communicate with their students both in and out of the class. In short, for the period of early Turkish Republic, it can be said that most of the initiatives and developments in sign language, and the environment in which sign language and deaf culture could flourish were provided by Gök despite the effects of oralist attitudes that were becoming more diffusive in Turkey. In addition, as İlkbaşaran & Taşçı (2012: 1776) points out, we understand that despite seeing deaf people as poor and disabled, Gök struggled and found a way for integrating them under the notion of deaf solidarity and advocated deaf education as an instrument to create a strong and capable society. There are now Deaf clubs and associations as well as specialized schools for the Deaf in all parts of the country. The Deaf community is organized in a centralized way: All clubs and associations are associated to the Turkish National Federation of the Deaf (TSMF). “Meetings among the members of Deaf associations are conducted in sign language. Taken into account all of these factors, the Deaf community has achieved a considerable degree of self-governance” (Zeshan 2003: 44). The Deaf community in Turkey meets on a regular basis. The most active gathering seems to be at the level of sports organizations, with many tournaments organized at all levels. Notwithstanding, cultural activities are much less developed, with rare sign language theater and forms of sign language literature. Except for the modern metropolitan areas where both Deaf men and women often participate equally in social activities, social clubs in other parts of the country are sometimes dominated by men, with only a day or two open to women and families (Zeshan, ibid). 2.2.1.1. Deaf Identity in Turkey The way that Deaf people talk about their language and community can be a good hint to have a look at Deaf identity. As Zeshan (2003: 47), there is no word for‘sign language’in TİD. This is also the case for some other sign languages (Kyle et al. 1985 for British Sign Language, Zeshan 2000 for Indo-Pakistani Sign Language). The sign language is referred to as İŞARET ‘sign’ (see Figure 4. İŞARET ‘sign’ ) in TİD. 27 Figure 4. İŞARET ‘sign’ Interestingly, it seems that deafness supersedes ethnicity as a marker of identity in Turkey. That is, people primarily identify themselves as ‘Deaf’ rather than ‘Turkish Deaf’ , ‘Kurdish Deaf’, and etc. in spite of the fact that the territory of Turkey includes people from different ethnicity who do not identify themselves as ‘Turks’. The Deaf community particularly in the metropolitan areas in Turkey, has had some exposure to the issues of the redefinition of deafness as involving a linguistic and cultural minority. This kind of issues have recenlty been discussed in Deaf communities in Western countries as well. As Zeshan (2003) mentions, a significant number of Deaf people have travelled abroad, mostly to European countries for Deaf sports competitions or to visit their relatives. Although there is also a flow of Deaf European tourists coming into Turkey, contact with foreign Deaf communities is still limited. The use of the internet in general and e-mail in particular is also very limited among Turkish Deaf, whereas messaging with mobile phones is hugely popular among them. 2.2.2. Deaf Population and Deaf Education in Turkey As Zeshan (2003: 43) asserts, “so far the available evidence suggests that the sign language is used all over Turkey, with some regional dialectal variation, mainly in the lexicon”. The apparent linguistic unity of TİD throughout Turkey is probably reinforced by the social and political organization of the community which involves regular meetings of Deaf people from all regions of Turkey. However, there is not a clear-cut report on the number of Deaf and hard of hearing people living in Turkey. According to The Turkey Disability Survey of 2002, there were 250,000 people with ‘hearing disability’ as of 2002, which means nearly 0.37 percent of the general Turkish population (Demir & Aysoy, 2002). Taking into account the national population as 28 reported by the 2013 census, “there should be about 284,000 deaf people in Turkey. Overall, most individuals with hearing impairment in Turkey are either between the ages of 10-39 years, or older than 70 years, with the prevalence being higher among men” (İlkbaşaran 2015: 59). As a result of this survey, the prevalence of deafness is lowest in the Eastern Anatolia (0.31%) and highest in the Black Sea region (0.45%). The Mediterranean region is placed between these two parts of Turkey with a percent of 0.34. However, according to İlkbaşaran (2015), this survey uses reports of family members rather than medical reports, so the numbers obtained can be misleading and unreliable with respect to actual number of Deaf prevelance in Turkey. In regard to the medical field, a recent study of newborn screening indicates that 2 in every 1,000 people have congenital deafness in Turkey (Genç et al. 2005). However, this estimate seems to be significantly lower than the numbers articulated by Deaf rights organizations in the country, since these organizations estimate that there are about 2.5 - 3 million deaf and hard of hearing people in Turkey. In addition, the prevalence of non- genetic deafness in Turkey decreased with the increased opportunities of health care including elimination of maternal rubella, and widespread vaccination for spinal meningitis (İlkbaşaran, 2015). As a result of this progress, congenital deafness is becoming a significant predictive factor of future geographies of deafness and sign language in Turkey (Tekin & Arıcı, 2007). Apart from congenital deafness, an important social factor in the genetic epidemiology of deafness in Turkey is the consanguineous marriage patterns, namely, marriages between close relatives. Tekin and Arıcı (ibid) suggests two different patterns: a) consanguineous marriages among hearing people increase in both magnitude and proximity as we go towards Eastern Turkey, and b) marriage between deaf people rises as we go towards the West and they attribute the rise of such marriages in the west part of the country to the longer history of deaf schools in Western parts of Turkey since, the prevalence of sign language in west parts could have most probably resulted in assortative mating based on linguistic homogamy. Typically more than 90% of deaf children around the world are born to hearing parents who do not know sign language, and thus, these children often spend the first few years of their lives with little or no access to a full-fledged language (Padden, 2000). For the 29 first steps into a deaf environment, deaf schools provide the initial opportunity for these children to meet and regularly spend time with their deaf peers. It can be said that most of the deaf children in Turkey are exposed to Turkish Sign Language belatedly, when they begin to meet their peers at the age of six or seven. The recent statistics on deaf schools in Turkey comprises a total of 62 schools for the deaf and hard of hearing, serving 5,482 students at 44 elementary and 18 Special Education Vocational High Schools (MEB, 2014). However, when compared to the statistics in Figure 5 below for the years 2005-2006 which identify a total of 70 deaf schools that serve 5,857 students at 49 elementary and 21 Special Education Vocational High Schools (MEB, 2005)7, it is understood that there is an overall decrease in the number of deaf students enrolled in these schools and this may be a result of the fact that more deaf children get cochlear implants and some parents seek better standards in education than is currently provided at schools for the deaf. Figure 5. Distribution of deaf students in deaf elementary schools and high schools by city (2005-2006) Teachers have been required to specialize in teaching deaf students since 2005, but there are only three universities in Turkey that offer four-year bachelor degree programs in Teaching for Deaf Education currently: Anadolu University (Eskişehir), Karadeniz 7 Unfortunately, there is not a proper map of statistics for the years after 2005-2006 regarding deaf schools in the website of MEB. 30 Technical University (Trabzon) and Ondokuz Mayıs University (Samsun) (ÖSYM Tercih Kılavuzu, 2013). Nonetheless, new teachers completed any of these training programs typically arrive at deaf schools with neither proper sign language skills to communicate with deaf students, nor skills to teach academic content using sign language. This is probably due to the fact that these teachers are not provided a proper training program in sign language in none of the universities mentioned above since there is a shortage of professional and instructional materials in TİD (İlkbaşaran, 2013: 31). 2.2.3. Current State of TİD TİD is a recently investigated language in terms of linguistic viewpoint, because as previously mentioned, much of the research on Turkish Deaf people has been conducted by either governmental institutions related to disability or by medical institutions with the aim of providing health services. Even so, there have been some major linguistic attempts which shed light on the current studies on TİD as listed below: ‘A Study on Sign Languages and Turkish Sign Language’ (2001) and ‘Linguistic Analysis on Basic Sentence Types in Turkish Sign Language(TİD) with reference to non-manual activity’ (2007) both by Açan are two of the linguistic works that deal with TİD in terms of its basic linguistic characteristics. Açan (2001) describes some syntactic and semantic properties of TİD in regard to individual signs and beyond, and also provides an insight in order to appreciate TİD as a “real language” in her study titled ‘A Study on Sign Languages and Turkish Sign Language’. To that end, she prepared a written set of simple and complex Turkish sentences and participants were requested to assert TİD equivalences of these sentences and they were recorded by a video camera. In addition, some general information about TİD were obtained from the participants beforehand the prepared corpus including declarative, interrogative, negative and imperative sentences that were prepared to obtain their TİD equivalences. Her findings indicated that TİD is adequate to be seen as a natural language although it differs from Turkish in many respects. In another study of her own, Açan (2007) attempts to contribute to the linguistic description of TİD on basis of the analysis of basic sentence types (i.e declarative, interrogative, negative and imperative sentences) within the frame of non-manual activity. Non-manual activity comprises the use of the head, bodily 31 movements, sounds uttered by vocal organs and etc. For this purpose, she collected the data from four native TİD informants through a presentation of a set of pictures that were shown to these participants with the aim of obtaining questions and statements from them. The participants were requested to produce many statements and questions in TİD with the consideration of the people and the settings. Participants were recorded by a video camera during their production of statements and questions in TİD. The findings of the study revealed information regarding sign structure, sentence types, word order and the use of non-manual acitivity. First of all, it has been found that TİD signs can be equated to words in spoken Turkish in a rule-governed way, resulting from the application of signing parameters: location, handshape and movement. Secondly, the study showed that TİD makes use of different sentence types that are also found in spoken languages such as declaratives, imperatives, interrogatives and negative sentences. Açan (2007:236) adds that these types of sentences are marked by non- manual activities. Thirdly, this study revealed that TİD exhibits S-O-V word order that is similar to Turkish but this does not mean that the grammar of both languages are same. Finally, judging from the results obtained in that study, non-manual activities of the face and body contribute to the grammatical and stylistic features in TİD. Zeshan worked with the grammatical structure of TİD and the spread of its use within the educational system. Among the best known works of her are ‘Sign Language of Turkey: The story of a hidden language (2002), and ‘Aspects of Türk İşaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language) (2003). In Aspects of Türk İşaret Dili (Turkish Sign Language), Zeshan(2003) first gives an overall historical, sociolinguistic and educational information about TİD as well as giving information about Deaf community of TİD in Turkey. In regard to TİD grammar, she has investigated five aspects including completive aspect movement derivation, types of nonmanual negation, negative cliticization, an honorific classifier, and TİD question particle. The studies of Özyürek, İlkbaşaran and Arık (2004) focus on the understanding the grammar of TID and its relation to other sign languages of the world (see http://turkisaretdili.ku.edu.tr.) In another study, İlkbaşaran (2013) examines communicative practices of Deaf people in Turkey and the features regarding sociolinguistics of TİD. 32 http://turkisaretdili.ku.edu.tr/ The project of Haberdar (2005) with the title ‘Saklı Markov Model Kullanılarak Görüntüden Gerçek Zamanlı Türk İşaret Dili Tanıma Sistemi’ deals with TİD with an aim to establish a satisfactory lexical and sentential recognition of the signs used in TİD. The study of Dikyuva (2006) titled as ‘Education, General History and Materials of Turkish Sign Language’ gives an exhaustive explanation about the background of TİD and about the ways, methods and materials to be utilized in the teaching of TİD. Apart from the studies referred to above, Arık (2013) has recently compiled main topics studied on Turkish Sign Language. A list of these domains and of the researchers who carried out studies on these topics is given in Figure 6 below: Figure 6. Overview of the studies carried out in TİD Apart from these academic studies, the Turkish government passed a bill within the Disabilities Act 8 with regard to recognizing Turkish Sign Language (TİD) and enforcing its documentation and use within state institutions in 2005 and then objectives such as developing a TİD dictionary, studying the linguistic aspects of TİD, and 8 The original text for this law (No. 5278) that was published on the Official Gazette with the title “Özürlüler ve Bazı Kanun ve Kanun Hükmünde Kararnamelerde Değişiklik Yapılması hakkında Kanun” can be found in http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/main.aspx?home=http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2005/07/200 50707. htm&main=http://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2005/07/20050707.htm 33 developing bilingual educational materials (Turkish and TİD) were on the agenda. Nonetheless, as İlkbaşaran (2015: 68) states, not much progress on the documentation of TİD has been made due to frequent reorganization, bureaucracy and lack of professional specialization and ability within the Turkish Sign Language Science Council (TİDBO) founded in 2005. The comprehensive and instructional materials on TİD are limited. The first known resource on TİD dates back to 1995 with the title “Sign Language Guide for Adults” printed by the Turkish Ministry of Education and was based on research that began as recently as 1983 and revised in 2012 under the title of “Dictionary of Turkish Sign Language” including 2000 signs with their photographies. In the 2000s, Zeshan (2002) organized the first TİD training program by using a special methodology and material. This program was continuously run under the name of the Turkish National Deaf Federation (TSMF) and mainly supported by the İstanbul City Municipality (Kemaloğlu & Kemaloğlu, 2012). Later, “TİD Word List” was created based on Özyürek’s research on the grammar of TID between the years 2000 - 2004 at Koç University (Özyürek, İlkbaşaran & Arık, 2004). However, there is no contemporary dictionary of TİD which is based on a comprehensive linguistic study conducted across Turkey. The only instructional book on TİD belongs to Dikyuva and Zeshan with the name “Turkish Sign Language –Level 1” published in 2008. Unfortunately, there are no academic departments or institutions on Turkish Sign Language or TİD interpreting in Turkey. The reason behind this is that the academic research on the linguistic properties of TİD only began in the 21st century, and the language is not fully documented yet. A workshop9 was held in 2007 with a concrete result of voting to recognize two-handed TİD alphabet formally. Afterwards, on November 25, 2010, the Association of Sign Language Interpreters (İDTD) was founded in collaboration with TSMF, which made it possible for TİD interpreters to collaborate with the World Association for Sign Language Interpreters (WASLI) and European Forum of Sign Language Interpreters (EFSLI). As İlkbaşaran (2015: 70) notes that foundation of İDTD was a significant step in the professionalization of TİD, however a two to four year college degree on TID interpreting is yet to be established in Turkey. In spite of the slow progress in developing scientific research, academic programs and instructional resources on TİD, the General Directorate of People with 9 Birinci Türk İşaret Dili Çalıştayı. Türk Dil Kurumu Konferans Salonu. Ankara: June 7-8, 2007. 34 Disabilities and the Elderly (EYH) passed a bill that makes TİD instruction obligatory at academic programs for Teachers of the Deaf as of the 2014- 2015 school year and later on, a group of Turkish Deaf people were certified to teach TİD (İlkbaşaran 2015). This can and should be taken as a remarkable step in the empowerment of Deaf people in Turkey, not only with respect to future job opportunities, but also to their contribution to the language development of new generations of Deaf people in Turkey. 2.2.4. Some Aspects of TİD Grammar As other sign languages around the world, TİD is a visual-gestural natural human language. Thus, it is not unnatural that some features that are similar to those in some other sign languages can be found in TİD as well. As in spoken languages, sign language have their own alphabets, but in a different medium. They use manual alphabets that are created by hands since the medium of language is different from that of spoken languages. Sign language manual alphabets can be can be either one-handed or two-handed. Like BSL, TİD has a two-handed manual alphabet which is fairly different from ASL and DGS having a one-handed manual alphabet. However, few letter signs such as C, I, L, O, P, V are created with one hand in TİD but other letter signs are performed with two hands. TİD manual alphabet has 29 manual letter signs which has the same number found in the alphabet of spoken Turkish. Some letter signs such as Q, X and W, which are used less frequently by TİD native signers, are not considered in the TİD manual alphabet. The manual alphabet of TİD is given in Figure 7 below: 35 Figure 7. The Manual Alphabet of TİD (Kubuş, 2008: 49) Apart from manual alphabets, there are also handshape inventories in sign languages. The handshape inventory of sign languages such as ASL and DGS (German Sign Language) has many similarities with their own one-handed manual alphabet signs since each handshape is performed with one hand, whereas two-handed alphabets only overlap with their handshape inventory when the alphabet has also one-handed letter signs. Although some letters like C, I, L, O, P, V are one-handed manual alphabet signs and also handshapes in TİD, the other manual alphabet signs which are perfomed with two hands are not observed in the TİD handshape inventory. Thus, as Kubuş (2008: 50) states, it is arguable whether these two-handed signs in the manual alphabet of TİD contain handshapes or not, for example whether the “A” letter is composed of a ‘V’ and an ‘I’ handshape or not. The handshape inventory of TİD can be accessed in the Appendix 1. 36 2.2.4.1. Sign Structure Individual signs in TİD and words in Turkish can be thought of as being equivalent to each other in terms of linguistic patterning. Both can be considered as ‘meaningful/functional free forms’ having an internal structure, being composed of smaller units which are combined in rule-governed ways. As Açan (2013: 81) examines, TİD signs are made up of three major specific components in terms of their internal structure, namely the ‘shape (configuration)’, ‘movement’, and the ‘location’ of the hand, altogether referred to as ‘parameters’ 10 , just as Turkish words consist of ‘phonemes’ -a series of meaning distinguishing speech sounds-. As previously stated in section 2.1.3.2., all of these parameters are limited in number but can be used to create many signs, and this is also true for TİD signs. To exemplify these parameters, a TİD sign ‘BEN’ (1st person singular pronoun ‘I’) has been given in the analysis below: a. TİD sign ‘BEN’ Location: chest Hand shape: (I-hand shape) index finger extended from closed fist Movement: movement towards signer (ends up at the location mentioned) As in words in spoken languages, a change in any of these parameters will result in either meaningless hand gestures or different lexical signs. For instance, a change only in the location parameter of the sign ‘BEN’ and keeping the handshape and movement same, a different sign, namely ‘BEYAZ’ (white), will be created below and the difference in terms of the component between the signs ‘BEN’ and ‘BEYAZ’ is underlined: b. TİD sign ‘BEN’ : Location: chest Hand shape: (I-hand shape) index finger extended from closed fist Movement: movement towards signer (ends up at the location mentioned) 10 The general definitions of each of these components in sign languages were explained in detail in Section 2.1.3.2. of the present study. 37 TİD sign ‘BEYAZ’ : Location: fore tooth Hand shape: (I-hand shape) index finger extended from closed fist Movement: movement towards signer (ends up at the location mentioned) Judging from the analysis of these signs above, contrasts in terms of any parameters can be said to result in minimal pairs -signs that have different meanings and that differ in terms of only one component-. Therefore, it can be said that each of these components seems to have a meaning-distinguishing function just as phonemes have in spoken languages. There are also differences among signs in terms of the use of hands. Some signs in TİD require the use of only one hand (one-handed signs) such as in ‘BEN’ and ‘BEYAZ’ above, and some other signs require the use of both hands (two-handed signs). Two handed signs vary in terms of hand dominance and the handshapes of the two hands and are divided into two types (Kubuş, 2008: 45) : Type 1: Both hands have the same handshape, the same movement and generally either the same location or a symmetric location. (‘FESTİVAL/ FESTIVAL’ in Figure 8a.) Type 2: Hands have the same handshape but one hand is dominant and other is non-dominant. ( ‘DÜĞÜN/WEDDING’ in Figure 8b.) Figure 8a. ‘FESTİVAL / FESTIVAL’ Figure 8b. ‘DÜĞ