Exploring wh-questions in Indian Sign Language

Abstract

Wh-questions have been well studied in many sign languages. There have been many competing analyses like leftward, rightward and remnant movement, to explain the typologically uncommon appearance of wh-signs in the right periphery. In this paper, I focus on wh-questions in Indian Sign Language (ISL). A previous analysis of wh-questions in ISL argues against rightward wh-movement to Spec, CP. Instead, the general ISL whsign (G-WH) can be better analyzed as a syntactic head of a right-branching functional projection in the left periphery of the clause. In this paper, I scrutinize this analysis given for the wh-questions in ISL and attempt to formulate a new analysis based on new data collected online and during fieldwork with five deaf signers in India.