The indefinite-interrogative affinity in sign languages: the case of C atalan S ign L anguage (2023)

Abstract: Prior studies on spoken languages have shown that indefinite and interrogative pronouns may be formally very similar. Our research aims to understand if sign languages exhibit this type of affinity. This paper presents an overview of the phenomenon and reports on the results of two studies: a cross-linguistic survey based on a sample of 30 sign languages and an empirical investigation conducted with three deaf consultants of Catalan Sign Language (LSC). Our research shows that, in sign languages, certain signs have both existential and interrogative readings and it identifies the environments that make existential interpretations available in LSC.

## introduction research on spoken languages has shown that indefinite pronouns are commonly derived from generic nouns such as 'thing' or 'time' (as in english something or sometime) and the numeral 'one' (e.g., someone in english, qualcuno in italian). furthermore, indefinite pronouns may be morphologically very similar or even identical to interrogative pronouns @xcite . for example, the mandarin chinese form shenme ('something'/'what') has both indefinite and interrogative functions and the english indefinite anywhere is somehow linked to the interrogative word where and the indefiniteness marker any-. this formal resemblance is known as the indefinite-interrogative affinity @xcite @xcite . in his typology of spoken language indefinites, haspelmath (1997) made the following observation: when indefinite and interrogative pronouns are formally similar but not fully identical, the indefinite is always the element that is more morphologically complex. that is, there is a universal asymmetric markedness relation such that interrogative pronouns are virtually never more marked than indefinite pronouns nor derived from them. 1 this is why indefinite pronouns bearing a formal resemblance with interrogative words are commonly referred to as interrogative-based indefinites @xcite or as wh-indefinites @xcite . depending on their form, wh-indefinites may be further broken down into two categories: bare, if their form is identical to that of the interrogative, and complex, if they involve the interrogative along with some additional morphology. languages differ with respect to the type of affinity they allow: some languages have both bare and complex wh-indefinites, some languages have one type only, and yet others do not show this type of affinity (cf. @xcite . in this paper, we will follow @xcite and adopt the term quexistentials to refer to those elements that may be used either as question words or as existential indefinites. likewise, we will refer to the interrogative interpretation of a quexistential as qu of quex and to the existential reading of the quexistential as ex of quex. while in its original formulation, the term applies only to those words that allow interrogative and indefinite uses without differences in spell-out, we will extend the definition to cover those cases in which the two uses correspond to similar but not fully identical forms. the main motivation is that interrogative and indefinite signs tend to co-occur with specific sets of non-manual markers (nmms), but we do not yet know what the exact role of such markers is nor whether fully identical forms can be found in any sign language. therefore, we will use the term quexistential when the manual sign is the same and the nmns differ, but also when the manual sign is not fully identical in both readings, either because it combines with other signs or because it involves a change on its phonological make-up (e.g., by means of reduplication or movement modification). to make these distinctions explicit, we will use the labels bare and complex quexistential. despite claims that in some sign languages certain items may function both as indefinite and as interrogative pronouns, the extent to which the indefinite-interrogative affinity is found in the visual modality has not yet been investigated @xcite @xcite . thus, it is also not clear whether haspelmath's universal, according to which indefinite pronouns always constitute derived forms, can be taken to hold for sign languages as well. indeed, this is the main reason for adopting the term quexistentials, as it remains neutral with respect to the nature of the interrogative-indefinite affinity (i.e., it does not presume that the indefinite is always derived from the interrogative). in this paper, we aim to investigate the extent to which the indefinite-interrogative affinity is found in the signed modality. the roadmap of the paper is as follows. section 2 provides an overview of the distribution of quexistentials across spoken and signed languages. in section 3, we zoom in on the morphology of quexistentials and the distribution of the ex of quex in catalan sign language (lsc). section 4 summarizes our findings and section 5 suggests directions for future research. the main contribution of this study is that it provides the first description of the morphology and the distribution of the ex of quex in a sign language. ## cross-linguistic distribution of the indefinite-interrogative affinity the indefinite-interrogative affinity is a widespread phenomenon among the world's spoken languages. importantly, this affinity is not restricted to a specific language family or to a particular geographic area. in @xcite typology of interrogative systems, it is attested in 77 out a sample of 79 spoken languages. in haspelmath's typology of indefinite pronouns (1997), 63 out of a sample of 100 spoken languages were found to show this type of affinity. ## conclusion the results of our study show the indefiniteinterrogative affinity is a phenomenon attested across different sign languages. besides, our investigation shows that, in lsc, quexistentials are possible in different semantic categories and that the distribution of the ex of quex follows a pattern similar to the one described for spoken languages such as mandarin chinese. in particular, the existential reading of quexistentials is licensed in, at least, the following contexts: polar questions, epistemic and deontic modals, antecedents of conditionals and positive episodic sentences.