Wh-Questions in ASL: A Case for Rightward Movement

This report presents an analysis of wh-movement in American Sign Language in which moved wh-phrases occur in a rightward specifier of CP position. Evidence is based on straightforward word order facts and on the distribution of non-manual wh-marking, which displays the same patterns and systematicity as other non-manual syntactic markings. We had presented an analysis in terms of rightward wh-movement in prior work (see especially Neidle, Kegl, Bahan, Aarons, and MacLaughlin 1997). This analysis was criticized in Petronio and Lillo-Martin 1997. Here we show that their alternative interpretations of the data are incorrect and that their analysis cannot account for the facts of the language. In addition, this report presents a more detailed exposition of several aspects of our analysis than is available in our prior publications and presents new evidence in support of rightward wh-movement in ASL. Thus, we maintain that universal grammar must allow the option of rightward movement. This report includes links to video examples corresponding to many of the grammatical constructions in this paper. In some cases, the video may not represent exactly the same lexical items as in the gloss, but it illustrates the same construction. Sometimes there are examples as signed by more than one native signer. In other cases, other slight variants of the construction discussed in the text are also provided on video. <-Please read. To view the video accompanying the text example, simply click onthe video icon(s) to the right of the sentence. To close the video window, use the Escape key while the video window is active/selected (this is important to remember).