A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

Foot is the prosodic unit that is above the syllable and below the prosodic word. In this level, syllables are organized into rhythmically strong and weak syllables.  A foot is a rhythmic unit and it is made up of one or two syllables. Below we mention some instances for foot in TİD. These are some two-digit numbers, the negative affix -less, the agentive and associative suffixes, and the sign person.

TİD groups some of its two digit numbers into foot. sıxteen is such a number. Each digit is a single syllable resulting from an epenthetic movement. Together they form a two-syllable unit.

 

sıxteen

 

The negative suffix [Morphology - Section 2.1.1.2.] -less forms a foot with a sign it attaches to. When a lexical item has more than one movement in its citation form, the movement of the lexical item is reduced to one so that the lexical item and the negative suffix form a prosodic foot together.

 

 

 

book

 

 

 

 

book-less

 

 

The derivational morphemes agentive suffix -c-ı and associative suffix -l-ı/-l-u also form a foot with the lexical sign they attach to. These borrowed suffixes have a single path movement that implements the handshape change from the first letter to the second. If a lexical item with more than one lexical movement is attached to one of these morphemes, the movement of the lexical item reduces to one. So, the lexical item and the suffix form a prosodic foot.

 

 

 

 

cacao-l-u 'with cacao'

 

 

The -person suffix also forms a foot with the sign that it attaches to. football has more than one syllable in its citation form. When the -person suffix is attached to it, the number of syllables on football reduce to one. So, the lexical item and the suffix form a prosodic foot in football-person.

           

 

 

football

 

 

 

 

football-person