A Grammar of Turkish Sign Language (TİD)

The manual (finger-spelled) alphabet in TİD is two-handed and is made up of 32 letters: the 29 letters of the Turkish alphabet and the three letters common in European languages, q, w, and x. There is a close visual resemblance between the letters in the TİD manual alphabet and the written alphabetical symbols.

            In the TİD manual alphabet, c, i, l, o, p, u, v, of which the first two are depicted below, are one-handed, and the rest are two-handed. Of the two-handed letters, j and y are traced on the hand to depict the letters:

c                           l                          j                                                      y

Inventory of the finger spelled letters in TİD:

The letter G has a different sign in the Ankara dialect:

Letter g (Ankara)

The single-handed letters c, i, l, o, p, u, v are articulated on the non-dominant hand. In the letters i, ö, ü, the larger part of the letters (i, o, u, respectively) is formed on the non-dominant hand, while the dots and umlauts (two dots) are signed on the dominant hand by finger snapping. The Turkish alphabet contains some diacritics: the cedilla and the brève, and these are also signed in TİD. The cedilla in ç is signed on the dominant hand either by finger snapping or by the index finger. The cedilla on ş is indicated by finger snapping or finger wiggling. The brève in ğ is signed by finger wiggling. In the remaining letters, if one of the components is depicted by the index finger, it occurs on the dominant hand (except in the cases of d and z). Some two-handed letters are symmetrical; the selected fingers on both hands are the same, e.g. b, m, and t. Others are asymmetrical, e.g. e, n and z.

            Using letters during signing can have many functions: For spelling out a proper noun that lacks a sign, to enhance a sign (for example the name of an object or a place that is used infrequently), to avoid an ambiguity or to aide the perception of a particular sign. But the grammatical functions of finger spelling come about when the manual alphabet is used to form lexical items, e.g. as in initialization where the formation of lexical items is sensitive to the phonological constraints of TİD.