Türk İşaret Dili'nde (TİD) olay yapısı

This study investigates how telicity is realized in Turkish Sign Language (TİD), with a focus on the encoding of event structure through nonmanual markers, manual forms, and kinematic patterns. Data from 30 signers (15 Deaf of Deaf and 15 Deaf of Hearing) demonstrate that telicity marking in TİD involves an intricate interplay of continuous and discontinuous nonmanuals, manual forms, and movement dynamics. Continuous nonmanuals predominantly align with atelic events, while discontinuous nonmanuals are exclusive to telic ones. Iconic forms are primarily associated with atelic events. Phonological motion profiles provide another key cue, with atelic events exhibiting harmonic motion and telic events displaying non-harmonic motion. This distinction is observed through Pose Estimation, a cost-effective alternative to Motion Capture, which highlights distinct kinematic patterns. Age of acquisition (AoA) analysis further reveals that telicity encoding through nonmanuals is a resilient feature in TİD, with DoD signers displaying greater use of nonmanuals across both telic and atelic events. Collectively, these findings support the Event Visibility Hypothesis (EVH; Wilbur, 2003, 2008), illustrating that the underlying event structure is visible through both phonological and kinematic representations in TİD.