Word Order and Clause Structure in Korean Sign Language

In this paper, we establish the underlying word order and basic clause structure of Korean Sign Language (KSL). We first suggest that word order plays a functional role in KSL, and argue that KSL belongs to the class of languages which have the basic order of SOV. We then claim by reviewing displacement possibilities, adverb hierarchy, structural ambiguity, and wh-clefting in KSL that words in the language are organized into constituents. Building on the conclusions about word order and constituent structure, we propose a basic clause structure of KSL, adopting the Functional Parametrization Hypothesis and the cost-free operation of short scrambling. The current paper not only serves as a base for future research on more complex constructions and syntactic phenomena in KSL, but it also provides an argument for the view that syntactic constituency is one of the defining characteristics of natural languages, regardless of their modality.