DOI: 10.1075/sll.25005.cel ISSN: 1387-9316

ve (‘and’) as a multifunctional discourse connective in Turkish-to-Turkish Sign Language simultaneous interpreting

Aytaç Çeltek, Cansu Geygel
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Abstract

This study investigates the multifunctionality of the Turkish discourse connective ve ‘and’ in simultaneous interpreting from Turkish into Turkish Sign Language (TİD) in broadcast news. Using a corpus of interpreted news texts, it examines how this polyfunctional connective is transferred across modalities. Drawing on Halliday and Hasan’s cohesion model and the Penn Discourse Treebank typology, the study identifies discourse relations expressed by ve — such as elaboration, temporality, causality , and comparison — and analyzes how they are conveyed in TİD through explicit signs, implicit marking, or omission. Most relations are preserved, though often implicitly, reflecting the economy principle in signed languages. Manual signs used to express ve , including

ve
-1 and
palm-up
, vary systematically with relation type. This points to a cross-modal tendency for explicit realization under increased processing demands. As the data derive from hearing interpreters rather than native Deaf signers, the findings reflect interpreter-mediated strategies rather than monolingual Deaf discourse norms.

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