On question words in Czech Sign Language

This paper investigates content questions and the paradigm of question words in Czech Sign Language (cesky znakovcr jazyk - CZJ). While this topic has been investigated for a fair number of other sign languages, a comprehensive study for CZJ is still missing. Our aim is to fill this gap. In the absence of a representative corpus for CZJ, we use data from the most extensive electronic dictionary database (Dictio), developed at the Masaryk University in Brno. We offer a basic description of the CZJ interrogative strategies for content questions. In doing so, we also situate the language within the typology of sign language interrogatives: we classify CZJ as a language with a rich paradigm of question words, and we identify the basic syntactic position of question words as sentence-final. Furthermore, we outline three morphological types of CZJ question words: simple, complex, and derived.