Abstrakt
This paper investigates content questions and the paradigm of question words in Czech Sign Language (český znakový jazyk - ČZJ). While this topic has been investigated for a fair number of other sign languages, a comprehensive study for ČZJ is still missing.
Our aim is to fill this gap. In the absence of a representative corpus for ČZJ, 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 ČZJ interrogative strategies for content questions. In doing so, we also situate the language within the typology of sign language interrogatives: we classify ČZJ 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 ČZJ question words: simple, complex, and derived.