WORD ORDER IN DECLARATIVES SENTENCES IN SPANISH SIGN LANGUAGE: A FUNCTIONALIST PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to address the issue of word order in declarative utterances in Spanish Sign Language, with special attention to the informative component (topic and focus), given that research carried out to date in certain signed languages has revealed that this component plays a key role in utterance organisation. The results of our study indicate that the following three word order options are possible: SOV, SVO and topicalisation of object and space-setting (at the beginning of the utterance as a grammaticalised component). These orders may vary if the signer adopts a spatial organisation of events. As for the other item of the informative element, the focus, it has an emphatic value (information and contrastive focus) and is expressed by means of two types of binary structures: a) a divided  question-answer structure, and  b) a structure whose initial element expresses surprise, followed by the focalised element. The paper concludes with a reflection of the predominant role of the informationalcomponent, as well as other pragmatic phenomena, in organizing utterance structure in this language, and in sign languages in general.