ON WH-COMPLEMENTS IN TURKISH SIGN LANGUAGE EMRE HAKGÜDER Boğaziçi University The purpose of this study is twofold: while (i) describing embedded content questions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD), (ii) it aims to explain why and how TİD distinguishes between wh-complements embedded under different types of verbs. Embedded questions comprise a broad area of research in any language. This study, however, will give the center stage to the description of the syntactic and prosodic properties of wh-complements embedded under two semantically distinct environments: verbs of retaining knowledge such as know, remember and forget, and inquisitive verbs such as ask, wonder and investigate (Karttunen 1977), while discussing the theoretical implications of the differences. Two central findings of my inquiry are that (i) the syntactic distribution of wh-items in embedded content questions differs from the syntactic distribution of wh-items in simplex questions (for the latter see Makaroğlu 2012, İşsever & Makaroğlu 2013, and Göksel & Kelepir 2013), and (ii) the relationship that holds between an inquisitive verb and its wh-complement is not the same as the relationship between a verb of retaining knowledge and its wh-complement. This will become apparent by two crucial findings: (a) the presence of a specific non-manual marker in the former verb type, associated with the clause-typing of content questions in TİD (Göksel & Kelepir 2013), as opposed to the absence of it in the latter, and (b) the preferred position of wh-complements with respect to different types of matrix verbs. After a thorough examination, we shall see that both complement types obey the same embedded clause-internal syntactic restrictions while they differ from each other with respect to their position in the matrix clause and their prosodic properties. Although throughout the literature there is a tendency to study the [+wh] complements of all types of embedding verbs uniformly, this study highlights the necessity to further classify these wh-complements depending on the type of the matrix verb that they are embedded under. 1. Introduction The motivation behind this research topic is enrooted in the course of understanding complexity in TİD. This study aims at shedding light on three issues relating to the syntax of constructions with an embedded content question: (i) whether the preferred matrix word order is different with different types of verbs, (ii) the position of the wh-item in embedded questions, (iii) whether embedded content questions have the same syntactic derivation as their matrix counterparts. I shall further discuss the implications of these syntactic issues and their prosodic properties, for the information structure of TİD. Two major constructions will be under the spotlight: (i) content questions embedded under verbs of retaining knowledge as exemplified in (1) and (ii) content questions embedded under inquisitive verbs as in (2). Verb of retaining knowledge: (1) IX-1 KNOW [KUNTAYa IX-3a ELVANb IX-3b WHO a-CHEAT.ON-b] IX-1 KNOW “I know who Kuntay is cheating on Elvan with.”