75 bilig SUMMER 2020/NUMBER 94 An Experimental Approach to Word Order in Turkish Sign Language * Engin Arık ** Abstract Te present study ofers an experimental linguistic perspective to investigate word order in sign languages, focusing particularly on word order in Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili-TİD), one of the oldest, yet relatively understudied, sign languages. Two experiments were conducted to investigate TİD signers’ acceptability judgments of various orders of linguistic forms in a sentence. Experiment 1 consisted of 26 intransitive sentences with a 2x2 (SV vs. VS; Human vs. Animal) within-subjects design whereas Experiment 2 consisted of 28 transitive sentences with a 3x2 (Subject order: First vs. Middle vs. Last; Object order: Object-before-Verb vs. Object-after-Verb) within-subjects design. Both experiments asked native TİD signers (n=8 and n=6, respectively) to rate sentences using 5-point Likert scales. Results from Experiment 1 showed that there was a signifcant main efect of Sign Order, indicating that participants gave signifcantly higher ratings to SV order over VS order. Tere was no main efect of Subject Type but an interaction between Sign Order and Subject Type. Results from Experiment 2 showed a signifcant main efect of object-verb order indicating that participants’ ratings for the Object-before-Verb order were signifcantly higher than those for the Verb-before-Object order. In Experiment 2, there was no signifcant main efect of subject order or interaction. Tese fndings suggested that TİD has a preference for SV and OV over other possible orders. Keywords Word order, Turkish Sign Language, Experimental Linguistics. * Date of Arrival: 17 November 2014 – Date of Acceptance: 05 February 2015 You can refer to this article as follows: Arık, Engin (2020). “An Experimental Approach to Word Order in Turkish Sign Language”. bilig – Journal of Social Sciences of the Turkic World 94: 75-96. ** Assoc. Prof., Nuh Naci Yazgan University, Faculty of Science and Letters, Department of Psychology – Kayseri/Türkiye ORCID ID: 0000-0002-0981-257X enginarik@enginarik.com 75-96