Interrogatives in Slovenian sign language: The interaction of head and eyebrow movements

I describe the typological differences between polar and content questions in spoken and signed languages. I present a linguistic analysis of interrogative sentences in Slovenian Sign Language using examples available on szj.si. Polar questions in this language are prosodically marked by two non-manual markers: a raising of the eyebrows and a lowering of the head, while content questions are marked by a lowering of the eyebrows and a raising of the head. Word order in questions can be influenced by the information structure, but the unmarked po­sition of the wh-word appears to be at the beginning of the sentence, although future research will need to rule out a possible influence from Slovenian.