Ronnie B. Wilbur

Stress in ASL: empirical evidence and linguistic issues.

The study of signed languages provides an opportunity to identify those characteristics of language that are universal and to investigate the effect of production modality (signed vs. spoken) on the grammar. Over time, American Sign Language (ASL) has accommodated itself to the production and perception requirements of the manual/visual modality, resulting in a prosodic system that is comparable in function to spoken languages but different in means of expression. The present focus is on phrasal prominence in ASL. I review the marking of stress and phrase boundaries in ASL, and discuss prominence assignment at the phrasal level, with brief mention of lexical stress. At the kinematic level, there is a modality effect in marking of linguistic prominence but no modality effect with respect to marking phrase position. Of significance is the fact that ASL lacks phrasal prominence plasticity, that is the ability to move prominence to mark focus in a sentence location other than phrase final. I review the typological implications of how ASL handles prominence as compared to other languages.

The Effects of Linguistic Stress on ASL Signs

Target ASL signs were elicited in stressed and unstressed contexts for ten different types of sign movement. Previous reports that stressed signs tended to change the size and intensity of their movements were only partially confirmed. No single cue emerged as the primary indicator of stress. Qualitative analysis of the modifications revealed that there were some features commonly associated with stress which occurred across the ten movement categories. These included using non-manual behaviors (facial expression, body shifts), sharp beginning and/or end boundaries in the sign, producing signs physically higher in the signing space, and bracing or repetition of words and phrases. Signs normally made without linear path movement tended to add one, but other stressing cues, such as repetition and increasing signing speed, tended to be sporadic in utilization. The actual movement type in each of the ten categories appeared to be less important as a predictor of stress markings than whether the sign had path movement or not and whether the sign had one or two lexical movements.

Purdue RVL-SLLL ASL database for automatic recognition of American Sign Language

This article reports on an extensive database of American Sign Language (ASL) motions, handshapes, words and sentences. Research on automatic recognition of ASL requires a suitable database for the training and the testing of algorithms. The databases that are currently available do not allow for algorithmic development that requires a step-by-step approach to ASL recognition-from the recognition of individual handshapes, to the recognition of motion primitives, and finally, to the recognition of full sentences. We have sought to remove these deficiencies in a new database-the Purdue RVL-SLLL ASL database.

SYLLABLES AND SEGMENTS: HOLD THE MOVEMENT AND MOVE THE HOLDS!

Publisher Summary This chapter presents a current model that contains segments inside ASL signs/syllables. It highlights Edmondsons claim that segments do not exist in signed languages. The chapter also discusses why proposed segments are not relevant to ASL phonology and the implications of this observation for theoretical phonology in general. It also presents four prevailing interpretations of segment in modern linguistic theory. There is no apparent phonological utility to the segments that have been proposed. The chapter discusses how the facts of ASL phonology require statement only with feature trees, tiers, syllables, and moras, and raises the question of whether certain spoken languages such as English need to make reference to segments in the statement of their own phonological generalizations, or whether SYLLABLE and FEATURE suffice.

Eyeblinks & ASL Phrase Structure

The present report attempts to formulate an appropriate linguistic generalization for the occurrence of inhibited periodic eyeblinking by fluent ASL signers. There are three components to our investigation. In the first component, Observation, we take several signing sources, transcribe significant nonmanuals, and analyze where eyeblinks occur with respect to the signed signal and other nonmanuals. In the second component, Prediction, we formulate a generalization concerning the possible locations of eyeblinks and test this generalization by making predictions on a sample of signing. In the third component, Confirmation, we reconsider Baker and Padden’s observation that signers do not blink after the conditional clause before a question, provide data to the contrary, and provide a possible explanation of why they were led to the conclusion they reached. Overall, we show that signers’ eyeblinks are sensitive to syntactic structure, from which Intonational Phrases may be derived. These findings help to establish how intonational information, carried by pitch in spoken languages, can be provided in a signed language.

Effects of varying rate of signing on ASL manual signs and nonmanual markers.

Spoken languages are characterized by flexible, multivariate prosodic systems. As a natural language, American Sign Language (ASL), and other sign languages (SLs), are also expected to be characterized in the same way. Artificially created signing systems for classroom use, such as signed English, serve as a contrast to natural sign languages. The present article explores the effects of changes in signing rate on signs, pauses, and, unlike previous studies, a variety of nonmanual markers. Rate was a main effect on the duration of signs, the number of pauses and pause duration, the duration of brow raises, the duration of licensed lowered brows, the number and duration of blinks, all of which decreased with increased signing rate. This indicates that signers produced their different signing rates without making dramatic changes in the number of signs, but instead by varying the sign duration, in accordance with previous observations (Grosjean, 1978, 1979). These results can be brought to bear on three different issues: (1) the difference between grammatical nonmanuals and non-grammatical nonmanuals; (2) the fact that nonmanuals in general are not just a modality effect; and (3) the use of some nonmanuals as pragmatically determined as opposed to overt morphophonological markers reflecting the semantic—syntax—pragmatic interfaces.

The duration of syllables in American sign language.

Data are presented for the duration of syllables in American Sign Language and for movement and hold components of those syllables. Measurements from 3072 syllables taken from four different samples of signing resulted in a grand mean of 293.7 msec. The different signing samples reflected different degrees of naturalness, and the means for each sample varied accordingly. The most natural situation, conversational signing, had a mean of 249.7 msec, comparable to the quarter of a second reported for spoken English syllables. Less natural situations, involving clicitation tasks, showed higher means (292.1 to 360.7 msec). Different syllable types varied in their duration. The presence of a final hold significantly increased the syllable duration. Statistical analysis revealed three distinct groups of syllabic types as a function of duration: short, long, and extra long. A specific test of the claim that linguistic stress significantly increases the duration of syllables was not confirmed; instead, stressed targets differed from unstressed targets in having a greater number of syllables. A related claim that the duration of movement when stressed is significantly shorter than when not stressed was also not confirmed.

Foregrounding structures in American sign language

Abstract Foregrounding structures serve the primary function of highlighting information by clause-external placement. Foley and Van Valin (1985) identify five such structures: Topicalization, Clefts, Pseudoclefts, Left Dislocation, and Right Dislocation. This paper will argue that there is strong evidence that ASL has the first four of these structures, but that evidence for the existence of Right Dislocation is weak. While Topicalization and Left Dislocation in ASL have already been discussed in the literature, the contribution of the present discussion is to provide pragmatic evidence primarily for Pseudoclefts and secondarily for Clefts. Of significance is the argument that the prevailing view of the ASL Pseudocleft as a ‘rhetorical question-answer’ sequence fails to account for both syntactic and pragmatic aspects of Pseudocleft behavior. The final constituent in the Pseudocleft is shown to be a focused phrase that provides the value of a variable in an open proposition; it is not an afterthought nor Right Dislocation.

A Linguistic Analysis of the Negative Headshake in American Sign Language

We explored negative headshakes (NH) used by two native signers of ASL, using videotaped conversation and sentences constructed to elicit negative signalling, and found that NH: (1) are used syntactically to indicate negation, (2) may be accompanied by other nonmanual behaviors (which without the NH may signal negation), (3) may accompany a negative lexical item (but no negative sign was found to require a headshake), (4) and synchronize generally with syntactic constituents.

Sensitivity to Visual Prosodic Cues in Signers and Nonsigners.

Three studies are presented in this paper that address how nonsigners perceive the visual prosodic cues in a sign language. In Study 1, adult American nonsigners and users of American Sign Language (ASL) were compared on their sensitivity to the visual cues in ASL Intonational Phrases. In Study 2, hearing, nonsigning American infants were tested using the same stimuli used in Study 1 to see whether maturity, exposure to gesture, or exposure to sign language is necessary to demonstrate this type of sensitivity. Study 3 addresses nonsigners’ and signers’ strategies for segmenting Prosodic Words in a sign language. Adult participants from six language groups (3 spoken languages and 3 sign languages) were tested. The results of these three studies indicate that nonsigners have a high degree of sensitivity to sign language prosodic cues at the Intonational Phrase level and the Prosodic Word level; these are attributed to modality or ‘channel’ effects of the visual signal.There are also some differences between signers’ and nonsigners’ sensitivity; these differences are attributed to language experience or language-particular constraints. This work is useful in understanding the gestural competence of nonsigners and the ways in which this type of competence may contribute to the grammaticalization of these properties in a sign language.