Wendy Sandler

Prosody in Israeli Sign language.

This is a study of the interaction of phonology with syntax, and, to some extent, with meaning, in a natural sign language. It adopts the theory of prosodic phonology (Nespor & Vogel, 1986), testing both its assumptions, which had been based on data from spoken language, and its predictions, on the language of the deaf community in Israel. Evidence is provided to show that Israeli Sign Language (ISL) divides its sentences into the prosodic constituents, phonological phrase and intonational phrase. It is argued that prominence falls at the end of phonological phrases, as the theory predicts for languages like ISL, whose basic word order is head first, then complement. It is suggested that this correspondence between prominence pattern and word order may have important implications for language acquisition. An assimilation rule whose domain is the phonological phrase provides further evidence for the phono logical phrase constituent. The rule involves a phonetic element that has no equivalentin spoken language: the non dominant hand. In this way, it is shown how a phonetic system that bears no physical relation to that of spoken language is recruited to serve a phonologicalsyntactic organization that is in many ways the same. The study also provides evidence for the next higher constituent in the prosodic hierarchy, the intonational phrase. Elements such as topicalized constituents form their own intonational phrases in ISL as in spoken languages. Intonational phrases have clear phonetic correlates, one of which is facial expressions which characterize entire intonational phrases. It is argued that facial expressions are analogous to intonational melodies in spoken languages. But unlike the tones of spoken language, which follow one another in a sequence, facial articulations can occur simultaneously with one another and with the rest of the communicative message conveyed by the hands. This difference, it is argued, results from the fact that the many facial articulators are independent, both of each other and of the primary articulators, the hands. The investigation illuminates the similarities as well as the differences of prosodic systems in the two natural human language modalities, and points out directions for future research.

On the nature of phonological structure in sign language

The study of phonological structure and patterns across languages is seen by contemporary phonologists as a way of gaining insight into language as a cognitive system. Traditionally, phonologists have focused on spoken languages. More recently, we have observed a growing interest in the grammatical system underlying signed languages of the deaf. This development in the field of phonology provides a natural laboratory for investigating language universals. As grammatical systems, in part, reflect the modality in which they are expressed, the comparison of spoken and signed languages permits us to separate those aspects of grammar which are modality-dependent from those which are shared by all human languages. On the other hand, modality-dependent characteristics must also be accounted for by a comprehensive theory of language. Comparing languages in two modalities is therefore of theoretical importance for both reasons: establishing modality-independent linguistic universals, and accounting for modality-dependent structure and organisation.

The Spreading Hand Autosegment of American Sign Language

The Hand Tier (HT) model presented here can account for sign language sign structure by showing hand configuration associating with location and movement on the segmental tier. This model preserves the structural and functional importance of location, movement, and hand configuration, and reveals special properties of the hand tier, which spreads across signs according to its own timetable. Structural relationships among signs in the lexicon, as well as productive phonological and morphological rules, provide evidence that this model can account for surface data in a way that reveals key information about the core of ASL structure.

Visual Intonation in the Prosody of a Sign Language

While visual signals that accompany spoken language serve to augment the communicative message, the same visual ingredients form the substance of the linguistic system in sign languages. This article provides an analysis of visual signals that comprise part of the intonational system of a sign language. The system is conveyed mainly by particular actions of the upper face, and is shown to pattern linguistically and predictably in Israeli Sign Language. Its components, aligned with prosodic constituents, are associated with particular but general meanings and may be combined to derive complex meanings. The Brow Raise component is functionally comparable to H tones, signaling continuation and dependency, and characterizing yes/no questions and the if-clause of conditionals, for example. The component Squint instructs the addressee to retrieve information that is not readily accessible, and characterizes relative clauses, topics, and other structures. The details of the componential analysis proposed here explain why the two components together co-occur on such seemingly diverse structures as yes/no questions about mutually retrievable information and counterfactual conditionals. Like auditorily perceived intonational melodies, the visual intonational arrays in sign language provide a subtle, intricately structured, and meaningful accompaniment to the words and sentences of language.

A sonority cycle in American Sign Language

It is generally accepted that there are three major categories of phonological elements in the signs of sign language: (i) the shape of the hand, (ii) the location of the hand on or near the body and (iii) the movement of the hand – either (a) movement of the fingers or palm at a single location or (b) movement of the whole hand along a path from one location to another. It has further been argued that each of these categories consists of hierarchically organised classes of features (Sandler 1987b, 1989a).

Body as subject

The notion of subject in human language has a privileged status relative to other arguments. This special status is manifested in the behavior of subjects at the morphological, syntactic, semantic and discourse levels. Here we bring evidence that subjects have privileged status at the lexical level as well, by analyzing lexicalization patterns of verbs in three different sign languages. Our analysis shows that the sublexical structure of iconic signs denoting state of affairs in these languages manifests an inherent pattern of form-meaning correspondence: the signers body consistently represents one argument of the verb, the subject. The hands, moving in relation to the body, represent all other components of the event - including all other arguments. This analysis shows that sign languages provide novel evidence in support of the centrality of the notion of subject in human language. It also solves a typological puzzle about the apparent primacy of object in sign language verb agreement, a primacy not usually found in spoken languages, in which subject agreement ranks higher. Our analysis suggests that the subject argument is represented by the body and is part of the lexical structure of the verb. Because it is always inherently represented in the structure of the sign, the subject is more basic than the object, and tolerates the omission of agreement morphology.

A language in space : the story of Israeli sign language

Contents: Israeli Sign Language: Language and People. The Basic Components of the Word in Sign Language. Vocabulary. Grammar in Space: The Pronominal System. Grammar in Space: Verb Agreement. Tenses and Aspects. Shapes, Locations, and Motions in Space: Classifier Constructions. Word Order. Negative and Interrogative Sentences. Beyond the Hands: Facial Expression as Intonation in ISL. The History of the Deaf Community in Israel. The Emergence and Development of ISL. Voices From the Community. Similarities and Differences Across Sign Languages. The Contribution of Sign Languages to Linguistic Research. Appendix A: List of Handshapes of Israeli Sign Language. Appendix B: Main Places of Articulation in Israeli Sign Language. Appendix C: Notational Conventions.

Symbiotic symbolization by hand and mouth in sign language

Abstract Current conceptions of human language include a gestural component in the communicative event. However, determining how the linguistic and gestural signals are distinguished, how each is structured, and how they interact still poses a challenge for the construction of a comprehensive model of language. This study attempts to advance our understanding of these issues with evidence from sign language. The study adopts McNeills criteria for distinguishing gestures from the linguistically organized signal, and provides a brief description of the linguistic organization of sign languages. Focusing on the subcategory of iconic gestures, the paper shows that signers create iconic gestures with the mouth, an articulator that acts symbiotically with the hands to complement the linguistic description of objects and events. A new distinction between the mimetic replica and the iconic symbol accounts for the nature and distribution of iconic mouth gestures and distinguishes them from mimetic uses of the mouth. Symbiotic symbolization by hand and mouth is a salient feature of human language, regardless of whether the primary linguistic modality is oral or manual. Speakers gesture with their hands, and signers gesture with their mouths.

Morphological universals and the sign language type

We have shown that established sign languages comprise a morphological type. In all these languages, visuo-spatial concepts and relations are represented in a motivated yet rule-governed and linguistic morphological system. Developed sign languages also show non-motivated, grammaticalized morphology, but to a limited extent, because they are young. ABSL shows neither the motivated nor the arbitrary morphology found in more developed sign languages. The lesson from ABSL is therefore that even the motivated morphology that we find in all established sign languages requires social interaction over time to crystallize. ABSL thus vindicates the new language prototype: little or no systematic morphology. This prototype was originally formulated on the basis of creole languages, but the formulation has run into empirical difficulty in recent years, as we noted above. Because ABSL is a completely new language, it allows us to distinguish between relatively young languages (established creoles and sign languages) and new languages, and to realize that the prototype holds of the latter.

Competing iconicities in the structure of languages

Abstract The paper examines the role that iconicity plays in the structuring of grammars. Two main points are argued for: (a) Grammar does not necessarily suppress iconicity; rather, iconicity and grammar can enjoy a congenial relation in that iconicity can play an active role in the structuring of grammars. (b) Iconicity is not monolithic. There are different types of iconicity and languages take advantage of the possibilities afforded by them. We examine the interaction between iconicity and grammar by focusing on the ways in which sign languages employ the physical body of the signer as a rich iconic resource for encoding a variety of grammatical notions. We show that the body can play three different roles in iconic forms in sign languages: it can be used as a naming device where body parts represent body parts; it can represent the subject argument of verbal signs, and it can stand for first person. These strategies interact and sometimes compete in the languages under study. Each language resolves these competitions differently, which results in different grammars and grammatical structures. The investigation of the ways in which grammar and iconicity interact in these languages provides insight into the nature of both systems.