Space as space and space as grammar

Gesture ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2-3) ◽  
Author(s):  
John B. Haviland
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Spatial Orientation ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Spatial Frames Of Reference ◽  
Spatial Grammar

Abstract Research on narratives in an Australian language demonstrated surprising facts about speakers’ spatial orientation and knowledge both in the insistent use of morphologically hypertrophied spoken directional terminology and in accompanying gestures. Pursuing comparable phenomena in a Mayan language from the other side of the globe revealed correspondingly complex gestural devices for communicating about location and direction but with very different kinds of support from speech. Evidence from a new sign language, emerging in the same Mayan context, suggests that mechanisms for signing about space both resemble and depart from the gestural practices of the surrounding speech community. In particular, they invoke spatial “frames of reference” not used by speakers to sign about location and direction, and they employ signed “spatial grammar” to express syntactic argument structure.

scholarly journals Appositive possession in Ainu and around the Pacific

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Bugaeva ◽  
Johanna Nichols ◽  
Balthasar Bickel
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Finite Clause

Abstract Some languages around the Pacific have multiple possessive classes of alienable constructions using appositive nouns or classifiers. This pattern differs from the most common kind of alienable/inalienable distinction, which involves marking, usually affixal, on the possessum, and has only one class of alienables. The Japanese language isolate Ainu has possessive marking that is reminiscent of the Circum-Pacific pattern. It is distinctive, however, in that the possessor is coded not as a dependent in an NP but as an argument in a finite clause, and the appositive word is a verb. This paper gives a first comprehensive, typologically grounded description of Ainu possession and reconstructs the pattern that must have been standard when Ainu was still the daily language of a large speech community; Ainu then had multiple alienable class constructions. We report a cross-linguistic survey expanding previous coverage of the appositive type and show how Ainu fits in. We split alienable/inalienable into two different phenomena: argument structure (with types based on possessibility: optionally possessible, obligatorily possessed, and non-possessible) and valence (alienable, inalienable classes). Valence-changing operations are derived alienability and derived inalienability. Our survey classifies the possessive systems of languages in these terms.

scholarly journals Global-Local Enhancement Network for NMF-Aware Sign Language Recognition

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Hezhen Hu ◽  
Wengang Zhou ◽  
Junfu Pu ◽  
Houqiang Li
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Challenging Problem ◽  
Language Recognition ◽  
Local Enhancement ◽  
Sign Language Recognition ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Hand Gestures ◽  
Fine Grained

Sign language recognition (SLR) is a challenging problem, involving complex manual features (i.e., hand gestures) and fine-grained non-manual features (NMFs) (i.e., facial expression, mouth shapes, etc .). Although manual features are dominant, non-manual features also play an important role in the expression of a sign word. Specifically, many sign words convey different meanings due to non-manual features, even though they share the same hand gestures. This ambiguity introduces great challenges in the recognition of sign words. To tackle the above issue, we propose a simple yet effective architecture called Global-Local Enhancement Network (GLE-Net), including two mutually promoted streams toward different crucial aspects of SLR. Of the two streams, one captures the global contextual relationship, while the other stream captures the discriminative fine-grained cues. Moreover, due to the lack of datasets explicitly focusing on this kind of feature, we introduce the first non-manual-feature-aware isolated Chinese sign language dataset (NMFs-CSL) with a total vocabulary size of 1,067 sign words in daily life. Extensive experiments on NMFs-CSL and SLR500 datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

Loss of Spatial Orientation, Constructional Apraxia and Gerstmann'S Syndrome

1944 ◽  
Vol 90 (380) ◽  
pp. 753-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Stengel
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Orientation ◽  
Parietal Lobe ◽  
The Other ◽  
Angular Gyrus ◽  
Dominant Hemisphere ◽  
Comprehensive Description ◽  
War Injuries ◽  
Constructional Apraxia ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
Gerstmann’S Syndrome

In recent years important additions to the knowledge of the symptomatology in cases with involvement of the parietal lobe have been made. Both constructional apraxia (Kleist, 1922) and Gerstmann's syndrome, consisting of finger-agnosia, disturbance of right-left orientation, agraphia and acalculia (1924) have been related to lesions of the angular gyrus of the dominant hemisphere. Before the description of those symptoms, a loss of spatial orientation had been described in cases with lesions of the same localization. Balint (1910), Riddoch (1917), and others had observed that symptom in single cases, but the most comprehensive description was given by Gordon Holmes (1918), who studied it in a case-material of war injuries. When Holmes and his co-workers published their observations, constructional apraxia and Gerstmann's syndrome were still unknown. Loss of spatial orientation as a fully developed symptom is rare, while the other two disorders are not uncommon. For this reason the psychopathological relationship of those symptoms is still insufficiently understood. The following case offers an opportunity for studying the problem:

scholarly journals Concept of Nonverbal Communication by Using Sign Language by Al-Jahidz l Mafhum al-Ittisal Goiru al-Lafdzi bi Istikhdam Lugah al-Isyarah 'inda Al-Jahidz

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Muflihah Muflihah
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Nonverbal Communication ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Verbal Communication ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Qualitative Descriptive

Most of the generation (Arabic linguistic academics) have not comprehended the linguistic theories which initiated by Al-Jahid. This study aims to research on the concept of communication with the signs in Al-Jahid works. To identify these problems in depth and thoroughly, qualitative descriptive study was used. The primary data sources of this research were various sources, mainly Al Jahid book with documentation from the works of Al-Jahid and observation techniques based on the other books about Jahid ‘s point of view, such as Kamal Bisyri and other linguists. The results of this study concluded that: Al-Jahiz is an Arabic language expert who discussed the theory of non-verbal communication. In the case of learning a language, we also have to comprehend the theory of communication, especially communication with signs by Al-Jahiz. His thoughts were followed by several contemporary scholars. Thus, it is highly recommended to the Arabic researchesr to figure out the works of previous Arabic scholars which had been discussing about contemporary linguistic.

English as a Lingua Franca in the Expanding Circle

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Expanding Circle ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
First Languages ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

This article discusses English in terms of its role as a contact language among expanding circle users of English from different first languages. It begins by observing both similarities between English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) and other lingua francas, and the difference in scale between them, with ELF involving a far higher number of people and first languages. The article goes on to explore empirical research into ELF, and its key findings: on the one hand, that certain “nonstandard” English forms are regularly preferred to “standard” (i.e. native) ones, and on the other, that ELF is far more affected by context and accommodation processes, and, therefore, far more diverse, than native Englishes. The notion of “community of practice,” it is argued, is, thus, more appropriate to ELF than that of “speech community.” The article concludes by considering three key areas of ELF research that need to be tackled.

scholarly journals The Impact of Transitional Movements and Non-Manual Markings on the Disambiguation of Locally Ambiguous Argument Structures in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS)

2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 652-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Krebs ◽  
Ronnie B. Wilbur ◽  
Phillip M. Alday ◽  
Dietmar Roehm
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Hand Movement ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Time Points ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Impact

Previous studies of Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) word-order variations have demonstrated the human processing system’s tendency to interpret a sentence-initial (case-) ambiguous argument as the subject of the clause (“subject preference”). The electroencephalogram study motivating the current report revealed earlier reanalysis effects for object-subject compared to subject-object sentences, in particular, before the start of the movement of the agreement marking sign. The effects were bound to time points prior to when both arguments were referenced in space and/or the transitional hand movement prior to producing the disambiguating sign. Due to the temporal proximity of these time points, it was not clear which visual cues led to disambiguation; that is, whether non-manual markings (body/shoulder/head shift towards the subject position) or the transitional hand movement resolved ambiguity. The present gating study further supports that disambiguation in ÖGS is triggered by cues occurring before the movement of the disambiguating sign. Further, the present study also confirms the presence of the subject preference in ÖGS, showing again that signers and speakers draw on similar strategies during language processing independent of language modality. Although the ultimate role of the visual cues leading to disambiguation (i.e., non-manual markings and transitional movements) requires further investigation, the present study shows that they contribute crucial information about argument structure during online processing. This finding provides strong support for granting these cues some degree of linguistic status (at least in ÖGS).

Egocentric Action in Early Infancy: Spatial Frames of Reference for Saccades

1997 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 224-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick O. Gilmore ◽  
Mark H. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Information ◽  
Visual Space ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
Saccade Target ◽  
Visually Guided ◽  
Retinal Position ◽  
Position Information ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Visually Guided Action ◽  
Spatial Frames Of Reference

The extent to which infants combine visual (i e, retinal position) and nonvisual (eye or head position) spatial information in planning saccades relates to the issue of what spatial frame or frames of reference influence early visually guided action We explored this question by testing infants from 4 to 6 months of age on the double-step saccade paradigm, which has shown that adults combine visual and eye position information into an egocentric (head- or trunk-centered) representation of saccade target locations In contrast, our results imply that infants depend on a simple retinocentric representation at age 4 months, but by 6 months use egocentric representations more often to control saccade planning Shifts in the representation of visual space for this simple sensorimotor behavior may index maturation in cortical circuitry devoted to visual spatial processing in general

Prosody: A feature of languages or a feature of speakers?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Muñiz-Cachón
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Linguistic Interference ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Social situations of language coexistence have resulted in linguistic manifestations of bilingualism and diglossia, including linguistic interference, lexical loans and code switching. What role does prosody play in social bilingualism? In other words, when contact between different languages is not restricted to the individual but affects an entire speech community, does a dominant prosody exist? Does prosody vary among different linguistic varieties? In order to find an answer to these questions, we hereby show the results of a research project on the prosodic features of Asturian and Castilian spoken in the centre of Asturias. This experimental study is based on the speech of four informants from Oviedo – two men and two women – two of which speak Castilian, while the other two speak Asturian.

Describing buoys from the perspective of discourse markers

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-240
Author(s):  
Sílvia Gabarró-López
Keyword(s):  
Sign Language ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
The Other

Abstract This paper provides a description of the distribution of buoys across genres and of their possible functions as discourse markers in French Belgian Sign Language. We selected a sample of dialogic genres – argumentative, explanatory, narrative, and metalinguistic – produced by different signers from the LSFB Corpus. In our dataset, buoys are unequally distributed across genres, and list and fragment buoys are the most frequent. Apart from a pointer and a point buoy, only some list buoys have discourse-marking functions, including enumeration, alternative, and addition. On the basis of the distribution of all types of buoys, the narrative dialogic genre is the most different as compared to the other three genres. It is characterized by a lower frequency of list buoys and a higher frequency of fragment buoys. When focusing on discourse-marking buoys, the explanatory genre attracts the highest number of tokens, which we relate to the higher degree of preparation as compared to the other genres.

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