Parts of speech in Russian Sign Language

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vadim Kimmelman
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Shed Light

In this paper, we present data that shed light on the parts of speech system of Russian Sign Language (RSL), in particular, the noun-verb distinction. An experimental study revealed that in RSL, specific phonological differences distinguish between nouns and verbs; these include differences in movement, handshape, orientation, location, and mouthing. The attested differences, which are subject to variation among the signers, can co-occur with each other. The patterns we found cannot be accounted for by models that have previously been proposed for other sign languages (e.g. American Sign Language and Australian Sign Language). We argue that these differences may result from the higher iconicity of verbs and the higher economy of nouns.

People Are Less Susceptible to Illusion When They Use Their Hands to Communicate Rather Than Estimate

2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762199155
Author(s):  
Amanda R. Brown ◽  
Wim Pouw ◽  
Diane Brentari ◽  
Susan Goldin-Meadow
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Estimation Task ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Lyer Illusion ◽  
Description Task ◽  
The Way

When we use our hands to estimate the length of a stick in the Müller-Lyer illusion, we are highly susceptible to the illusion. But when we prepare to act on sticks under the same conditions, we are significantly less susceptible. Here, we asked whether people are susceptible to illusion when they use their hands not to act on objects but to describe them in spontaneous co-speech gestures or conventional sign languages of the deaf. Thirty-two English speakers and 13 American Sign Language signers used their hands to act on, estimate the length of, and describe sticks eliciting the Müller-Lyer illusion. For both gesture and sign, the magnitude of illusion in the description task was smaller than the magnitude of illusion in the estimation task and not different from the magnitude of illusion in the action task. The mechanisms responsible for producing gesture in speech and sign thus appear to operate not on percepts involved in estimation but on percepts derived from the way we act on objects.

scholarly journals Occupational Health and Safety For Sign Language Interpreters

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Woodcock ◽  
Steven L. Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
Occupational Health ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Sign Language Interpreters ◽  
Sign Language Interpreting

<div>"This Guide is intended for working interpreters, interpreting students and educators, and those who employ or purchase the services of interpreters. Occupational health education is essential for professionals in training, to avoid early attrition from practice. "Sign language interpreting" is considered to include interpretation between American Sign Language (ASL) and English, other spoken languages and corresponding sign languages, and between sign languages (e.g., Deaf Interpreters). Some of the occupational health issues may also apply equally to Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) reporters, oral interpreters, and intervenors. The reader is encouraged to make as much use as possible of the information provided here". -- Introduction.</div><div><br></div>

scholarly journals How much can classifiers be analogous to their referents?

Gesture ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Sutton-Spence ◽  
Donna Jo Napoli
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Language Poetry ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Classifier System ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
British Sign Language ◽  
British Sign

Sign Language poetry is especially valued for its presentation of strong visual images. Here, we explore the highly visual signs that British Sign Language and American Sign Language poets create as part of the ‘classifier system’ of their languages. Signed languages, as they create visually-motivated messages, utilise categoricity (more traditionally considered ‘language’) and analogy (more traditionally considered extra-linguistic and the domain of ‘gesture’). Classifiers in sign languages arguably show both these characteristics (Oviedo, 2004). In our discussion of sign language poetry, we see that poets take elements that are widely understood to be highly visual, closely representing their referents, and make them even more highly visual — so going beyond categorisation and into new areas of analogue.

Negative incorporation in French and American sign language

1977 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Woodward ◽  
Susan Desantis
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Variation Theory ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Social Variables ◽  
Language Variation And Change ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Dynamic Framework

ABSTRACTThis paper examines Negative Incorporation in various lects of two historically related sign languages, French Sign Language and American Sign Language. Negative Incorporation not only offers interesting insights into the structure of French and American Sign Language, but also into the descriptive and explanatory power of variation theory. By viewing Negative Incorporation in a dynamic framework, we are able to describe the variable usage of Negative Incorporation as a phonological process in French Sign Language and as a grammatical process in American Sign Language, to argue for possible early creolization in American Sign Language, to show the historical continuum between French Sign Language and American Sign Language despite heavy restructuring, and to demonstrate the influences of social variables on language variation and change, especially illustrating the progressive role of women in sign language change and the conservative forces in French Sign Language as compared with American Sign Language. (Sociolinguistics, sign language, creolization, linguistic changes.)

Phonological variation and change in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages: The location variable

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Schembri ◽  
David McKee ◽  
Rachel McKee ◽  
Sara Pivac ◽  
Trevor Johnston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Phonological Variation ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Place Of Articulation ◽  
Citation Form ◽  
Deaf Signers

AbstractIn this study, we consider variation in a class of signs in Australian and New Zealand Sign Languages that includes the signs think, name, and clever. In their citation form, these signs are specified for a place of articulation at or near the signer's forehead or above, but are sometimes produced at lower locations. An analysis of 2667 tokens collected from 205 deaf signers in five sites across Australia and of 2096 tokens collected from 138 deaf signers from three regions in New Zealand indicates that location variation in these signs reflects both linguistic and social factors, as also reported for American Sign Language (Lucas, Bayley, & Valli, 2001). Despite similarities, however, we find that some of the particular factors at work, and the kinds of influence they have, appear to differ in these three signed languages. Moreover, our results suggest that lexical frequency may also play a role.

scholarly journals Finger Gesture Vocalizer

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 1247-1249
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Processing Unit ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Audio Processing ◽  
Large Scale System ◽  
Unit Standard

A Gesture Vocalizer is a small scale or a large scale system that provides a way for dumb and mute people to communicate easily. The research paper defines a technique, Finger Gesture Vocalizer which includes sensors attached to the gloves above the fingers of the person who wants to communicate. The sensors are arranged in such a way on the gloves, that they can capture the movements of the fingers and based on the change in resistance of the sensors, it can be identified what the person wants to say. The message is displayed on the LCD and is also converted to audio using the APR33A3 audio processing unit. Standard sign languages such as that of American Sign Language which is used by dumb and mute people to communicate can be employed while wearing these gloves.

scholarly journals Implicit causality biases and thematic roles in American Sign Language

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Therese Frederiksen ◽  
Rachel I. Mayberry
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Noun Phrase ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Thematic Roles ◽  
Psycholinguistic Research ◽  
Thematic Role ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Implicit Causality

AbstractImplicit causality (IC) biases, the tendency of certain verbs to elicit re-mention of either the first-mentioned noun phrase (NP1) or the second-mentioned noun phrase (NP2) from the previous clause, are important in psycholinguistic research. Understanding IC verbs and the source of their biases in signed as well as spoken languages helps elucidate whether these phenomena are language general or specific to the spoken modality. As the first of its kind, this study investigates IC biases in American Sign Language (ASL) and provides IC bias norms for over 200 verbs, facilitating future psycholinguistic studies of ASL and comparisons of spoken versus signed languages. We investigated whether native ASL signers continued sentences with IC verbs (e.g., ASL equivalents of ‘Lisa annoys Maya because…’) by mentioning NP1 (i.e., Lisa) or NP2 (i.e., Maya). We found a tendency towards more NP2-biased verbs. Previous work has found that a verb’s thematic roles predict bias direction: stimulus-experiencer verbs (e.g., ‘annoy’), where the first argument is the stimulus (causing annoyance) and the second argument is the experiencer (experiencing annoyance), elicit more NP1 continuations. Verbs with experiencer-stimulus thematic roles (e.g., ‘love’) elicit more NP2 continuations. We probed whether the trend towards more NP2-biased verbs was related to an existing claim that stimulus-experiencer verbs do not exist in sign languages. We found that stimulus-experiencer structure, while permitted, is infrequent, impacting the IC bias distribution in ASL. Nevertheless, thematic roles predict IC bias in ASL, suggesting that the thematic role-IC bias relationship is stable across languages as well as modalities.

Person vs. locative agreement

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Lily Kwok ◽  
Stephanie Berk ◽  
Diane Lillo-Martin
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
The Third ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Person Agreement

Abstract Sign languages are frequently described as having three verb classes. One, ‘agreeing’ verbs, indicates the person/number of its subject and object by modification of the beginning and ending locations of the verb. The second, ‘spatial’ verbs, makes a similar appearing modification of verb movement to represent the source and goal locations of the theme of a verb of motion. The third class, ‘plain’ verbs, is characterized as having neither of these types of modulations. A number of researchers have proposed accounts that collapse all of these types, or the person-agreeing and spatial verbs. Here we present evidence from late learners of American Sign Language and from the emergence of new sign languages that person agreement and locative agreement have a different status in these conditions, and we claim their analysis should be kept distinct, at least in certain ways.

Acquiring plurality in directional verbs

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-73
Author(s):  
Lynn Y-S. Hou
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Alternative Strategies ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Number Marking ◽  
Signed Languages ◽  
Deaf Adults ◽  
Agreement Morphology

Little is known about when and how children acquire plurality for directional verbs in ASL and other signed languages. This paper reports on an experimental study of 11 deaf native-signing children’s acquisition of ‘plural verb agreement’ or plural forms of directional verbs in American Sign Language. Eleven native-signing deaf adults were also tested. An elicitation task explored how children (aged 3;4 to 5;11) and adults marked directional verbs for plurality. The children also participated in an imitation task. Adults marked directional verbs for plurality significantly more often than children. However, adults also omitted plurality from directional verbs, utilizing alternative strategies to mark plural referents significantly more often than did children. Children across all ages omitted plurality, suggesting that the omission is attributable to both the conceptual complexity of plural markers and the optionality of number-marking. Directionality may not be best analyzed as a morphosyntactic phenomenon analogous to verb agreement morphology in spoken languages.

A quantitative analysis of sign lengthening in American Sign Language

2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Information Load ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Sign Languages ◽  
Role Shift ◽  
High Information

In spoken languages, disfluent speech, narrative effects, discourse information, and phrase position may influence the lengthening of segments beyond their typical duration. In sign languages, however, the primary use of the visual-gestural modality results in articulatory differences not expressed in spoken languages. This paper looks at sign lengthening in American Sign Language (ASL). Comparing two retellings of the Pear Story narrative from five signers, three primary lengthening mechanisms were identified: elongation, repetition, and deceleration. These mechanisms allow signers to incorporate lengthening into signs which may benefit from decelerated language production due to high information load or complex articulatory processes. Using a mixed effects model, significant differences in duration were found between (i) non-conventionalized forms vs. lexical signs, (ii) signs produced during role shift vs. non-role shift, (iii) signs in phrase-final/initial vs. phrase-medial position, (iv) new vs. given information, and (v) (non-disordered) disfluent signing vs. non-disfluent signing. These results provide insights into duration effects caused by information load and articulatory processes in ASL.

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