The Emergence of Phonology

Diane Brentari

doi:10.1017/9781316286401.005

5 - The Emergence of Phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2019

Diane Brentari

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Diane Brentari: Affiliation:
University of Chicago

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Summary

In this chapter, issues concerning the emergence of phonology will be addressed by tracing the paths of phonology and morphophonology as they move from gesture, to homesign, and across multiple stages in cohorts (or generations) of young sign languages. The material covered in the first four chapters of this volume will provide theoretical context for the emergence of phonology. Relevant work on spoken languages, which has observed and modeled processes of emergence or mapped them typologically, will be discussed, and some of the principles of phonological systems will be articulated, such as paradigm uniformity, conventionalization, symmetry of the phonological inventory, and well-formedness constraints on phonological constituents. Based on ongoing work we can also address some of the social factors that may be important in different rates of emergence in different social contexts or “language ecologies.”

Keywords

gesture–language interface prosodic hierarchy prosodic constraints prosodic cues phonetics–phonology interface morphology–phonology interface semantics–prosody interface

Type: Chapter
Information: Sign Language Phonology , pp. 132 - 165

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316286401.005 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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References

5.6 Further Reading

Brentari, D. & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2017). Language emergence. Annual Review of Linguistics 3, 363–88.CrossRef Google Scholar PubMed

Carrigan, E. & Coppola, M. (2017). Successful communication does not drive language development: Evidence from adult homesign. Cognition, 158, 10–27.Google Scholar

Goldin-Meadow, S. & Brentari, D. (2017). Gesture, sign and language: The coming of age of sign language and gesture studies. Brain and Behavioral Sciences, 39 doi:10.1017/S0140525X15001247.Google Scholar

Sandler, W. (2016). What comes first in language emergence? In Enfield, N. (ed.), Dependency in Language: On the Causal Ontology of Language Systems. Studies in Diversity in Linguistics 99 (pp. 67–86). Berlin: Language Science Press.Google Scholar

Senghas, R., Senghas, A., & Pyers, J. (2005).The emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language: Questions of development, acquisition, and evolution. In Langer, J., Milbrath, C., & Parker, S. (eds.), Biology and Knowledge Revisited: From Neurogenesis to Psychogenesis (pp. 287–306). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar