Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:35:43.603Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Visual intonation in two sign languages*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 August 2013

Svetlana Dachkovsky ,
Christina Healy  and
Wendy Sandler
Svetlana Dachkovsky
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
Christina Healy
Affiliation:
Gallaudet University
Wendy Sandler
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In a detailed comparison of the intonational systems of two unrelated languages, Israeli Sign Language and American Sign Language, we show certain similarities as well as differences in the distribution of several articulations of different parts of the face and motions of the head. Differences between the two languages are explained on the basis of pragmatic notions related to information structure, such as accessibility and contingency, providing novel evidence that the system is inherently intonational, and only indirectly related to syntax. The study also identifies specific ways in which the physical modality in which language is expressed influences intonational structure.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , August 2013 , pp. 211 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Bob Ladd, three anonymous reviewers and the editors for their thoughtful and helpful comments and suggestions. This research was funded in part by the Israel Science Foundation and by a Fulbright Student Fellowship to Christina Healy.

References

REFERENCES

Aarons, Debra (1994). Aspects of the syntax of American Sign Language. PhD dissertation, Boston University.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira (1990). Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London & New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ariel, Mira (1991). The function of accessibility in a theory of grammar. Journal of Pragmatics 16. 443–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariel, Mira (2001). Accessibility theory: an overview. In Sanders, Ted, Schilperoord, Joost & Spooren, Wilbert (eds.) Text representation: linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 29–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Charlotte & Cokely, Dennis (1980). American Sign Language: a teacher's resource text on grammar and culture. Silver Spring, MD: T. J. Publishers.Google Scholar
Baker, Charlotte & Padden, Carol A. (1978). Focusing on the nonmanual components of American Sign Language. In Siple, Patricia (ed.) Understanding language through sign language research. New York: Academic Press. 27–57.Google Scholar
Baker-Shenk, Charlotte (1983). A micro analysis of the nonmanual components of questions in American Sign Language. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Bartels, Christine (1999). The intonation of English statements and questions: a compositional interpretation. New York & London: Garland.Google Scholar
Baumann, Stefan (2005). Degrees of givenness and their prosodic marking. Poster presented at IDP05 (Discourse Prosody Interface 2005), Aix-en-Provence.Google Scholar
Baumann, Stefan (2006). The intonation of givenness: evidence from German. Berlin & New York: de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumann, Stefan & Grice, Martine (2006). The intonation of accessibility. Journal of Pragmatics 38. 1636–1657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumann, Stefan & Hadelich, Kerstin (2003). Accent type and givenness: an experiment with auditory and visual priming. In Solé, et al. (2003). 1811–1814.Google Scholar
Bergman, Brita (1984). Non-manual components of signed languages: some sentence types in Swedish Sign Language. In Loncke, Filip, Braem, Penny Boyes & Lebrun, Yvan (eds.) Recent research on European sign languages. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. 49–59.Google Scholar
Bing, Janet M. (1979). Aspects of English prosody. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight (1978). Intonation across languages. In Greenberg, Joseph H., Ferguson, Charles A. & Moravcsik, Edith A. (eds.) Universals of human language. Vol. 2: Phonology. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 471–524.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight (1989). Intonation and its uses: melody in grammar and discourse. London: Arnold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brazil, David, Coulthard, Malcolm & Johns, Catherine (1980). Discourse intonation and language teaching. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Brown, Gillian, Currie, Karen L. & Kenworthy, Joanne (1980). Questions of intonation. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Cecchetto, Carlo, Geraci, Carlo & Zucchi, Sandro (2009). Another way to mark syntactic dependencies: the case for right-peripheral specifiers in sign languages. Lg 85. 278–320.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L. (1973). Language and memory. Lg 49. 261–281.Google Scholar
Coerts, Jane A. (1992). Nonmanual grammatical markers: an analysis of interrogatives, negations and topicalisations in Sign Language of the Netherlands. PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Coulter, Geoffrey R. (1979). American Sign Language typology. PhD dissertation. University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Crasborn, Onno, van der Kooij, Els, Ros, Johan & Hoop, Helen de (2009). Topic Agreement in NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands). The Linguistic Review 26. 355–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crasborn, Onno & Sloetjes, Han (2008). Enhanced ELAN functionality for sign language corpora. Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Marrakech.Google Scholar
Dachkovsky, Svetlana (2005). Facial expression as intonation in Israeli Sign Language: the case of conditionals. MA thesis, University of Haifa.Google Scholar
Dachkovsky, Svetlana & Sandler, Wendy (2009). Visual intonation in the prosody of a sign language. Language and Speech 52. 287–314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Darwin, Charles (1872). The expression of emotions in man and animals. 3rd edn. 1998. New York: Philosophical Library.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deuchar, Margaret (1983). Is British Sign Language an SVO language? In Kyle, James & Woll, Bencie (eds.) Language in sign: international perspectives on sign language. London: Croom Helm. 69–76.Google Scholar
Deuchar, Margaret (1984). British Sign Language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul (2003). Emotions revealed: recognizing faces and feelings to improve communication and emotional life. New York: Holt.Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul & Friesen, Wallace V. (1978). Facial Action Coding System: a technique for the measurement of facial movement. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul, Friesen, Wallace V. & Hager, Joseph C. (2002). Facial Action Coding System: the manual on CD ROM. Salt Lake City: A Human Face.Google Scholar
Emmorey, Karen (2002). Language, cognition, and the brain: insights from sign language research. Mahwah, NJ & London: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Engberg-Pedersen, Elisabeth (1990). Pragmatics of nonmanual behavior in Danish Sign Language. In Edmondson, William H. & Karlsson, Fred (eds.) SLR '87: papers from the 4th International Symposium on Sign Language Research, Lappeenranta, Finland. Hamburg: Signum. 121–128.Google Scholar
Fenlon, Jordan, Denmark, Tanya, Campbell, Ruth & Woll, Bencie (2008). Seeing sentence boundaries. Sign Language and Linguistics 10. 177–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Susan (1975). Influences on word order change in American Sign Language. In Li, Charles N. (ed.) Word order and word order change. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1–25.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Janet (2010). The prosody of speech: timing and rhythm. In Hardcastle, William J., Laver, John & Gibbon, Fiona E. (eds.) The handbook of phonetic sciences. 2nd edn.Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell. 523–602.Google Scholar
Ford, Cecilia E. (1993). Grammar in interaction: adverbial clauses in American English conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Lynn A. (1976). The manifestation of subject, object and topic in the American Sign Language. In Li, Charles N. (ed.) Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press. 125–148.Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos (2004). The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos (2012). Tone and intonation in Cantonese English. Paper presented at the 3rd International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, Nanjing.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English. Part I. JL 3. 37–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, Bruce & Lahiri, Aditi (1991). Bengali intonational phonology. NLLT 9. 47–96.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Annika (2010). The interaction of eye blinks and other prosodic cues in German Sign Language. Sign Language and Linguistics 13. 3–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia (2004). Pragmatics and intonation. In Horn, Lawrence R. & Ward, Gregory (eds.) The handbook of pragmatics. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell. 515–537.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia & Pierrehumbert, Janet (1986). The intonational structuring of discourse. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Columbia University. Association for Computational Linguistics. 136–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirst, Daniel & Cristo, Albert Di (1998). A survey of intonation systems. In Hirst, Daniel & Cristo, Albert Di (eds.) Intonation systems: a survey of twenty languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1–44.Google Scholar
Jacobsen, Wesley M. (1999). Aspects of hypothetical meaning in Japanese conditionals. In Kamio, Akio & Takami, Ken-ichi (eds.) Function and structure: in honor of Susumo Kuno. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 83–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jun, Sun-Ah (2003). The effect of phrase length and speech rate on prosodic phrasing. In Solé et al. (2003). 483–486.Google Scholar
Kimmelman, Vadim & Pfau, Ronald (forthcoming). Information structure in sign languages. In Ishihara, Caroline Féry & Shinichiro (eds.) The Oxford handbook of information structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Klatt, Dennis H. (1976). Linguistic uses of segmental duration in English: acoustic and perceptual evidence. JASA 59. 1208–1221.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohler, Klaus (1991). Terminal intonation patterns in single-accent utterances of German: phonetics, phonology and semantics. Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung der Universität Kiel 25. 115–185.Google Scholar
Krahmer, Emiel & Swerts, Marc (2009). Audiovisual prosody: introduction to the special issue. Language and Speech 52. 129–133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krifka, Manfred (2007). Basic notions of information structure. In Féry, Caroline, Fanselow, Gisbert & Krifka, Manfred (eds.) Interdisciplinary studies on information structure. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag. 13–55.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert (1986). Intonational phrasing: the case for recursive prosodic structure. Phonology Yearbook 3. 311–340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert (1996). Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Liddell, Scott K. (1980). American Sign Language syntax. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liddell, Scott K. (1986). Head thrust in ASL conditional marking. Sign Language Studies 52. 243–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meir, Irit & Sandler, Wendy (2008). A language in space: the story of Israeli Sign Language. New York & London: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Neidle, Carol, Kegl, Judy, Bahan, Dawn MacLaughlin, Benjamin & Lee, Robert G. (2000). The syntax of American Sign Language: functional categories and hierarchical structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nespor, Marina & Sandler, Wendy (1999). Prosody in Israeli Sign Language. Language and Speech 42. 143–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nespor, Marina & Vogel, Irene (1986). Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Newport, Elissa L. & Meier, Richard P. (1985). The acquisition of American Sign Language. In Slobin, Dan Isaac (ed.) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Vol. 1: The data. Hillsdale, NJ & London: Erlbaum. 881–938.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M. (1992). Sonority and syllable structure in American Sign Language. LI 23. 407–442.Google Scholar
Pfau, Ronald & Quer, Josep (2010). Nonmanuals: their grammatical and prosodic roles. In Brentari, Diane (ed.) Sign languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 381–402.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. & Beckman, Mary E. (1988). Japanese tone structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pierrehumbert, Janet B. & Hirschberg, Julia (1990). The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In Cohen, Philip R., Morgan, Jerry & Pollack, Martha E. (eds.) Intentions in communication. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 271–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prevost, Scott A. (1995). A semantics of contrast and information structure for specifying intonation in spoken language generation. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given–new information. In Cole, Peter (ed.) Radical pragmatics. New York: Academic Press. 223–255.Google Scholar
ReillyJudy Snitzer, Marina McIntire Judy Snitzer, Marina McIntire & Bellugi, Ursula (1990). The acquisition of conditionals in American Sign Language: grammaticized facial expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics 11. 369–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenstein, Ofra (2001). Israeli Sign Language: a topic prominent language. MA thesis, University of Haifa.Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy (1986). The spreading hand autosegment of American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 50. 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy (1989). Phonological representation of the sign: linearity and non-linearity in American Sign Language. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy (1999a). Cliticization and prosodic words in a sign language. In Hall, T. Alan & Kleinhenz, Ursula (eds.) Studies on the phonological word. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 223–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy (1999b). The medium and the message: prosodic interpretation of linguistic content in Israeli Sign Language. Sign Language and Linguistics 2. 187–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy (2010). Prosody and syntax in sign languages. Transactions of the Philological Society 108. 298–328.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sandler, Wendy (2012). The phonological organization of sign languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 6. 162–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sandler, Wendy & Lillo-Martin, Diane (2006). Sign language and linguistic universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy, Meir, Irit, Padden, Carol & Aronoff, Mark (2005). The emergence of grammar: systematic structure in a new language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102. 2661–2665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Šarac, Ninoslava, Schalber, Katharina, Alibašić, Tamara & Wilbur, Ronnie B. (2007). Cross-linguistic comparison of interrogatives in Croatian, Austrian, and American Sign Languages. In Perniss, Pamela M., Pfau, Roland & Steinbach, Markus (eds.) Visible variation: comparative studies in sign language structure. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 207–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schumacher, Petra B. & Baumann, Stefan (2010). Pitch accent affects the N400 during referential processing. NeuroReport 21. 618–622.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Selkirk, Elisabeth (1984). Phonology and syntax: the relation between sound and structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth (1995a). Sentence prosody: intonation, stress, and phrasing. In Goldsmith, John A. (ed.) The handbook of phonological theory. Cambridge, Mass. & Oxford: Blackwell. 550–569.Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth (1995b). The prosodic structure of function words. In Beckman, Jill N., Dickey, Laura Walsh & Urbanczyk, Suzanne (eds.) Papers in Optimality Theory. Amherst: GLSA. 439–469.Google Scholar
Senghas, Ann (2003). Intergenerational influence and ontogenetic development in the emergence of spatial grammar in Nicaraguan Sign Language. Cognitive Development 18. 511–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solé, M. J., Recasens, D. & Romero, J. (eds.) (2003). Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Barcelona: Causal Productions.Google Scholar
Steedman, Mark (1991). Structure and intonation. Lg 67. 260–296.Google Scholar
Steedman, Mark (2000). Information structure and the syntax–phonology interface. LI 31. 649–689.Google Scholar
Sutton-Spence, Rachel & Woll, Bencie (1999). The linguistics of British Sign Language: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swerts, Marc, Geluykens, Ronald & Terken, Jacques (1992). Prosodic correlates of prosodic units in spontaneous speech. In Ohala, John J., Nearey, Terrance M., Derwing, Bruce L., Hodge, Megan M. & Wiebe, Grace E. (eds.) Proceedings of the 1992 International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. Edmonton: University of Alberta. 421–424.Google Scholar
Sze, Felix (2009). Topic constructions in Hong Kong Sign Language. Sign Language and Linguistics 12. 222–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tang, Gladys (2006). Questions and negation in Hong Kong Sign Language. In Zeshan, Ulrike (ed.) Interrogatives and negative constructions in sign languages. Nijmegen: Ishara Press. 198–224.Google Scholar
Terken, Jacques & Hirschberg, Julia (1994). Deaccentuation of words representing ‘given’ information: effects of persistence of grammatical function and surface position. Language and Speech 37. 125–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vermeerbergen, Myriam, Leeson, Lorraine & Crasborn, Onno (2007). Simultaneity in signed languages: a string of sequentially organised issues. In Vermeerbergen, Myriam, Leeson, Lorraine & Crasborn, Onno (eds.) Simultaneity in signed languages: form and function. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogt-Svendsen, Mark (1990). Interrogative strukturer i norsk tengspråk. Oslo: UNIPUB.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. (1996). Prosodic structure of American Sign Language. Ms, Purdue University.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. (2000). Phonological and prosodic layering of nonmanuals in American Sign Language. In Emmorey, Karen & Lane, Harlan (eds.) The signs of language revisited: an anthology to honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima. Mahwah, NJ & London: Erlbaum. 215–244.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Patschke, Cynthia G. (1998). Body leans and the marking of contrast in American Sign Language. Journal of Pragmatics 30. 275–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Patschke, Cynthia G. (1999). Syntactic correlates of brow raise in ASL. Sign Language and Linguistics 2. 3–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woll, Bencie (1981). Question Structure in British Sign Language. In Woll, Bencie, Kyle, Jim G. & Deuchar, Margaret (eds.) Perspectives on British Sign Language and deafness. London: Croom Helm. 136–149.Google Scholar
Zeshan, Ulrike (2004). Interrogative constructions in signed languages: crosslinguistic perspectives. Lg 80. 7–39.Google Scholar
Ziv, Yael (1997). Conditionals and restrictives on generics. In Athanasiadou, Angeliki & Dirven, René (eds.) On conditionals again. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 223–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar