Complexity in two-handed signs in Kenyan Sign Language

Morgan, Hope E.; Mayberry, Rachel I.

doi:10.1075/sll.15.1.07mor

Cited by 32 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 9 publications

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“…The Symmetry and Dominance Conditions serve as the phonological foundation for many studies; in particular, a large body of literature on sign phonology has looked specifically at two-handed signs, often taking the Symmetry and Dominance Conditions as the point of departure. These studies have examined many different aspects of two-handed signs, and the Symmetry and Dominance Conditions have consistently been used to motivate taxonomies of two-handed signs (see Sandler 1993;van der Hulst 1996;Morgan & Mayberry 2012).…”

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confidence: 99%

Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998)

Börstell

Lepic

2014

SL&L

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Battison (1978), without doubt one of the most-cited works in the field of sign language linguistics, proposes two conditions which together constrain structural complexity in two-handed signs. These dual constraints, the Dominance Condition and the Symmetry Condition, are typically assumed to be phonological in nature and are at work in multiple sign languages. However, few studies have sought to determine whether these conditions are indeed phonological or rather consequences of other more general and non-linguistic constraints.A notable exception is Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998), who compare sign language with gesture in order to determine whether the Symmetry Condition is specific to sign language, and therefore phonological, or common to sign and gesture, and therefore by definition not uniquely linguistic, after all. The data that they use to answer this question, balanced two-handed signs and co-speech gestures collected from retellings of animated cartoon clips, come from two populations: signers using Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT) and hearing non-signers speaking Dutch. Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst find that signers and co-speech gesturers do not differ in adhering to the Symmetry Condition. The authors take this as evidence that the Symmetry Condition can be considered a universal and non-linguistic constraint, rather than a phonological one. However, the authors also investigate whether signers and co-speech gesturers differ concerning the articulatory distinctness of their handshapes (i.e. handshapes being categorical rather than gradient) and their use of body contact as a place of articulation, and find that the signers were less likely to make use of sloppily articulated handshapes, but more likely to make use of body contact, than the gesturers. Unlike the Symmetry Condition, then, the constraints that yield these regularities in sign language can be considered phonological. One of Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst's (1998) contributions is to argue that some regularities in sign language structure are the result of abstract linguistic constraints, and others are the result of non-linguistic constraints.

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confidence: 99%

Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998)

Börstell

Lepic

2014

SL&L

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Methods of Research on Sign Language Grammars

Padden¹

2015

Research Methods in Sign Language Studies

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Neurolinguistic processing when the brain matures without language

Mayberry

Davenport

Roth

et al. 2018

Cortex

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The extent to which development of the brain language system is modulated by the temporal onset of linguistic experience relative to post-natal brain maturation is unknown. This crucial question cannot be investigated with the hearing population because spoken language is ubiquitous in the environment of newborns. Deafness blocks infants' language experience in a spoken form, and in a signed form when it is absent from the environment. Using anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography, aMEG, we neuroimaged lexico-semantic processing in a deaf adult whose linguistic experience began in young adulthood. Despite using language for 30 years after initially learning it, this individual exhibited limited neural response in the perisylvian language areas to signed words during the 300-400 ms temporal window, suggesting that the brain language system requires linguistic experience during brain growth to achieve functionality. The present case study primarily exhibited neural activations in response to signed words in dorsolateral superior parietal and occipital areas bilaterally, replicating the neural patterns exhibited by two previously case studies who matured without language until early adolescence (Ferjan Ramirez N, Leonard MK, Torres C, Hatrak M, Halgren E, Mayberry RI. 2014). The dorsal pathway appears to assume the task of processing words when the brain matures without experiencing the form-meaning network of a language.

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Complexity in two-handed signs in Kenyan Sign Language

Cited by 32 publications

References 9 publications

Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998)

Commentary on Kita, van Gijn & van der Hulst (1998)

Methods of Research on Sign Language Grammars

Neurolinguistic processing when the brain matures without language

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