Distribution and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language

Börstell, Carl; Hörberg, Thomas; Östling, Robert

doi:10.1075/sll.19.2.01bor

Cited by 36 publications

(59 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…This relationship between frequency and duration has been demonstrated in the SSL corpus overall, where high frequency signs (not just pointing signs) are generally shorter in duration than low frequency signs (Börstell et al 2016). Indeed, grammatical signs (e.g., pronouns, question signs, conjunctions), which are highly frequent, are shorter than the less frequent content signs (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives) (Börstell et al 2016). Pointing signs thus display formational features usually associated with grammatical signs in sign languages.…”

Section: Evidence For Reductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…The shorter duration of pointing signs may be related either to their frequency, since pointing signs are generally amongst the most frequent signs in BSL conversations (Fenlon et al 2014), or to their grammatical status. This relationship between frequency and duration has been demonstrated in the SSL corpus overall, where high frequency signs (not just pointing signs) are generally shorter in duration than low frequency signs (Börstell et al 2016). Indeed, grammatical signs (e.g., pronouns, question signs, conjunctions), which are highly frequent, are shorter than the less frequent content signs (e.g., nouns, verbs, adjectives) (Börstell et al 2016).…”

Section: Evidence For Reductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

“…Another formational feature of interest is duration. Börstell et al (2016) have found pointing signs to be shorter in duration than lexical signs in Swedish Sign Language (SSL). They suggest that this difference may be due to frequency; pointing signs are generally the most frequent signs in conversations, and more frequent signs tend to be shorter in duration than less frequent signs.…”

Section: Durationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Comparing sign language and gesture: Insights from pointing

Fenlon

Cooperrider

Keane

et al. 2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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How do the signs of sign language differ from the gestures that speakers produce when they talk? We address this question by focusing on pointing. Pointing signs play an important role in sign languages, with some types functioning like pronouns in spoken language (e.g., Sandler & Lillo-Martin 2006). Pointing gestures, in contrast, are not usually described in linguistic terms even though they play an important role in everyday communication. Researchers have focused on the similarities between pointing in signers and speakers (e.g., Cormier et al. 2013), but no studies to date have directly compared the two at a fine-grained level. In this paper, we compare the formational features of 574 pointing signs produced by British Sign Language signers (BSL Corpus) and 543 pointing gestures produced by American English speakers (Tavis Smiley Corpus) with respect to three characteristics typically associated with language systems: conventionalization, reduction, and integration. We find that, although pointing signs and pointing gestures both exhibit regularities of form, pointing signs are more consistent across uses, more reduced, and more integrated into prosodic structure than pointing gestures. Pointing is thus constrained differently when it is produced along with a signed language vs. when it is produced along with a spoken language; we discuss possible sources of these constraints.

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Section: Evidence For Reductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Section: Evidence For Reductionmentioning

confidence: 67%

Section: Durationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Comparing sign language and gesture: Insights from pointing

Fenlon

Cooperrider

Keane

et al. 2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…A large-scale corpus study of British Sign Language (BSL) reports that the palm-up, glossed by the authors as a discourse marker meaning WELL, is the second most frequent sign (after the first-person pronoun) (Fenlon et al, 2014). A comparably sized corpus study also found the palm-up to be the second most frequent sign in the sign language of Australia (Auslan) (Johnston, 2012), as did a smaller corpus study of New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) (McKee and Wallingford, 2011); and it was the third most frequent sign in a corpus study of Swedish Sign Language (SSL) (Börstell et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign

2018

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During communication, speakers commonly rotate their forearms so that their palms turn upward. Yet despite more than a century of observations of such palm-up gestures, their meanings and origins have proven difficult to pin down. We distinguish two gestures within the palm-up form family: the palm-up presentational and the palm-up epistemic. The latter is a term we introduce to refer to a variant of the palm-up that prototypically involves lateral separation of the hands. This gesture-our focus-is used in speaking communities around the world to express a recurring set of epistemic meanings, several of which seem quite distinct. More striking, a similar palm-up form is used to express the same set of meanings in many established sign languages and in emerging sign systems. Such observations present a two-part puzzle: the first part is how this set of seemingly distinct meanings for the palm-up epistemic are related, if indeed they are; the second is why the palm-up form is so widely used to express just this set of meanings. We propose a network connecting the different attested meanings of the palm-up epistemic, with a kernel meaning of absence of knowledge, and discuss how this proposal could be evaluated through additional developmental, corpus-based, and experimental research. We then assess two contrasting accounts of the connection between the palm-up form and this proposed meaning network, and consider implications for our understanding of the palm-up form family more generally. By addressing the palm-up puzzle, we aim, not only to illuminate a widespread form found in gesture and sign, but also to provide insights into fundamental questions about visual-bodily communication: where communicative forms come from, how they take on new meanings, and how they become integrated into language in signing communities.

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“…Here, two fingerspelled words of this type are described in more detail, the fingerspelled words fs pen, from the February 22 nd broadcast, and fs powder, from the February 24 th broadcast. These words are instructive because, as common nouns, they provide an opportunity to see the effects of reduction on the durations of repeated fingerspelled words in a single discourse context (see also Börstell et al 2016 Table 4 shows the durations for each repeated word token in succession; the token durations reported here were measured through manual coding in ELAN (Brugman & Russel 2004).…”

Section: Fingerspelled Wordsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A usage-based alternative to “lexicalization” in sign language linguistics

Lepic

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The usage-based framework considers linguistic structure to be emergent from how human languages are used, and shaped by domain-general cognitive processes. This paper appeals to the cognitive processes of chunking, entrenchment, and routinization to explore a usage-based alternative to the structuralist notion of lexicalization, as it has traditionally been used in sign language linguistics. This exploration shows that chunking, entrenchment, and routinization are useful for re-contextualizing three "lexicalization" phenomena sign language linguistics: multiword expressions, fingerspelled words, and morphologically complex signs. An advantage of the usage-based approach for linguistic theory and description is that it anticipates the existence of linguistic constructions that exhibit analyzable internal structure and holistic properties simultaneously. This alternate framing alleviates the burden for sign language linguists to determine whether or not linguistic constructions have become "lexicalized", and instead directs analysts to focus on the degree to which linguistic constructs are established in any language user's mental representation of their language.

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Distribution and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language

Cited by 36 publications

References 66 publications

Comparing sign language and gesture: Insights from pointing

Comparing sign language and gesture: Insights from pointing

The Palm-Up Puzzle: Meanings and Origins of a Widespread Form in Gesture and Sign

A usage-based alternative to “lexicalization” in sign language linguistics

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