Frequency Characteristics of American Sign Language

Morford, Jill P.; MacFarlane, James

doi:10.1353/sls.2003.0003

Cited by 74 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The Morford and MacFarlane Corpus of ASL is a small corpus of 4,111 signs, collected from videotaped conversations and narratives, ranging from formal to casual registers, produced by signers from across the United States (Morford & MacFarlane 2003). Importantly, this corpus is representative of real usage and was coded for all sign types used in the discourse context, including core lexical signs, which can be found in a dictionary of ASL, as well as classifier signs, deictics, fingerspelling, inflected numerical signs, and proper-name signs of places or individuals, which are often not included in dictionaries.…”

Section: Asl and Libras Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Winter

Bergen

2012

Lang Cognition

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Abstract. While the arbitrariness of the sign has occupied a central space in linguistic theory for a century, counter-evidence to this basic tenet has been mounting. Recent findings from cross-linguistic studies on spoken languages have suggested that, contrary to purely arbitrary distributions of phonological content, languages often exhibit systematic and regular phonological and sub-phonological patterns of form-meaning mappings. To date, studies of distributional tendencies of this kind have not been conducted for signed languages.In an investigation of phoneme distribution in American Sign Language (ASL) and Língua Brasileira de Sinais (Libras), tokens of the claw-5 handshape were extracted and analyzed for whether the handshape contributed to the overall meaning of the sign. The data suggests that distribution of the claw-5 handshape is not randomly distributed across the lexicon, but clusters around six formmeaning patterns: convex-concave, Unitary-elements, non-compact matter, hand-as-hand, touch, and interlocking. Interestingly, feature-level motivations were uncovered as the source of the mappings These findings are considered within a new cognitive framework to better understand how and why sub-morphemic units develop and maintain motivated form-meaning mappings. The model proposed here, Embodied Cognitive Phonology, builds on cognitive and usage-based approaches but incorporates theories of embodiment to address the source of the claw-5 mappings. Embodied Cognitive Phonology provides a unifying framework for understanding the perceived differences in phonological patterning and organization across the modalities. Both language-internal and languageexternal sources of motivation contribute to the emergence of form-meaning mappings. Arbitrariness is argued to be but one possible outcome from the process of emergence and schematization of phonological content, and exists alongside motivation as a legitimate state of linguistic units of all sizes of complexity. Importantly, because language is dynamic, these states are not fixed, but are in continuous flux, as language users reinvent and reinterpret form and meaning over time.

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Section: Asl and Libras Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Winter

Bergen

2012

Lang Cognition

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“…Moreover, there is a limited amount of information available on the frequency with which different signs occur in ASL. Morford and MacFarlane (2003) carried out an analysis of the frequency characteristics of a corpus of 4,111 spontaneously-produced ASL signs. Their resulting database is useful, but it provides substantially more information about high-frequency signs than about low-frequency signs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic reduction and variation in American Sign Language: A quantitative study of sign lowering

Tyrone¹,

Mauk

2012

Laboratory Phonology

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During normal sign language use, a signer’s productions will often be reduced from the citation forms of signs. This study examines a form of phonetic reduction in American Sign Language, in which signs that are located at the forehead are lowered in space. In particular, we explore the effects of signing rate and phonetic environment on the lowering of specific ASL signs and on their phonetic variation along the other two movement axes. Movement data were captured as native signers produced utterances that were controlled for phonetic environment and signing rate. We found that all signers produced lowered forms as an effect of the phonetic factors that we manipulated. In addition, several rate-induced effects occurred, which we had not predicted. Results are discussed in relation to past research on variation in sign production and in speech.

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“…There are very limited data on lexical frequency in ASL, which creates a great setback for researchers in phonetics and s ociophonetics. Morford and MacFarlane (2003) carried out a preliminary study on lexical frequency in ASL, with 4,111 signs produced by 27 different signers, but much more needs to be done to allow thorough investigation of frequency effects in sign phonetics. Russell et al recognized this issue and carried out their own small experiment to collect frequency data.…”

Section: Undershoot -Russell Wilkinson and Janzenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetics of sign location in ASL: Comments on papers by Russell, Wilkinson, & Janzen and by Grosvald & Corina

Tyrone

2012

Laboratory Phonology

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Frequency Characteristics of American Sign Language

Cited by 74 publications

References 13 publications

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Language comprehenders represent object distance both visually and auditorily

Phonetic reduction and variation in American Sign Language: A quantitative study of sign lowering

Phonetics of sign location in ASL: Comments on papers by Russell, Wilkinson, & Janzen and by Grosvald & Corina

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