Prosody in Israeli Sign Language

Abstract

This is a study of the interaction of phonology with syntax, and, to some extent, with meaning, in a natural sign language. It adopts the theory of prosodic phonology (Nespor & Vogel, 1986), testing both its assumptions, which had been based on data from spoken language, and its predictions, on the language of the deaf community in Israel. Evidence is provided to show that Israeli Sign Language (ISL) divides its sentences into the prosodic constituents, phonological phrase and intonational phrase. It is argued that prominence falls at the end of phonological phrases, as the theory predicts for languages like ISL, whose basic word order is head first, then complement. It is suggested that this correspondence between prominence pattern and word order may have important implications for language acquisition. An assimilation rule whose domain is the phonological phrase provides further evidence for the phono logical phrase constituent. The rule involves a phonetic element that has no equivalentin spoken language: the non dominant hand. In this way, it is shown how a phonetic system that bears no physical relation to that of spoken language is recruited to serve a phonologicalsyntactic organization that is in many ways the same. The study also provides evidence for the next higher constituent in the prosodic hierarchy, the intonational phrase. Elements such as topicalized constituents form their own intonational phrases in ISL as in spoken languages. Intonational phrases have clear phonetic correlates, one of which is facial expressions which characterize entire intonational phrases. It is argued that facial expressions are analogous to intonational melodies in spoken languages. But unlike the tones of spoken language, which follow one another in a sequence, facial articulations can occur simultaneously with one another and with the rest of the communicative message conveyed by the hands. This difference, it is argued, results from the fact that the many facial articulators are independent, both of each other and of the primary articulators, the hands. The investigation illuminates the similarities as well as the differences of prosodic systems in the two natural human language modalities, and points out directions for future research.

Towards a Classification of Weak Hand Holds

“…On the contrary, holds are a phonetic-phonological phenomenon above the word, and therefore are by definition prosodic in nature, as the traditional notion of prosody for spoken languages encompasses all phonological phenomena above the segment. It does remain an open question whether or not all phenomena we have encountered in the two corpora lend themselves to an analysis in terms of prosodic domains in the spirit of Nespor and Vogel (1986) and Nespor and Sandler (1999). A clearer view of the functions of holds, like the one we have outlined here, combined with a detailed study of the prosodic level may however help to establish how prosodic domains are derived from and related to syntactic domains.…”

“…Rather, all holds seem to fulfil one of the four functions outlined in this paper. Their phonological appearance is likely to often align with prosodic domains, much as in the examples in Nespor and Sandler (1999).…”

“…Nespor and Sandler (1999), for example, argue that in Israeli Sign Language there are weak hand holds that have a rhythmic function and are restricted to the phonological phrase. A similar proposal within a slightly different model of sign language phonology is offered in Van der Hulst (1996).…”

“…However, holds in these contexts were not frequent in our sample. Nespor and Sandler (1999) looking at similar holds in a different sign language (Israeli Sign Language, ISL) argued that at least some holds in ISL do not appear to have a function, but only serve to make visible the rhythmic structure of sentences. In particular, they suggest that holds may mark the level of phonological phrases in the prosodic hierarchy.…”

Morphological universals and the sign language type

“…The signed responses were divided into clauses, using semantic and prosodic criteria for determining constituency and clause boundaries. Predicates were linked to their arguments according to meaning, and rhythmic cues together with facial expressions marked boundaries between constituents (Nespor and Sandler, 1999). We were also guided by a spoken language translation provided by a consultant fluent in ABSL.…”