Metodología de encuestas

non-linguistic §2.2.3 sequential phonological context properties of the speaker / signer §2.2.3.1 properties of the addressee §2.2.3.2 properties of the situation §2.2.3.3 prosodic structure social properties

age, gender, social class, ethnic group,

region physiological properties fatigue, emotional state practical circumstances distance between the

participants, visual or acoustic noise physiological

properties body size, voice quality, fatigue, emotional state, hand dominance

social properties age, gender, social class, ethnic group

social circumstances topic of conversation, social

context, relation between signer and

addressee personal style

Figure 2.1

Factors responsible for phonetic variation of signs

An important set of variables that is left out in this survey concerns the extent to which signer and addressee are both part of the Deaf community. Membership of the Deaf community is defined by a set of variables that includes whether a person does or does not have a hearing loss (and to what degree), but more importantly whether a person has Deaf parents, learned sign language early in life, and has social ties with the rest of the Deaf community (Baker-Shenk & Cokely 1980, Reagan 1995). When a native signer signs to someone outside the Deaf community, some form of code mixing often occurs between the sign language and a spoken language. Studies of such contact signing have mostly centered on morphosyntactic variables, and even though phonetic and phonological changes may occur as well, these situations are left out of consideration in order to not complicate the issue.

The different factors will now be discussed in turn in the sections indicated in the table.

2.2.2 Linguistic factors

The definition of phonetic variation as not carrying semantic distinctions, or in other words as not being phonologically distinctive, still leaves open the possibility that

there are linguistic factors that lead to differences in the surface forms of signs. There are at least two such linguistic factors.

Firstly, the sequential phonological context can lead to ‘coarticulation’ or ‘assimilation’ effects. In speech, coarticulation is typically studied within the word. For example, the articulation of different vowels after a given consonant leading to modifications in the articulatory gesture for the consonants (Laver 1994). In sign languages studied to date there is very little sequential structure in lexical items, and coarticulation is therefore predicted to be found mostly when two or more signs are realized in sequence. Such coarticulation in sign languages has been studied for American Sign Language (ASL) by Wilcox (1992) and Cheek (2000), among others. These studies investigated changes in the articulation of handshape induced by different sequential contexts, the former looking at fingerspelling of two or more letters in sequence, the latter looking at sequences of two signs. The results for both types of studies indicated that subtle timing differences exist in the movement of the fingers towards their target state depending on the following and (primarily) the preceding handshape. These context effects are gradual and not categorical: the observed changes should be characterized as (phonetic) coarticulation and not (phonological) assimilation.23

Another coarticulation effect that has been mentioned in the literature concerns whether a sign is articulated with one or two hands. Leaving aside lexical items in which the so-called ‘weak hand’ serves as a place of articulation, signs may be articulated with one hand or with two hands. This is a phonological property of signs; although few minimal pairs exist differing only in this feature, it is not predictable whether a sign is one-handed or two-handed, and therefore this information should be stored in the lexical representation of the sign. In two-handed signs, one hand is more or less the mirror image of the other hand: it has the same

23 _{Liddell & Johnson (1989) suggest that the location of the preceding or following sign may determine} whether the movement direction of a sign in ASL is reversed (this is analyzed as metathesis), or whether the movement is reduced to a small contacting movement. They further suggest that the height of the location of neighboring signs plays a role in determining whether or not a sign is articulated in a lower location than in its citation form. In a pilot study of the sign DEAFASL, which has downwards movement on

the cheek, Lucas (1995) found that variants with upward movement or contacting movement were not correlated to specific sequential contexts, but rather to the syntactic function of the sign (adjective rather than predicate or noun) and to the style (informal rather than formal). This finding was replicated in Bayley, Lucas & Rose (2000), who found moreover that if the following sign was not made at the location ‘cheek’ (but rather higher or lower) the occurrence of the contact variant of DEAFASL was

increased. However, the authors do not make clear why only these three possible realizations of DEAFASL

were considered, and not finer distinctions in either the size of the movement and the precise beginning and end locations. The implicit claim seems to be that the three variants are phonologically distinct, having a different segmental structure when analyzed in the model of Liddell & Johnson (1989). It is precisely this view on segments that is contested by several other researchers (for an overview, see Wilbur 1993). Even though many of them would agree that the three forms that were considered can be phonologically distinctive in many sign languages, it is not clear why other variants were not taken into consideration. Lucas, Bayley, Rose & Wulf (to appear) further found that a high location of the preceding sign decreased the chance of a number of signs being articulated lower than on the head (the citation forms), while a preceding or following pause increased the chance of the occurrence of such a variant. In this study there was no discussion of the selection of the variants either, and the distinction that was studied appears to be limited to ‘head’ vs. ‘lower than the head’.

handshape and location, and the movement may be synchronic or asynchronic (alternating). It has been observed in Australian Sign Language (Auslan) that signs that are normally one-handed can become two-handed when preceded or followed by a two-handed sign (Johnston & Schembri 1998), but it is not clear what conditions this change nor whether it is gradual or categorical. A complicating factor in this spreading of the weak hand is that it can also be used distinctively by morphosyntactic and discourse-level constructions, although it has not yet been investigated for SLN in which circumstances such constructions are used.24

Miller (1997) discusses a phenomenon that he calls ‘prosodic imbrication’ (in French “imbrication prosodique”, p. 148). In signs in Quebec Sign Language (LSQ) that have a repeated alternating movement of the two hands, the last cycle of movement of one hand can sometimes be deleted, that hand instead executing another sign. This process may be constrained by phonological structure, but it also could be argued to be an instance of coarticulation (Chris Miller, personal communication).

The standard conception of coarticulation is that it is a smoothing out of different consecutive articulatory gestures, which can be mathematically modeled by having the gestures overlap in time. These different overlapping gestures often are physiologically independent from each other. For example, in speech, movement of the jaw or tongue is largely independent of the movement of the velum or lips. In the realization of the simultaneous parameters handshape, orientation, location, and movement in sign languages, one can hypothesize the existence of ‘simultaneous coarticulation’. The articulators that produce the different parameters are not independent, and it seems plausible that, for example, the realization of a specific location value such as chin can influence the realization of an orientation value such as fingertips pointing sidewards. Such interactions between parameters have received little discussion in the literature (Battison, Markowicz & Woodward 1975, Battison 1978, Greftegreff 1992). In the following chapters I will present evidence for the claim that there are various limitations on combinations of values for the three static parameters handshape, orientation, and location. These limitations are not phonotactic restrictions on the sign, but limitations inherent in the manual articulators, which articulate a more limited set of phonological distinctions than is sometimes assumed. Although there are restrictions on what the articulator can do, then, there is no significant sense in which this can be called ‘coarticulation’.

A second linguistic factor responsible for phonetic variation consists of differences in prosodic properties of signs. Prosodic variables that have been identified in spoken languages include for example the position in the sentence leading to differences in timing: overall, units (such as segments or syllables) tend to be longer at the end of a sentence than at the beginning of a sentence (Cruttenden 1986). For sign languages, there has been relatively little research on prosodic

24 _{A further case of coarticulation that has been observed in Auslan concerns the phonetic realization of} the location of a sign. The location of some signs that are made in neutral space can differ as the result of morphosyntactic processes, but apparently the location of these signs can also be influenced by the height of the hands in the preceding sign (Johnston 1997).

structure and phonetic correlates of different prosodic categories. It is therefore not easy to evaluate the kind of variation that results from prosodic structure and demarcate the remaining phonetic variation.

Wilbur (1999) reviews some of the studies that have been performed on focused elements, showing that the main correlate of such non-lexical stress is increased acceleration of the hand movement. Although there are some phonological differences in what has been termed the ‘manner’ of the movement, the ones such as ‘tensed movement’ having an effect on speed, duration, size or acceleration are limited to a small number of signs. It is still under debate whether all manner features have an effect throughout the lexicon (see §3.4.2 below).

Miller (2000) argues on the basis of data from LSQ that many of these movement characteristics, such as the number of repetitions (none, one, many), the size of the movement (small, large), the shape of the movement (straight, arc- shaped, circular), and the distinction between unidirectional and bidirectional, can be analyzed as the phonetic correlates of a difference in prosodic structure. Some of this prosodic structure seems to be part of the lexical item, and replaces traditional features referring to these movement properties, while other parts of this prosodic structure involves units larger than the sign.

Finally, Coulter (1993) found that in ASL the height of the hands in signs with the same phonological location varies, being higher for stressed signs and lower for sentence-initial and sentence-final signs. The limited scope of this study, using only lists of the number signs one through five, makes these results hard to interpret.