The results for the initial states of the MCP and wrist joints are listed in Table 4.1. The numbers at the end of each row indicate how many signs had the combination of MCP and wrist joint state indicated by the pluses and minuses; this final column adds up to the total number of tokens (42). The shaded row in this and the following two tables marks the forms that were like the citation form in Figure 4.1.
wrist MCP flexion less (+) or more (++) than 30 degrees adduction less (+) or more (++) than 20 degrees flexion
less (+) or more (++) than 30 degrees, or hyperextension (–) no. of tokens (total = 42) ++ ++ ++ 1 ++ + ++ 2 ++ + + 3 ++ + – 2 ++ + 1 ++ – 1 ++ 3 + ++ + 1 + + ++ 2 + + + 8 + + – 1 + + 2 + ++ 3 + + 6 + 3 + + 2 + 1 Table 4.1
Initial wrist and MCP positions
These data clearly show that the initial position of both the wrist and the MCP joint is highly variable. The citation form has wrist flexion and MCP flexion, and this combination occurs 6 times (14%) in the present corpus. In all but 1 case, the wrist is not fully extended, and in 30 out of 42 cases (71%), the wrist state is different from its position in the citation form. Various different positions occur, both in terms of flexion and in terms of adduction.
In 34 out of 42 cases (81%), the MCP joint was not fully extended (i.e. 0 degrees flexion), and in 28 out of 42 cases (67%), the MCP state is different from its position in the citation form.106
106 The extremes found in this sign do not line up nicely with the traditional handshape categories ‘1’ and ‘bent 1’. The MCP state varies from about 25 degrees hyperextension (categorized as ‘MCP hyperextension’ in the table above) to about 60 degrees flexion (categorized as ‘>30° MCP flexion’ in the table above). The KOMVA system distinguishes between full extension (‘1’) and about 60 degrees flexion (‘1v’) for SLN handshapes in which the PIP and DIP joints are extended.
The wrist and MCP joints work together in SAY to bring the articulator (the index finger, especially the distal end) to the initial location. Note that there is no a priori reason why these joints should be involved at all: with fully extended wrist and MCP joints the index finger can easily touch the chin, and depending on posture and body proportions this may or may not require abducting movement of the shoulder away from a position parallel to the side of the body. However, in all the items, including the forms in isolation (both the citation form and the form used by my own informant), there was some non-neutral state of the wrist and/or MCP joint.
Prediction 1 is borne out by the data, then. The phonological model therefore makes the correct prediction that the MCP joint position is not specified phonologically, giving it the same status as the arm joints such as the wrist. Of course, this gives us little information about what the forms actually look like, since the other joints of the arm work together with the wrist and MCP to articulate perceptual features like palm orientation and location. It is merely established that there is articulatory variation. The orientation feature is discussed below. Transcription of location showed that this parameter was the same for all tokens: the lower front part of the chin.
Although the realization of the feature place in terms of contact was not the main object of interest here, it is still noteworthy that in at least two tokens no physical contact between the fingertip and the chin was produced. Often, it was hard to see from a frontal view of the camera alone whether or not there was contact; this was one of the arguments for using 2 cameras at right angles for later recordings. This supports recent phonological work (van der Kooij 1997) in which it is suggested that contact is merely the optimal realization of location features (for the most part on the body), implying that for these signs less optimal non-contact realizations may occur.
The results for movement are presented in Table 4.2. The shaded row indicates tokens that have the same articulation as the citation form (elbow extension alone).
shoulder elbow wrist MCP
no. of tokens (total = 42) + + + 1 + + 2 + + 8 + + + 10 + 9 + 2 10 3 7% 30 71% 21 50% 10 26% Table 4.2
We can see in this table that in 9 cases (21%) elbow extension was the only movement, as in the citation form. In 21 other signs (50%), elbow extension is involved in executing the movement along with another joint. In only 2 cases (5%) is the movement fully distalized, involving no elbow movement whatsoever. In 21 cases (50%), wrist extension is involved, and in 10 cases (24%), MCP movement occurs. Finally, it is remarkable that 10 versions (24%) were produced without any lexical movement at all. In the two signs that were transcribed as having only wrist movement and one sign with shoulder and elbow movement, it was not quite clear whether or not the movement involved belonged to the sign SAY or was the transitional movement towards the next sign.
Only one type of source of variation in movement was taken into consideration, namely linguistic context (potentially favorable to coarticulation). In 10 cases, a clear contextual effect seemed to lead to deviation from the citation form. In 3 of these, the only movement in the sign was the transitional movement from the initial location of SAY to the initial location of the next sign, with the handshape changing during this movement. (In the remaining 7 tokens without a movement resembling that in the citation form, it was not clear whether the context led to the absence of movement.) One could either say that the lexical movement was present, but that it overlapped with the transition towards the next sign, or that the lexical movement was simply deleted. The movement in these signs was transcribed as ‘no movement’, assuming that deletion took place. Although the transitional movement is predictable in the sense that it is determined by the location of the sign that followed, there is no explanation for why the deletion of lexical movement occurred. The prosodic structure of the sentence may be of influence here; this is one of the most under-explored areas in sign linguistics (cf. Miller 1997, Sandler 1999, Boyes Braem 1999, Wilbur to appear).
Just as variation in the state of the MCP joint affected the traditional handshape parameter, so the movements of the wrist and MCP joints involved in 21 signs (50%) changed the settings for the traditional parameters of handshape and orientation. For the model proposed in Chapter 3, this is exactly what one would expect, because of the underspecified nature of these categories. The model does predict a contrast, though, between the one specified degree of freedom (the palm side for SAY) and the other degree. In Table 4.3, absolute orientation values are listed for palm and tip sides of the last phalanx of the index finger, at the start of the sign, when the finger is closest to the chin. The shaded row refers to the token in which the orientation was identical to that in the citation form.
palm finger tip no. of tokens b bcu 2 b c 2 b cu 10 bcd bcu 10 bcd cu 1 bd bu 1 bd bc 3 bd bcu 2 bd bu 1 bdi bcu 2 cd cu 2 d c 3 d bc 3 42 Table 4.3
Orientation of the palm and tip of the finger in space107
In the citation form of the sign, illustrated in Figure 4.1, the palm was pointing back- down, and the tip was pointing up-back; this only occurred once in the present corpus.
Although the data clearly confirm the prediction in that, indeed, the tip orientation is variable, the same is true for the palm orientation. Both seem to cluster around three different directions, each located in one of the eight quadrants of the space around the finger. The palm orientation is a combination of back, down, and contralateral (with 2 exceptions, where ipsilateral is combined with back and down), and the tip orientation is a combination of back, contralateral and up.
One possibility is that the orientation specification for this sign is [tip] rather than [palm]. Since the finger tip is less clearly a plane that can be parallel to the chin plane, but more like a point, this would correctly predict why both palm and tip orientation are so variable. On the other hand, the front side of the chin is not exactly a plane either, and this too might explain the variability in both dimensions. Moreover, because of the near cylindrical (symmetric) shape of the index finger, it may be that for this particular articulator, regardless of which sign it occurs in, the degree of variability that the users allow is rather large. If this is correct, the prediction is that the palm specification for flat (asymmetric) articulators (e.g. the
107 b = back, c = contralateral, d = down, i = ipsilateral, u = up. Combinations of two or three letters refer to 45 degree angles between the 90 degree ‘cardinal’ angles referred to by the letters. For example, ‘bd’ means an intermediate angle between straight back straight down. Sometimes, it was hard to categorize the form in these categories differing by 45 degree angles, leading to apparent discrepancies between the palm and tip values.
traditional B-hand) would lead to much less variability in the specified degree of freedom.
In 9 cases, the initial configuration of the articulator seemed influenced by coarticulation effects, in this case the location of the hand in the previous sign. In general, this location was fairly high in neutral space or on the head. This led to different configurations where the position of the index finger (and in some cases the whole forearm) was much less vertical than in the citation form (and in some cases even fully horizontal). In some of these cases this was due mainly to shoulder abduction (raising the elbow sidewards from the body). In other cases the orientation of the fingers was different due to wrist adduction and flexion alone (while the elbow was close to body).
For many other tokens, then, it is not immediately obvious that it is coarticulation with surrounding signs that causes the observed variation. The presence of coarticulation is hard to determine given that so little is known about prosodic characteristics of movement.