Schedule 71. StuTS + 31. TaCoS

Sign languages, the manual-visual languages of deaf communities, exhibit a high degree of iconicity in their vocabularies due to the affordances of the modality for creating visually motivated form-meaning mappings (1). The potential for iconicity creates cross-linguistic similarity between sign languages based on shared associations and properties. For instance, many sign languages represent the concept EAT by bringing the hand to the mouth (2). At the same time, sign languages consist of formational components (hand configuration, movement, location) that combine to form conventionalised signs (3), and that are a source for language-specific differences in form, including in signs that share an iconic base. For instance, the German Sign Language (DGS) and British Sign Language (BSL) signs for EAT differ in their hand configuration.

Past studies have explored how iconicity influences the lexicon in the visual modality, typically paying limited attention to signs’ formational components and their cross-linguistic differences (4–9). Other studies have conducted lexical comparisons across sign languages to establish cross-linguistic similarity, typically discarding iconic signs from the analysis (10–14). Yet, a deeper understanding of the factors that shape a manual lexicon must include how these two forces interact in sign language lexica: iconicity driving cross-linguistic similarity and language-specific conventions driving differences. In the present study, we investigate this interaction, by analysing types of iconicity (i.e., strategies to realise form-meaning mappings) and degree of form overlap in BSL and DGS.

We selected up to 10 concepts (N = 234) (concrete and abstract) elicited from deaf signers in a semantic fluency task in DGS and BSL for analysis. We classified all signs by iconic strategy (enactment, acting on, representing, personification, entity, tracing, moulding), are collecting iconicity and concreteness ratings, and establishing edit-distance, based on the formational components, for each concept.

We find that proportions of different iconic strategies in DGS and BSL are substantially similar across the languages for concrete concepts, but that interesting differences emerge for abstract concepts. These results suggest that iconicity supports similar mappings in concrete referents across sign languages, supporting the view that it is grounded in sensory-motor experience (15). However, in abstract concepts, cultural and linguistic conventions may drive variation, leading to divergence across sign languages. Phonological analysis is predicted to reveal substantive overlap for iconic signs, though granular analysis is likely to reveal subtle differences.
This investigation sheds light on how iconicity shapes the lexicon of a sign language, given language-specific constraints. This furthers our understanding of the similarities and differences between sign language lexica, giving a systematic account of pressures driving similarity and differences.

References:
1. Taub, S. F. The Analogue-Building Model of Linguistic Iconicity. in Language from the body: Iconicity and Metaphor in American Sign Language (ed. Taub, S. F.) (Cambridge University Press, 2001). doi:10.1017/CBO9780511509629.004.
2. Su, S. & Tai, J. H.-Y. Lexical comparison of signs from Taiwan, Chinese, Japanese, and American Sign Languages: Taking iconicity into account. in Taiwan Sign Language and Beyond 149–176 (The Taiwan Institute for the Humanities, National Chung Cheng University, 2009).
3. Brentari, D. Sign language phonology. (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
4. Hou, L. Iconic Patterns in San Juan Quiahije Chatino Sign Language. Sign Lang. Stud. 18, 570–611 (2018).
5. Hwang, S.-O. et al. Of the body and the hands: patterned iconicity for semantic categories. Lang. Cogn. 9, 573–602 (2017).
6. Kimmelman, V., Klezovich, A. & Moroz, G. IPSL: A database of iconicity patterns in sign languages. Creation and use. in Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (eds. Calzolari, N. et al.) 4230–4234 (ELRA, 2018).
7. Östling, R., Börstell, C. & Courtaux, S. Visual Iconicity Across Sign Languages: Large-Scale Automated Video Analysis of Iconic Articulators and Locations. Front. Psychol. 9, 725 (2018).
8. Padden, C. et al. Patterned iconicity in sign language lexicons. Gesture 13, 287–308 (2013).
9. Padden, C., Hwang, S.-O., Lepic, R. & Seegers, S. Tools for Language: Patterned Iconicity in Sign Language Nouns and Verbs. Top. Cogn. Sci. 7, 81–94 (2015).
10. Chen, Y. & Gong, Q. Dialects or languages a corpus based quantitative approach to lexical variation in common signs in Chinese Sign Language (CSL). Lingua (2020) doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102944.
11. Clark, B. Sign language varieties in Lima Peru. Sign Lang. Stud. 17, 222–264 (2017).
12. Ebling, S., Konrad, R., Braem, P. B. & Langer, G. Factors to Consider When Making Lexical Comparisons of Sign Languages: Notes from an Ongoing Comparison of German Sign Language and Swiss German Sign Language. Sign Lang. Stud. 16, 30–56 (2015).
13. Miyamoto, R. & Mori, S. Is Kenyan Sign Language a sister language of ASL?: An analysis of language nativity through comparison between KSL and ASL. Jpn. J. Sign Lang. Stud. 24, 17–30 (2015).
14. Parkhurst, S. J. & Parkhurst, D. D. Lexical Comparisons of Signed Languages and the Effects of Iconicity. in Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, University of North Dakota Session (2018). doi:10.31356/silwp.vol47.02.
15. Perniss, P. & Vigliocco, G. The bridge of iconicity: from a world of experience to the experience of language. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 369, (2014).

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Info

Day: 2022-05-27
Start time: 12:00
Duration: 00:30
Room: Eisenga (2.32)
Track: Typology and Variational Linguistics
Language: en

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