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In this work, we address structural, iconic and social dimensions of the emergence of phonological systems in two emerging sign languages. A comparative analysis is conducted of data from a village sign language (Central Taurus Sign Language; CTSL) and a community sign language (Nicaraguan Sign Language; NSL). Both languages are approximately 50 years old, but the sizes and social structures of their respective communities are quite different. We find important differences between the two languages’ handshape inventories. CTSL's handshape inventory has changed more slowly than NSL's across the same time period. In addition, while the inventories of the two languages are of similar size, handshape complexity is higher in NSL than in CTSL. This work provides an example of the unique and important perspective that emerging sign languages offer regarding longstanding questions about how phonological systems emerge.

Does knowledge of language transfer spontaneously across language modalities? For example, do English speakers, who have had no command of a sign language, spontaneously project grammatical constraints from English to linguistic signs? Here, we address this question by examining the constraints on doubling. We first demonstrate that doubling (e.g.panana; generally: ABB) is amenable to two conflicting parses (identity vs. reduplication), depending on the level of analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language spontaneously project these two parses to novel ABB signs in American Sign Language. Moreover, the chosen parse (for signs) is constrained by the morphology ofspokenlanguage. Hebrew speakers can project the morphological parse when doubling indicates diminution, but English speakers only do so when doubling indicates plurality, in line with the distinct morphological properties of their spoken languages. These observations suggest that doubling in speech and signs is constrained by a common set of linguistic principles that are algebraic, amodal and abstract.

Two differences between signed and spoken languages that have been widely discussed in the literature are: the degree to which morphology is expressed simultaneously (rather than sequentially), and the degree to which iconicity is used, particularly in predicates of motion and location, often referred to as classifier predicates. In this paper we analyze a set of properties marking agency and number in four sign languages for their crosslinguistic similarities and differences regarding simultaneity and iconicity. Data from American Sign Language (ASL), Italian Sign Language (LIS), British Sign Language (BSL), and Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) are analyzed. We find that iconic, cognitive, phonological, and morphological factors contribute to the distribution of these properties. We conduct two analyses—one of verbs and one of verb phrases. The analysis of classifierverbsshows that, as expected, all four languages exhibit many common formal and iconic properties in the expression of agency and number. The analysis of classifierverb phrases(VPs)—particularly, multiple-verb predicates—reveals (a) that it is grammatical in all four languages to express agency and number within a single verb, but also (b) that there is crosslinguistic variation in expressing agency and number across the four languages. We argue that this variation is motivated by how each language prioritizes, or ranks, several constraints. The rankings can be captured in Optimality Theory. Some constraints in this account, such as a constraint to be redundant, are found in all information systems and might be considered non-linguistic; however, the variation in constraint ranking in verb phrases reveals the grammatical and arbitrary nature of linguistic systems.

The link between language and cognition is unique to our species and emerges early in infancy. Here, we provide the first evidence that this precocious language-cognition link is not limited to spoken language, but is instead sufficiently broad to include sign language, a language presented in the visual modality. Four- to six-month-old hearing infants, never before exposed to sign language, were familiarized to a series of category exemplars, each presented by a woman who either signed in American Sign Language (ASL) while pointing and gazing toward the objects, or pointed and gazed without language (control). At test, infants viewed two images: one, a new member of the now-familiar category; and the other, a member of an entirely new category. Four-month-old infants who observed ASL distinguished between the two test objects, indicating that they had successfully formed the object category; they were as successful as age-mates who listened to their native (spoken) language. Moreover, it was specifically the linguistic elements of sign language that drove this facilitative effect: infants in the control condition, who observed the woman only pointing and gazing failed to form object categories. Finally, the cognitive advantages of observing ASL quickly narrow in hearing infants: by 5- to 6-months, watching ASL no longer supports categorization, although listening to their native spoken language continues to do so. Together, these findings illuminate the breadth of infants' early link between language and cognition and offer insight into how it unfolds.

Fingerspelling, in which words are signed letter by letter, is an important component of American Sign Language. Most previous work on automatic fingerspelling recognition has assumed that the boundaries of fingerspelling regions in signing videos are known beforehand. In this paper, we consider the task of fingerspelling detection in raw, untrimmed sign language videos. This is an important step towards building real-world fingerspelling recognition systems. We propose a benchmark and a suite of evaluation metrics, some of which reflect the effect of detection on the downstream fingerspelling recognition task. In addition, we propose a new model that learns to detect fingerspelling via multi-task training, incorporating pose estimation and fingerspelling recognition (transcription) along with detection, and compare this model to several alternatives. The model outperforms all alternative approaches across all metrics, establishing a state of the art on the benchmark., Comment: CVPR 2021

When people speak or sign, they not only describe using words but also depict and indicate. How are these different methods of communication integrated? Here, we focus on pointing and, in particular, on commonalities and differences in how pointing is integrated into language by speakers and signers. One aspect of this integration is semantic—how pointing is integrated with the meaning conveyed by the surrounding language. Another aspect is structural—how pointing as a manual signal is integrated with other signals, vocal in speech, or manual in sign. We investigated both of these aspects of integration in a novel pointing elicitation task. Participants viewed brief live-action scenarios and then responded to questions about the locations and objects involved. The questions were designed to elicit utterances in which pointing would serve different semantic functions, sometimes bearing the full load of reference (‘load-bearing points’) and other times sharing this load with lexical resources (‘load-sharing points’). The elicited utterances also provided an opportunity to investigate issues of structural integration. We found that, in both speakers and signers, pointing was produced with greater arm extension when it was load bearing, reflecting a common principle of semantic integration. However, the duration of the points patterned differently in the two groups. Speakers’ points tended to span across words (or even bridge over adjacent utterances), whereas signers’ points tended to slot in between lexical signs. Speakers and signers thus integrate pointing into language according to common principles, but in a way that reflects the differing structural constraints of their language. These results shed light on how language users integrate gradient, less conventionalized elements with those elements that have been the traditional focus of linguistic inquiry.

In this article, we analyze the grammatical incorporation of demonstratives in a tactile language, emerging in communities of DeafBlind signers in the US who communicate via reciprocal, tactile channels—a practice known as “protactile.” In the first part of the paper, we report on a synchronic analysis of recent data, identifying four types of “taps,” which have taken on different functions in protacitle language and communication. In the second part of the paper, we report on a diachronic analysis of data collected over the past 8 years. This analysis reveals the emergence of a new kind of “propriotactic” tap, which has been co-opted by the emerging phonological system of protactile language. We link the emergence of this unit to both demonstrative taps, and backchanneling taps, both of which emerged earlier. We show how these forms are all undergirded by an attention-modulation function, more or less backgrounded, and operating across different semiotic systems. In doing so, we contribute not only to what is known about demonstratives in tactile languages, but also to what is known about the role of demonstratives in the emergence of new languages.

Item does not contain fulltext When we use our hands to estimate the length of a stick in the Müller-Lyer illusion, we are highly susceptible to the illusion. But when we prepare to act on sticks under the same conditions, we are significantly less susceptible. Here, we asked whether people are susceptible to illusion when they use their hands not to act on objects but to describe them in spontaneous co-speech gestures or conventional sign languages of the deaf. Thirty-two English speakers and 13 American Sign Language signers used their hands to act on, estimate the length of, and describe sticks eliciting the Müller-Lyer illusion. For both gesture and sign, the magnitude of illusion in the description task was smaller than the magnitude of illusion in the estimation task and not different from the magnitude of illusion in the action task. The mechanisms responsible for producing gesture in speech and sign thus appear to operate not on percepts involved in estimation but on percepts derived from the way we act on objects. 11 p.

[EN]Infants readily extract linguistic rules from speech. Here, we ask whether this advantage extends to linguistic stimuli that do not rely on the spoken modality. To address this question, we first examine whether infants can differentially learn rules from linguistic signs. We show that, despite having no previous experience with a sign language, six-month-old infants can extract the reduplicative rule (AA) from dynamic linguistic signs, and the neural response to reduplicative linguistic signs differs from reduplicative visual controls, matched for the dynamic spatiotemporal properties of signs. We next demonstrate that the brain response for reduplicative signs is similar to the response to reduplicative speech stimuli. Rule learning, then, apparently depends on the linguistic status of the stimulus, not its sensory modality. These results suggest that infants are language-ready. They possess a powerful rule system that is differentially engaged by all linguistic stimuli, speech or sign. This work was supported by NSF Grants 1528411 and 502477 to IB, IOF Marie Curie Fellowship 624972, the Basque Foundation for Science IKERBASQUE, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation [Grant nr. PID2019-105100RJ-I00] to IdlCP, and the ERC Consolidator Grant "BabyRhythm" nr. 773202 to JG.

In this paper two dimensions of handshape complexity are analyzed as potential building blocks of phonological contrast—joint complexity and finger group complexity. We ask whether sign language patterns are elaborations of those seen in the gestures produced by hearing people without speech (pantomime) or a more radical re-organization of them. Data from adults and children are analyzed to address issues of cross-linguistic variation, emergence, and acquisition. Study 1 addresses these issues in adult signers and gesturers from the United States, Italy, China, and Nicaragua. Study 2 addresses these issues in child and adult groups (signers and gesturers) from the United States, Italy, and Nicaragua. We argue that handshape undergoes a fairly radical reorganization, including loss and reorganization of iconicity and feature redistribution, as phonologization takes place in both of these dimensions. Moreover, while the patterns investigated here are not evidence of duality of patterning, we conclude that they are indeed phonological, and that they appear earlier than related morphosyntactic patterns that use the same types of handshape.

Across languages, certain linguistic forms are systematically preferred to others (e.g. bla > lba). But whether these preferences concern abstract constraints on language structure, generally, or whether these restrictions only apply to speech is unknown. To address this question, here we ask whether linguistic constraints previously identified in spoken languages apply to signs. One such constraint, ANCHORING, restricts the structure of reduplicated forms (AB → ABB, not ABA). In two experiments, native ASL signers rated the acceptability of novel reduplicated forms that either violated ANCHORING (ABA) or obeyed it (ABB). In Experiment 1, signers made a forced choice between ABB and ABA forms; in Experiment 2, signers rated signs individually. Results showed that signers prefer signs that obey ANCHORING over ANCHORING violations (ABB > ABA). These findings show for the first time that ANCHORING is operative in ASL signers. These results suggest that some linguistic constraints are amodal, applying to both speech and signs.

In this paper. we offer a preliminary investigation of some aspects of individual and group variation in sign rate and rhythm, considering the sociolinguistic factors of Age (younger and older adults), Gender, and Sign Variety (Black and Mainstream American Sign Language). Differences in sign rate and rhythmic structure among signers were found in signers’ elicited narratives. A novel approach to phrasal rhythm is introduced, called “rhythm ratio”, which considers sign duration and transition duration together and is similar in spirit to the “normalized pairwise variability index” (nPVI) in spoken languages. This measure appears to be promising as a method for identifying rhythm class in sign languages; however, due to the small number of signers in each group these results can only be suggestive.

Following the Articulatory Model of Handshape (Keane 2014), which mathematically defines handshapes on the basis of joint angles, we propose two methods for calculating phonetic similarity: a contour difference method, which assesses the amount of change between handshapes within a fingerspelled word, and a positional similarity method, which compares similarity between pairs of letters in the same position across two fingerspelled words. Both methods are validated with psycholinguistic evidence based on similarity ratings by deaf signers. The results indicate that the positional similarity method more reliably predicts native signer intuition judgements about handshape similarity. This new similarity metric fills a gap in the literature (the lack of a theory-driven similarity metric) that has been empty since effectively the beginning of sign-language linguistics.

Does knowledge of language transfer across language modalities? For example, can speakers who have had no sign language experience spontaneously project grammatical principles of English to American Sign Language (ASL) signs? To address this question, here, we explore a grammatical illusion. Using spoken language, we first show that a single word with doubling (e.g., trafraf) can elicit conflicting linguistic responses, depending on the level of linguistic analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language extend these same principles to novel ASL signs. Remarkably, the morphological analysis of ASL signs depends on the morphology of participants' spoken language. Speakers of Malayalam (a language with rich reduplicative morphology) prefer XX signs when doubling signals morphological plurality, whereas no such preference is seen in speakers of Mandarin (a language with no productive plural morphology). Our conclusions open up the possibility that some linguistic principles are amodal and abstract.

Some concepts are more essential for human communication than others. In this paper, we investigate whether the concept of agent-backgrounding is sufficiently important for communication that linguistic structures for encoding this concept are present in young sign languages. Agent-backgrounding constructions serve to reduce the prominence of the agent – the English passive sentence a book was knocked over is an example. Although these constructions are widely attested cross-linguistically, there is little prior research on the emergence of such devices in new languages. Here we studied how agent-backgrounding constructions emerge in Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL) and adult homesign systems. We found that NSL signers have innovated both lexical and morphological devices for expressing agent-backgrounding, indicating that conveying a flexible perspective on events has deep communicative value. At the same time, agent-backgrounding devices did not emerge at the same time as agentive devices. This result suggests that agent-backgrounding does not have the same core cognitive status as agency. The emergence of agent-backgrounding morphology appears to depend on receiving a linguistic system as input in which linguistic devices for expressing agency are already well-established.

Language emergence describes moments in historical time when nonlinguistic systems become linguistic. Because language can be invented de novo in the manual modality, this offers insight into the emergence of language in ways that the oral modality cannot. Here we focus on homesign, gestures developed by deaf individuals who cannot acquire spoken language and have not been exposed to sign language. We contrast homesign with (a) gestures that hearing individuals produce when they speak, as these cospeech gestures are a potential source of input to homesigners, and (b) established sign languages, as these codified systems display the linguistic structure that homesign has the potential to assume. We find that the manual modality takes on linguistic properties, even in the hands of a child not exposed to a language model. But it grows into full-blown language only with the support of a community that transmits the system to the next generation. *

Does knowledge of language consist of abstract principles, or is it fully embodied in the sensorimotor system? To address this question, we investigate the double identity of doubling (e.g., slaflaf, or generally, XX; where X stands for a phonological constituent). Across languages, doubling is known to elicit conflicting preferences at different levels of linguistic analysis (phonology vs. morphology). Here, we show that these preferences are active in the brains of individual speakers, and they are demonstrably distinct from sensorimotor pressures. We first demonstrate that doubling in novel English words elicits divergent percepts: Viewed as meaningless (phonological) forms, doubling is disliked (e.g., slaflaf < slafmak), but once doubling in form is systematically linked to meaning (e.g., slaf = ball, slaflaf = balls), the doubling aversion shifts into a reliable (morphological) preference. We next show that sign-naive speakers spontaneously project these principles to novel signs in American Sign Language, and their capacity to do so depends on the structure of their spoken language (English vs. Hebrew). These results demonstrate that linguistic preferences doubly dissociate from sensorimotor demands: A single stimulus can elicit diverse percepts, yet these percepts are invariant across stimulus modality––for speech and signs. These conclusions are in line with the possibility that some linguistic principles are abstract, and they apply broadly across language modality.