Phonological segments, syllables and lexical components: a parallel linguistic
modality analysis in a cognitive study.
Since the greatest difference between sign and spoken languages is their sensory
modality, which results in distinct phonological and lexical structures, it is
fundamental to provide a parallel linguistic analysis to study the cognitive
performances between deaf and hearing individuals. Even though a great part of the
research focusing on semantic processing between deaf and hearing individuals does
not regard the linguistic influence in the performances of those studies, linguistic
modality seems to affect the semantic organization (Moita, 2012).
Focusing on the possible influence of linguistic modality in semantic organization
between early deaf signers, late deaf signers and hearing individuals, a category
fluency task on three linguistic modalities was developed. Therefore, it was essential
to identify the phonological and lexical aspects of the working languages and create
comparative variables to classify the linguistic clusters from deaf and hearing
individuals (Moita, 2012). This study compares the semantic performance of three
groups of subjects with different language acquisition backgrounds and with distinct
language modalities, solving those dissimilarities by adapting the task to each
modality and equally comparing the performance between groups.
Phonological analysis was based on phonological elements and prosodic units within
the signs or words, which can be labelled as syllables, and lexical analysis was based
on initial and last lexical items in the compound words.
Results demonstrate that linguistic modality affects the semantic performance of early
deaf signers, late signers and hearing individuals. In general, deaf signers
demonstrated comparable results with hearing individuals when the task was
performed in their natural linguistic modality.
This type of analysis provides us with a more direct and feasible comparative
evaluation when the sample is comprised of signers/speakers of different modality
languages.
References
Moita, M. (2012). Linguistic Modalty Effects in Semantic Processing in Deaf
Individuals. Master Thesis. University of Lisbon.