Pear Stories Narratives in American Sign Language: A distributional analysis of
disfluency types
Languages: ASL, English
Fluent language processing involves an interaction between linguistic and
cognitive organization that is chunked in a planning unit. Disfluency is defined as
language disruptions in language production. In speech, if language processing lags
behind cognitive processing at the completion of a planning unit, then speakers will show
disfluency in various forms, e.g., long pauses, verbal utterances like ‘hmmm’, and/or
utterances repetitions to allow more time to plan the following unit. Planning units
themselves may also be affected internally by prolongations and restarts. Language
disruptions provide evidence that people process language in units. However, nearly all
studies on disfluency concern spoken languages. Only a hand full studies on signed
languages, mostly on ‘slips of the hand’, show that disfluency occurs in signed languages
as well (Klima and Bellugi 1979, Newkirk et al 1980, Dively 1998, Leuninger et al.
2002).
In this study we revisit Emmorey et al’s (2000) findings that English speakers
have a significantly higher amount of disfluencies per minute compared to ASL signers.
We suggest that these different rates are caused by other disfluency types that are
modality/ language specific. By focusing on several types of signed language disfluencies
and subcategories within each group, we attempt to deliver a more in-depth analysis of
the cognitive and communicative processes involved in disfluent speech. We gathered
our data from five deaf signers from the Winnipeg area who produced two narrations the
Pear Film Narrative (Chafe 1980) spaced apart by approximately one hour. We then
isolated, pauses, fillers, repetitions, sign-lengthening and lexical selection errors. By
isolating and subcategorizing disfluencies, we aim to document (1) the modality
differences and processing similarities between spoken and signed language, (2) explore
how disfluencies aide in coordinating communication by analyzing phrase level
environments and (3) look at how facial expressions and body movement are used in
disfluent events. The narrative format used in documenting disfluencies not only allows
for individual comparative analyses among each participant, but also cross-participant
analyses. This permits us to look at (4) each signer’s individual isogloss and compare
both common and independent strategies for dealing with cognitive processing and the
coordination of communication. Finally (5), we look at tendencies in sign-specific
disfluencies i.e., the sub-categorizations of sign-lengthening not found in spoken
languages.
Our preliminary results suggest that disfluencies are just as complex as those
found in spoken languages. This implies that both speakers and signers implement similar
strategies for dealing with cognitive planning and coordinative processes. However, due
to the modality differences between spoken and signed languages, surface level
disfluencies can appear quite remote from those in spoken languages making this underinvestigated area of discourse of great importance. Finally, we also suggest that facial
expressions and body movements may be used to both predict and make up part of a
disfluent event.
References
Dively, V. 1998. Conversational repairs in ASL. In Pinky extension & eye gaze:
Language use in deaf communities, ed. Ceil Lucas. 137-169. Washington, D.C.:
Gallaudet University Press.
Klima, and U. Bellugi. 1979. The signs of language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Newkirk, D., E. Klima, C. Pedersen, and U. Bellugi. 1980. Linguistic evidence from slips
of the hand. In Errors in linguistic performance. Slips of the tongue, ear, pen, and hand,
ed. Victoria A. Fromkin, 165-197. New York: Academic Press.
Leuninger, H., D. Happ, A. Hohenberger. 2002. Assessing modality-neutral modality and
modality-dependent aspects of language production: Slips of the tongue and slips of the
hand and their repairs in spoken German and German Sign Language. In Modality and
structure in signed and spoken languages, eds. R. Meier, K. Cormier, and D. QuintoPozos, 112-142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.