Psychology of Language
PSYCH 155/LING 155
TA: Hilary Cunningham
American Sign Language
What is Sign Language?
What is Language?
1. What is Language?
Language is the cognitive system that links the sensory and cognitive
representations. The system is comprised of a series of intermediate
representations (acoustic, phonetic, lexical, syntactic) and the processes that
link them.
sound waves
(either hearing or
motor commands)
concepts (e.g.,
blackhole)
24
What is Sign Language?
What is Language?
2. How is Sign Language different?
Language is the cognitive system that links the sensory and cognitive
representations. The system is comprised of a series of intermediate
representations (acoustic, phonetic, lexical, syntactic) and the processes that
link them.
sound waves
(either hearing or
motor commands)
•
The difference is in the sensory representation.
•
In sign language, the sensory representation is
visual rather than auditory.
•
The intermediate representations closest to the
sensory side will also be different because of this.
•
conceptswill
(e.g.,
Comparable levels of representation
be
blackhole)
present, but they will be processed by the visual
system rather than the auditory system.
24
“Acoustic/Phonetic”
Representation:
Signs
“Acoustic/Phonetic” Representation
One way we were able to
accomplish this was by
describing each sound by a
set of features
•
•
place of articulation,
manner of articulation,
and voicing for consonants
height and backness for
vowels
400
600
800
1000
•
For spoken language, we saw
a lot of variation in the
physical characteristics of
sounds between different
speakers, so we needed a
way to group sounds together
to tell which ones were the
same and which were
different
1200
•
200
Recall...
F1 (in Hz)
•
A large corpus of vowel prod
Hillenbrand 1995
Predictio
for each
overlap w
for other
i iii iiiiiiii i i
u uuu
i
i iii ii i
i
u
i
uuuu
u
i i i i i ii e ii i i !! ii ! !
u uuuuuuuuuuuuuu u o
i
i
i
ei
i! ! ! ! !
!
!
i
u
i
uu!u!u uu
!
! !!
i
i i i i i iiiii iiii! ie!iii !iiii !i!iee!i ii !e!! ! e! ee!! e!!!!e! e!e!!!ee!!e!!!! e! ! u uu u uuu!uuuu!u! !!uuuuu!u!uu!u!oououuoouooouo
i i i i i i iii !! ! e !i !! e!! e! !
u! !u !u!u!u!!!!!uuuooo o oou
uu
!! ouuu!uuo
i ii i i i i i ! iei!e! !!! ! !!eee! !! e! u!e !eeeeee e! e e
uu !u!!
u
e
!
i
e
e
e
!
u
u
!
e
!
!
!
e
!
u
e
e
!
i
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i ii
e e !!! !! !
!
!o o
i ii ei! !i ! i e!!! e! !e u!!
!
!
u
e e e !! eee e! ! e !! !e e e !æ ! u! !! ! u!! ! ! u uo ooo ooo oo
ææ
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e! e!ee!æe!ee!eeee!! !e! ! eæ æ
æ
!
i
æ
æ
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æ
æ
o
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ee
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! ! !o oo!o!!oo ooo o!o!o
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e eeeeæee e!e!e!æ
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e æ ææ
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3500
3000
2500
2000 ! ! 1500
F2 (in HZ)
1000
Let’s look
Problem
be quite
between
types.
500
“Acoustic/Phonetic” Representation
•
Similarly, in Sign Language...
•
There may be variation in how different people make the same sign.
•
Several signs may overlap in some of their properties.
•
So, we need a way of grouping signs together to know which are the
same and which are different.
•
A sign can be described by a set of features:
•
•
Hand Shape
•
Palm Facing
•
Location Relative to the “Speaker”
•
Movement
let’s look at each of these features...
Hand Shape
➡
basic arrangement of fingers and hands
➡
alphabet hand shapes
➡
non-alphabet hand shapes
➡
minimal pair: two words that are the same across all but one feature
example: home vs. yesterday
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Discussion/d07b_videos_ASL_min_pairs.html
Palm Facing
➡
•
G vs. Q
•
K vs. P
minimal pair: two words that are the same across all but one feature
example: soon vs. train
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Discussion/d07b_videos_ASL_min_pairs.html
Location relative to “speaker”
➡
“Mom”
“Sister”
“Dad”
“Brother”
just so you don’t think this is only relevant for male/female signs:
apple vs. onion
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/Discussion/d07b_videos_ASL_min_pairs.html
Movement
• french fries vs. ninety-nine
•
http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/aslpro.cgi
•
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/n/
numbers41-99.htm
• chocolate vs. church
•
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/schuh/lx001/
Discussion/d07b_videos_ASL_min_pairs.html
• also, noun/verb pairs, but we will discuss these
when we get to morphology...
Morphological
Representation
Morphemes = smallest meaningful units of language
Morphology 1: Noun Pluralization
• We have already seen that languages have different
ways of distinguishing singular and plural nouns:
- suffixes (e.g. English)
- prefixes (e.g. Luganda)
- tones (e.g. Limburgish)
- reduplication (e.g. Indonesian)
- nothing (e.g. Japanese and Chinese)
• In ASL, like Japanese and Chinese, there is no plural
marking on the word itself, plurals are formed by adding
a quantifier (one, two, three, many, few, several)
• The quantifier comes after the noun, as do any
adjectives, similar to adjectives in Romance languages
Morphology 2: Verb Tense
• There are two different ways that we signify tense
in English:
1. add a suffix (ex.: past tense ‘-ed’)
2. add an extra word (ex.: future tense ‘will’)
• In ASL, tense is generally signified by adverbial
time indicators
•
for example, to say something has already been done, you
would sign the verb and then sign “finish”
•
to say that something has not been done yet (that it will
occur in the future), the sign for “not yet” is used
•
specific time words can also be used: yesterday, tomorrow,
last week...
Morphology 3: Noun/Verb Pairs
• In English, there are some words that we can change
from noun to verb simply by changing which syllable
is stressed:
•
Did you record the lecture? vs. Did you make a record of the
lecture?
•
Will you permit me to park in this lot? vs. Does the parking
permit work in this lot?
• In ASL, there is a class of signs called noun/verb
pairs, where the only difference between the noun
and the verb is the movement: the noun is tapped
twice, while the verb is tapped only once
•
Examples: food/eat, chair/sit, airplane/fly
Syntactic
Representation
Syntax
•
So, do we just string words together in the same order as
English?
•
There are several systems that try to do this...
•
for example: P.S.E. (Pidgin Sign English), C.A.S.E. (Conceptually Accurate
Signed English), M.C.E. (Manually Coded English), S.E.E.1 (Seeing Essential
English), etc.
•
However, as you can see from the names of these systems
(“pidgin”, “manually coded”), these are not true languages, they
are ways of coding English grammar into manual signs
•
This is not how ASL works
•
ASL is its own language, with syntactic rules, just like any other
language
Syntax
•
So, do we just string words together in the same order as
English? No!
•
In general, ASL uses topic-comment word order
•
This means a sentence will begin with the topic, and be followed by a comment
about it
•
Ex.: The English sentence “I walk my dog,”
would be signed in ASL: “MY DOG I WALK”
•
For past and future sentences, you add a time indicator at the
beginning
•
Ex.: The English sentence “I walked my dog yesterday,”
would be signed in ASL: “YESTERDAY MY DOG I WALK”
http://www.aslpro.com/cgi-bin/aslpro/phrases.cgi
Facial Expression
•
used when we would use intonation in speech
•
inflection
•
distinguish between statements and questions
•
added meaning - rhetorical questions, sarcasm, emotion
yes/no question
wh-question
What is Sign Language?
according to Bill Vicars:
"ASL is a visually perceived, gesture-based language." That
means it is a language that is expressed through the hands and
face and is perceived through the eyes. It isn't just waving your
hands in the air. If you furrow your eyebrows, tilt your head,
glance in a certain direction, twist your body a certain way, puff
your cheek, or any number of other "inflections" --you are adding
or changing meaning in ASL. A "visual gestural" language carries
just as much information as an oral/aural (mouth/ear) language.
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/asl1.htm
If you’re interested...
•
Take a class:
•
www.ivc.edu
•
•
www.goldenwestcollege.edu
•
•
I recommend Steve Longacre!
They have a full program with all the classes you need to become an interpreter.
Explore these sites:
•
www.aslpro.com
•
•
www.lifeprint.com
•
•
lots of information about how ASL works
www.deafblind.com
•
•
has an extensive ASL dictionary
information about British Sign Language - it is very different from ASL!
www.gallaudet.edu
•
Gallaudet University, a Deaf university in Washington, D.C.