170. Nonmanual gestures in sign languages

Herrmann, Annika; Pendzich, Nina-Kristin

doi:10.1515/9783110302028.2149

Cited by 10 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…We found several signs recurring in our data that can be analysed as focus particles, compare similar analyses of the ASL signs THAT and SELF in ASL (Wilbur 1994) and DGS (Hermann 2010). Some of these particles are similar to focus particles used in Dutch, like ONLY (Dutch alleen) which marks restrictive focus, ALSO (ook) which marks expanding focus, and REALLY (echt, toch, wel) which is used for counter-assertion.…”

Section: Focus Particlessupporting

confidence: 68%

The phonology of focus in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Crasborn

Kooij

2013

J. Ling.

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Signed languages are similar to spoken languages in the overall organisation of their grammars, displaying a prosodic level of organisation that is not isomorphic to the syntactic organisation. Their rich inventory of manual and non-manual features allows for a prolific range of functions if used prosodically. New data from Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT, Nederlandse Gebarentaal) are discussed to demonstrate that focused constituents are not marked by a single prosodic feature, but rather by multiple properties that can also have other functions in the prosodic phonology of the language. These findings are integrated in an overall model of sign language prosody that emphasises the distinction between phonetic appearance and phonological representation and that allows for the interaction of linguistic and paralinguistic cues in visual communication.

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Section: Focus Particlessupporting

confidence: 68%

The phonology of focus in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Crasborn

Kooij

2013

J. Ling.

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“…For this reason, parallels have been drawn between facial expressions and grammatical classes of spoken languages, such as adverbs and adjectives (mm. Wilbur 2000;Pfau & Quer 2010;Herrmann & Pendzich 2014). These labels have been given in particular to mouth actions-elements produced with the lower parts of the face-and to whole facial expressions in general.…”

Section: Signification With the Head And Other Parts Of A Signer's Bomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, different nonmanual elements have been analyzed as grammatical, and their functions have been associated with, for example, morphological and syntactic phenomena (e.g. Pfau & Quer 2010;Herrmann & Pendzich 2014) as well as with several aspects of interaction such as illocutionary acts, backchannelling, and emotive (Jakobson 1980) meanings (e.g. van der Kooij & Crasborn 2006;Puupponen et al 2015;Schoonjans 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As the expression of emotion is a common feature of human facial expression, this has resulted in associating "nonmanual gesturality" with the "signaling of affect" (see e.g. Herrmann & Steinbach 2011;Herrmann & Pendzich 2014). This oversimplifies both the concept of affect 1 as something gestural and the concept of nonmanual gesturality as something affective.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards understanding nonmanuality: A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements

Puupponen

2019

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This article discusses a certain type of nonmanual action, signers' head movements, from a semiotic perspective. It presents a typology of head movements and their iconic, indexical and symbolic features based on Peircean and post-Peircean semiotics. The paper argues for the view that (i) indexical strategies are very prominent in head movements, (ii) iconic features are most evident in enacting, while non-enacting description is less common, (iii) symbolic types for tokens are infrequent, although some movements-such as nodding and shaking the head-may become more conventional or schematized, and (iv) different types of head movements involve different proportions of iconicity, indexicality and symbolicity as well as different degrees of control in their production and interpretation. The treatment of head movements is extended to a discussion of semiotic versatility in the signification of actions of a signer's body, as well as to the treatment of nonmanuals in the theoretical description of sign languages. Finally, the paper presents a perspective on nonmanuals in which different nonmanual cues are examples of how signification, and human cognition in general, are closely connected to the embodied experience of existing and navigating in the physical and social world around us.

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“…The latter are produced by movements of the upper body, including the head, the face, and the torso. In contrast, movements of the lower body "by the legs, feet, and the hip do not have grammatical functions" (Herrmann & Pendzich 2014: 2150. Still, there exist no studies investigating the claim of a direct vertical mapping from operators with a relatively high or wide scope to high body parts, nor of a mapping from operators with a relatively low or narrow scope to low body parts where the lowest relevant body parts are the hands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scope-taking strategies and the order of clausal categories in German Sign Language

Bross

Hole

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The scope order of clausal categories has been claimed to be universal. In this paper we adopt a universalist cartographic approach to clausal syntax. By discussing the categories of speech acts, evaluation, epistemic modality, scalarity, volition and deontic, as well as other kinds of modality, we illustrate a striking regularity in strategies of scope-taking in German Sign Language (DGS): the wider/higher the scope of a clausal operator, the more likely its expression will occur with a high body part by way of layering; namely, descending from the eyebrows to the lower face, tentatively to the shoulders, and finally switching to manual expressions. For intermediate operators a left-to-right concatenation strategy is employed, and low categories are expressed by way of a manual right-to-left concatenation strategy. Hence, we propose a highly regular natural mapping of the scope-order of clausal categories onto the body. This sort of mapping can also be observed in other sign languages and may turn out to be universal.

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170. Nonmanual gestures in sign languages

Cited by 10 publications

References 20 publications

The phonology of focus in Sign Language of the Netherlands

The phonology of focus in Sign Language of the Netherlands

Towards understanding nonmanuality: A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements

Scope-taking strategies and the order of clausal categories in German Sign Language

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