Categories in Quebec Sign Language: Reflections on Categorization Across Modalities

Bouchard, Denis; Dubuisson, Colette; Parisot, Anne-Marie

doi:10.1016/b978-008044612-7/50071-8

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The robustness of various morphophonological distinctions between noun–verb pairs in sign languages is certainly debatable. While elicited production ( Abner et al, 2019 ) and assessed comprehension ( Experiments 1a and 1b ) of these noun–verb pairs in ASL elicits reliable distinctions from fluent signers, the occurrence of these distinctions may be less robust in connected discourse or naturalistic conversation ( Bouchard et al, 2005 ; Johnson, 2001 ; Voghel, 2005 ). Signers instead may favor other features like word order, spatial grammar, and context over morphophonology to communicate and interpret the meaning of a potential noun or verb form ( Voghel, 2005 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One or both of these derivational strategies appear, alongside others, across many different sign languages to varying degrees. While we observe expected similarities in the derivational strategies that leverage changes in the sign's movement among related sign languages, such as those related to Old French Sign Language (LSF) including modern LSF (Moody, 1983as cited in Vogel, 2005, Quebec Sign Language (LSQ; Bouchard et al, 2005), ASL (Abner et al, 2019;Supalla & Newport, 1978), Italian Sign Language (LIS; Pizzuto & Corazza, 1996), and Russian Sign Language (RSL; Kimmelman, 2009), these noun-verb movement patterns appear in sign languages unrelated to LSF, such as those from the family of British Sign Language (BSL) including Australian Sign Language (AUSLAN; Johnston, 2001) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL; Collins-Ahlgren, 1990). These morphophonological patterns are observed even in relatively young sign languages like Israeli Sign Language (ISL; Tkachman & Sandler, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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The iconic motivation for the morphophonological distinction between noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language does not reflect common human construals of objects and actions

Pyers

Emmorey²

2022

Lang. cogn.

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Across sign languages, nouns can be derived from verbs through morphophonological changes in movement by (1) movement reduplication and size reduction or (2) size reduction alone. We asked whether these cross-linguistic similarities arise from cognitive biases in how humans construe objects and actions. We tested nonsigners’ sensitivity to differences in noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language (ASL) by asking MTurk workers to match images of actions and objects to videos of ASL noun–verb pairs. Experiment 1a’s match-to-sample paradigm revealed that nonsigners interpreted all signs, regardless of lexical class, as actions. The remaining experiments used a forced-matching procedure to avoid this bias. Counter our predictions, nonsigners associated reduplicated movement with actions not objects (inversing the sign language pattern) and exhibited a minimal bias to associate large movements with actions (as found in sign languages). Whether signs had pantomimic iconicity did not alter nonsigners’ judgments. We speculate that the morphophonological distinctions in noun–verb pairs observed in sign languages did not emerge as a result of cognitive biases, but rather as a result of the linguistic pressures of a growing lexicon and the use of space for verbal morphology. Such pressures may override an initial bias to map reduplicated movement to actions, but nevertheless reflect new iconic mappings shaped by linguistic and cognitive experiences.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

The iconic motivation for the morphophonological distinction between noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language does not reflect common human construals of objects and actions

Pyers

Emmorey²

2022

Lang. cogn.

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Syntactic Categorization in Sign Languages * *I am extremely indebted to all of the individuals who have shared their language and their research with me and with the scientific community. I also thank Carlo Geraci and the editors for valuable feedback and suggestions. Any remaining errors are my own.

Abner

2017

Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science

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The noun-verb distinction in Catalan Sign Language

Ribera-Llonc

Espinal

Quer

2019

SL&L

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This paper investigates the morpho-phonological differences between the members of related noun-verb pairs in Catalan Sign Language. Like parallel investigations in other sign languages, our experimental work provides evidence that the major differentiating factors between related nouns and verbs materialize in the movement component of signs and non-manual markers, thus providing empirical support to the hypothesis that most noun-verb pairs have different morpho-phonological properties. We distinguish different types of movements, which we categorize into four regular morphological subgroups. We also take into account a fifth group that shows no apparent movement distinction. Concerning non-manual markers, we provide empirical evidence that nouns are mostly produced simultaneously with mouthing, in contrast to verbs, which in a smaller proportion are produced mainly with mouth gestures. Crucially, the fifth group presents the largest ratio of mouthing for nouns and even for verbs. We address these findings within an exo-skeletal theoretical syntactic approach (Borer 2005a,b, 2013, 2014).

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Categories in Quebec Sign Language: Reflections on Categorization Across Modalities

Cited by 3 publications

References 4 publications

The iconic motivation for the morphophonological distinction between noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language does not reflect common human construals of objects and actions

The iconic motivation for the morphophonological distinction between noun–verb pairs in American Sign Language does not reflect common human construals of objects and actions

The noun-verb distinction in Catalan Sign Language

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