The interaction of eye blinks and other prosodic cues in German Sign Language

Herrmann, Annika

doi:10.1075/sll.13.1.02her

Cited by 41 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(33 reference statements)

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“…We identified units containing one predicate (e.g., a verb) and expressing a single activity, event, or state. We used semantic, syntactic, and prosodic cues to help determine the clause units (Hansen & Heßmann, ; Herrmann, ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visible Cohesion: A Comparison of Reference Tracking in Sign, Speech, and Co‐Speech Gesture

Perniss

Özyürek

2014

Topics in Cognitive Science

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Establishing and maintaining reference is a crucial part of discourse. In spoken languages, differential linguistic devices mark referents occurring in different referential contexts, that is, introduction, maintenance, and re-introduction contexts. Speakers using gestures as well as users of sign languages have also been shown to mark referents differentially depending on the referential context. This article investigates the modality-specific contribution of the visual modality in marking referential context by providing a direct comparison between sign language (German Sign Language; DGS) and co-speech gesture with speech (German) in elicited narratives. Across all forms of expression, we find that referents in subject position are referred to with more marking material in re-introduction contexts compared to maintenance contexts. Furthermore, we find that spatial modification is used as a modality-specific strategy in both DGS and German co-speech gesture, and that the configuration of referent locations in sign space and gesture space corresponds in an iconic and consistent way to the locations of referents in the narrated event. However, we find that spatial modification is used in different ways for marking re-introduction and maintenance contexts in DGS and German co-speech gesture. The findings are discussed in relation to the unique contribution of the visual modality to reference tracking in discourse when it is used in a unimodal system with full linguistic structure (i.e., as in sign) versus in a bimodal system that is a composite of speech and gesture.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visible Cohesion: A Comparison of Reference Tracking in Sign, Speech, and Co‐Speech Gesture

Perniss

Özyürek

2014

Topics in Cognitive Science

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“…However, blinking also relates, like other autonomic processes (e.g., heart rate, perspiration), to cognitive states beyond physiological function alone (16): Blink rate has been observed to vary as a function of several cognitive tasks (17)(18)(19)(20)(21), and blink rates decrease during activities that require greater attention [as when reading vs. sitting in a waiting room (22)]. Studies have also shown that the timing of blinks is related to both explicit (20,21) and implicit (23,24) attentional pauses in task content. Together, these observations highlight a key difference between blinking and other autonomic reactions: Blinking sets a physical limit on visual attention because of its profound interruption of incoming visual information (25).…”

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confidence: 99%

Inhibition of eye blinking reveals subjective perceptions of stimulus salience

Shultz

Klin

Jones

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

106

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Spontaneous eye blinking serves a critical physiological function, but it also interrupts incoming visual information. This tradeoff suggests that the inhibition of eye blinks might constitute an adaptive reaction to minimize the loss of visual information, particularly information that a viewer perceives to be important. To test this hypothesis, we examined whether the timing of blink inhibition, during natural viewing, is modulated between as well as within tasks, and also whether the timing of blink inhibition varies as a function of viewer engagement and stimulus event type. While viewing video scenes, we measured the timing of blinks and blink inhibition, as well as visual scanning, in a group of typical two-year-olds, and in a group of two-year-olds known for attenuated reactivity to affective stimuli: toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Although both groups dynamically adjusted the timing of their blink inhibition at levels greater than expected by chance, they inhibited their blinking and shifted visual fixation differentially with respect to salient onscreen events. Moreover, typical toddlers inhibited their blinking earlier than toddlers with ASD, indicating active anticipation of the unfolding of those events. These findings indicate that measures of blink inhibition can serve as temporally precise markers of perceived stimulus salience and are useful quantifiers of atypical processing of social affective signals in toddlers with ASD.autonomic function | child development | eye-tracking | social engagement W hen we blink, the flow of visual information between the world and one's retina is temporarily interrupted. In that instant of blinking, visual stimulation from the external world is lost for 150-400 ms (1, 2). As a result, the average adult, in the course of a single waking day, will spend ∼44 min with his or her eyelids closed, missing visual information. During those moments, an exquisite choreography of neural systems-encompassing movement of the oculomotor muscles (3); activity in supplementary and frontal eye fields (4); and widespread activity in visual, parietal, and prefrontal cortical areas (5, 6)-works together to suppress the actual visual signal of an occluding eyelid. These systems create the illusion of perceptual continuity (6, 7), but if new visual information is presented in that instant of blinking, it will be missed (8, 9).From the standpoint of physiology, blinks exist primarily to protect: They keep the eyes hydrated and protect against foreign objects (10, 11). Average individual rates of blinking increase with age (12, 13) and are correlated with dopamine levels in human and nonhuman primates (14, 15). However, blinking also relates, like other autonomic processes (e.g., heart rate, perspiration), to cognitive states beyond physiological function alone (16): Blink rate has been observed to vary as a function of several cognitive tasks (17-21), and blink rates decrease during activities that require greater attention [as when reading vs. sitting in a waiting room ...

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“…3 Eye blinks, which frequently coincide with clause boundaries in DGS and American Sign Language (Wilbur 1994;Herrmann 2010), are neither obligatory at the end of a sentence nor restricted to clausal constituents. A signer may combine several sentences under one intonational contour marked by a final blink in fast signing (Wilbur 1999), or they may blink intra-clausally after topics, between a subject and its predicate, or within a DP containing a relative clause (Herrmann 2010). Pauses and holds often accompany the end of a sentence, but they occur infrequently compared to non-manual markers (Hansen & Heßmann 2007 for DGS;Fenlon et al 2007 for British and Swedish Sign Language).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting clauses and their dependencies in signed utterances: A syntactico-semantic approach

Loos

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Investigating the syntactic structure of utterances with multiple predicates in sign languages requires a clear understanding of how many finite and infinitival clauses they contain and which syntactic dependencies exist between them. Since the sign language literature currently lacks a standardized methodology for identifying clause boundaries, this paper discusses syntacticosemantic diagnostics of clausehood and clause size and analyzes their applicability to American Sign Language (ASL) and German Sign Language (DGS). First, I discuss tests that distinguish coordinated clauses from dependent clause structures; specifically negation, A'-movement, and subject pronoun copy. Limitations of whand topic fronting as clausehood diagnostics are identified and a modified subject pronoun copy test is proposed. Determining whether a given utterance contains coordinated or dependent clauses is only half the battle, however; we also want to know the approximate "size" of the constituent an embedded predicate projects. The present study takes a first pass at filling this gap by introducing rightward wh-movement and confirming center-embedding as diagnostics that can discriminate between finite and infinitival clauses in signed languages. Based on acceptability judgments from 13 native signers of DGS and ASL, I show that wh-subjects can move across infinitival control complements and the secondary predicates of resultative constructions, but they cannot cross a finite complement clause. The diagnostic thus provides empirical evidence for the existence of various types of embedded clauses in signed languages that differ in their functional structure.

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The interaction of eye blinks and other prosodic cues in German Sign Language

Cited by 41 publications

References 15 publications

Visible Cohesion: A Comparison of Reference Tracking in Sign, Speech, and Co‐Speech Gesture

Visible Cohesion: A Comparison of Reference Tracking in Sign, Speech, and Co‐Speech Gesture

Inhibition of eye blinking reveals subjective perceptions of stimulus salience

Detecting clauses and their dependencies in signed utterances: A syntactico-semantic approach

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