Towards a Fractal Analysis of the Sign Language

Andres, Jan; Benešová, Martina; Langer, Jiří

doi:10.1080/09296174.2019.1656149

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The standard statistical criteria for the verification of obtained results are described in Chapter 6, which is based on the paper . For the first experiment, treated in Chapter 7, where the validity of the Menzerath-Altmann law has been investigated for the sign language levels (both separately and together) via a fractal-based technique, we employed the results in Andres, Benešová, Langer (2019). For the second experiment, in Chapter 8, about the persistence of a sign language speech, explored by virtue of the Hurst formula, we adapted our study in Andres, Langer, Matlach (2020).…”

Section: Prefacementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Quantitative lingustic analysis of Czech sign language

Langer¹,

Andres²,

Benešová³

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

MOT: t@ag(*2) w@agˆopr'WHQ SEE WHAT(1h)ˆ? *CHI: MOUSE(*N) . *MOT: t@ag g@ag(nh): \-ˆopr'WHQ WHAT(1h)ˆ\? *CHI: 0 [%act: lifts panel in book] *mot . *MOT:ˆopr'WHQ WHAT(1h)ˆ? *CHI: < PNT 3[on book] *m > [>] . *MOT: <ˆopr'WHQ WHAT(1h)(*2)ˆ> [<] ? *MOT:ˆopr'YNQ \-CAT t@ag(nh) CAT PNT 3(at cat in book)ˆ< CAT > [>] ? *CHI: <ˆopr'NEG 0ˆ> [<] [%ges: don't know/not me] . %ges: open 5s, wrists rotate out *MOT:ˆopr'WHQ WHAT(1h)ˆ? *CHI: [*] [//] BEAR . %err: BEAR $mvt Czech sign languageCzech sign language is one of the national sign languages-it is the visual-manual communication system of the Czech deaf (the Deaf). The Act on the Communication Systems of Deaf and Deaf-Blind People No. 155/1998 Coll., as amended by Act No. 384/2008 Coll., defines Czech sign language in Section 4 as follows: "(1) Czech sign language is the basic communication system of those deaf people in the Czech Republic who consider it the main form of their communication. (2) Czech sign language is a natural and wholesome communication system consisting of specific visual-movement means, namely handshapes, hand position and movements, facial expressions, positions of the head and the upper torso. Czech sign language has the basic attributes of a language: it is semiotic, systemic, doubly articulated, productive, independent, and historical, and is lexically and grammatically stable. (3) Czech sign language can be used as a tactile communication system for deafblind people, consisting in tactile perception of its means of expression." Czech sign language is therefore the natural language of the Czech deaf (the Deaf). It is not derived from the main spoken Czech language and has its own vocabulary and grammar.

show abstract

Section: Prefacementioning

confidence: 99%

“…As already pointed out, a quantitative approach to sign languages is, unlike to spoken languages, still rather rare (see e.g. Andres, Benešová, Langer, 2019;Joshua et al, 2018;Malaia, Borneman, Wilbur, 2018, and the references therein), because it requires delicate techniques.…”

Section: Formulation Of Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantitative lingustic analysis of Czech sign language

Langer¹,

Andres²,

Benešová³

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Zipf’s law of brevity was also found in fingerspelling, with a negative relationship between mean fingerspelled sign duration and frequency (Börstell et al, 2016). Similarly, Czech sign language was found to follow Menzerath’s law (Andres et al, 2021). Work in non-human gesture has, to date, been more focused on context-specific signal usage, for example: Zipf’s law of brevity was found in the surface behaviour of dolphins (such as tail-slapping; Ferrer-i-Cancho & Lusseau, 2009) but not in the overall repertoire of play gestures of chimpanzees, where it was only present in subsets, although these gestures did follow Menzerath’s law (Heesen et al, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…At the level of constructs, Menzerath’s law states that “ the greater the whole, the smaller its constituents ” (Altmann, 1980; Köhler, 2012; Menzerath, 1954); for example: longer sentences have words of shorter average length, and words with more syllables contain syllables of shorter length. Menzerath’s law (and its mathematical expression known as the Menzerath-Altman’s law) has been identified in human spoken and signed languages (Altmann, 1980; Andres et al, 2021), genomes (Ferrer-i-Cancho & Forns, 2009; Li, 2012), music (Boroda & Altmann, 1991), and in the communication of dolphins (Ferrer-i-Cancho et al, 2022), penguins (Favaro et al, 2020), and primates (geladas: Gustison et al, 2016; chimpanzees: Fedurek et al, 2017; Heesen et al, 2019; gibbons: Clink et al, 2020; Huang et al, 2020; gorillas: Watson et al, 2020; Indri indri: Valente et al, 2021;). While many studies focused on vocal communication, several have now explored these statistical regularities in gestural and signed domains.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variable expression of linguistic laws in ape gesture: a case study from chimpanzee sexual solicitation

Safryghin

Cross

Fallon

et al. 2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Two language laws have been identified as manifestations of universal principles of animal behaviour, both acting on the organisation of numerous vocal and behavioural communicative systems. Zipf's law of brevity describes a negative relationship between behavioural length and frequency of behaviour. Menzerath's law defines a negative correlation between the number of behaviours in a sequence and average length of the behaviour composing it. Both laws have been linked with the information-theoretic principle of compression, which tends to minimise code length. We investigate the presence of these two laws in the repertoire of chimpanzee sexual solicitation gestures. We find that chimpanzee solicitation gestures do not follow either Zipf's law of brevity or Menzerath's law consistently. For the second time in ape gestural communication, evidence supporting Zipf's law of brevity was absent, and, here, the presence of Menzerath's law appears individually driven. Ape gesture does not appear to manifest a principle of compression or pressure for efficiency that has been previously proposed to be universal. Importantly, the same signals were shown to adhere to these laws when used in a different behavioural context; highlighting that signallers consider signalling efficiency broadly, and diverse factors play important roles in shaping investment in signal production.

show abstract

“…Sign language seems to possess similar features-the segmentation of sign language gestures into time durations showed the manifestation of the law as opposed to the segmentation of gestures into their parts (morphemes, etc.). This means that the physical nature of the communication act manifests the law as opposed to its sign or language segmentation (Andres, Benešová, Langer 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explain the law: When the evidence is not enough

Benešová

Faltýnek

Zámečník

2021

Linguistic Frontiers

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The article responds to the current variability of research into linguistic laws and the explanation of these laws. We show basic features to approach linguistic laws in the field of quantitative linguistics and research on linguistic laws outside the field of language and text. Language laws are usually explained in terms of the language system—especially as economizing—or of the information structure of the text (Piantadosi 2014). One of the hallmarks of the transmission of linguistic laws outside the realm of language and text is that they provide other kinds of explanations (Torre et al. 2019). We want to show that the problem of linguistics in the explanation of linguistic laws lies primarily in its inability to clarify the internal structure of language material, and the influence of the theory or method used for sample processing on the result of law analysis—which was formulated by Peter Grzybek (2006). We would like to show that this is the reason why linguistics avoids explanations of linguistic laws.

show abstract

Towards a Fractal Analysis of the Sign Language

Cited by 10 publications

References 20 publications

Quantitative lingustic analysis of Czech sign language

Quantitative lingustic analysis of Czech sign language

Variable expression of linguistic laws in ape gesture: a case study from chimpanzee sexual solicitation

Explain the law: When the evidence is not enough

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About