Is Phonology Necessary for Language?
Wendy Sandler & Mark Aronoff
Emergence of Language Structures WorkshopThe Center for Research in Language and
The Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind
UCSD February 6, 2007
a new sign language:
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign
currently in its third generation
all members of the first generation are
deceased
used by both hearing and (ca 100) deaf
members of the community
after Arabic, second language of the
village
Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign
Language (ABSL)
young language in a small community --
first signers (n. 4 - 8) would be in their
70s
cf. American Sign Language (ASL): ca.
250 years old, 200,000-300,000 signers
autochthonous
different in structure and lexicon from
surrounding spoken and sign languages
(e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Israeli Sign
Language
fully meets communicative needs of
users
observations
is phonology critical for language?
• Duality of patterning is a basic design feature of language (Hockett, 1960)
• “There are good adaptive reasons for a distinct level of combinatorial phonological structure to have evolved as part of the language faculty.” Pinker & Jackendoff (2005:212.)
“The meaningful elements in any language . . . constitute an enormous stock. Yet they are represented by small arrangements of a relatively very small stock of distinguishable sounds, which are in themselves wholly meaningless. This “duality of patterning” is illustrated by the English words “tack,” “ cat” and “act.” They are totally distinct as to meaning, and yet are composed of just three basic meaningless sounds in different permutations. Few animal communicative systems share this design-feature of language-none among the other hominoids, and perhaps none at all.” (Hockett 1960, p. 89)
“There is excellent reason to believe that duality of patterning was the last property to be developed, because one can find little if any reason why a communicative system should have this property unless it is highly complicated. If a vocal-auditory system (emphasis ours)comes to have a larger and larger number of distinct meaningful elements, those elements inevitably come to be more and more similar to one another in sound. There is a practical limit, for any species or any machine, to the number of distinct stimuli that can be discriminated, especially when the discriminations typically have to be made in noisy conditions.” (Hockett 1960, p. 95)
Words in ABSL
can be distinguished from mimetic depiction
can be distinguished from phrases and sentences
have no internal morphological structure
indeterminate phonological structure
mimetic depiction vs words
mimetic depiction conflates event with participants in the event
body plays the role of a participant and ‘acts out’ the event
words factor out predicates and their arguments
words are typically conveyed manually
words are discrete
word combinations have syntax
mimetic depiction in ABSL and signs in American Sign Language (ASL)
MOVIES
ABSL example with mimetic pantomime
ASL example with conventional manual signs
phonology in sign language:
finite set of discrete meaningless contrastive elements that combine to form words (Stokoe, 1960)
typically, one hand configuration, one location, and one movement in a word
phonology in sign language: 1. finite set of discrete meaningless
contrastive elements that combine to form words (Stokoe, 1960)
SICK (ASL) TOUCH (ASL)
minimal pair distinguished by location features
minimal pair distinguished by
handshape features
SAY (ISL) ASK (ISL)
a. symmetry constraint (Battison, 1978)
If both hands move, they must have the same handshape
and move symmetrically
phonology in sign language2: constraints on sign formation
SHOP (ISL)non-occurring form
b. selected finger constraint (Mandel, 1981)
There can only be one group of selected fingers in a sign
WAKE-UP (ISL)non-occurring form
ABSL lexicon: no clearly defined
phonological system across the community
there is conventionalized vocabulary
but much variation in form
familiar sign language phonological constraints not rigidly enforced
tokens of a prototype: BANANA
[MOVIES]
Differences across signers in handshapes and movement of each hand
location differences that are contrastive in other sign languages: DOG
[MOVIES]
locations near mouth, in front of body, to the side of body
violations of symmetry constraint
[MOVIES]
A sign for KNIFE in which the two hands are in different shapes and both hands move
A sign for DONKEY that begins with this handshape:
and ends with this one:
violations of selected finger constraint
[MOVIES]
tokens around a gestural prototype
manual signs (not mimetic depiction)
noncontrastive variation in form
paucity of minimal pairs
Can we identify the kernels of phonology in ABSL?
1. family-lects
2. phonology out of the hands of babes
TREE1. variation in older signers
[MOVIES]
idiosyncratic mimetic depiction for one signer
more conventionalized but non-canonical sign for another
TREE2. child’s non-iconic reduced word form
[MOVIE]
conforms to canonical sign template: reduplicated monosyllable (Sandler & Lillo-Martin 2006)
there are words in ABSL
words are discrete syntactically and paradigmatically
word form guided by iconic prototype
conclusions
Language can exist without a fully-fledged phonological system
phonological and lexical regularity may start within a family unit
phonological system may be emerging in youngest signers
conclusions
THANK YOU
- to the people of Al-Sayyid - to Shai Davidi (UHaifa) and Bob Buffington (CRL) for pictures and
movies
This research is part of a project conducted together with Irit Meir and Carol Padden, funded by NIH
REFERENCES
Battison, Robbin. 1978. Lexical Borrowing in American Sign Language. Silver Spring: Linstok Press Hockett, Charles F. (1960). The origin of speech. Scientific American,
203 (3), 88-96.
Mandel, Mark (1981) Phonotactics and Morphophonology in ASL. PhD dissertation. University of California, Berkeley.
Pinker, Steven & Ray Jackendoff (2005). The faculty of language: What’s special about it? Cognition,95(2), 201–236.
Sandler, Wendy, Irit Meir, Carol A. Padden, & Mark Aronoff (2005). The emergence of grammar: Systematic structure in a new sign language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102, 2661-2665.
Sandler, Wendy & Diane Lillo-Martin (2006). Sign Language and Linguistic Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Stokoe, William C., (1978 ) [1960]. Sign Language Structure. Silver Spring: Linstok Press.