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The Syntax of American Sign Language: Functional Categories and Hierarchical Structure
Recent research on the syntax of signed languages has revealed that, apart from some modality-specific differences, signed languages are organized according to the same underlying principles as spoken languages. This book addresses the organization and distribution of functional categories in American Sign Language (ASL), focusing on tense, agreement, and wh-constructions. Signed languages provide illuminating evidence about functional projections of a kind unavailable in the study of spoken languages. Along with manual signing, crucial information is expressed by specific movements of the face and upper body. The authors argue that such nonmanual markings are often direct expressions of abstract syntactic features. The distribution and intensity of these markings provide information about the location of functional heads and the boundaries of functional projections. The authors show how evidence from ASL is useful for evaluating a number of recent theoretical proposals on, among other things, the status of syntactic agreement projections and constraints on phrase structure and the directionality of movement.
- GenresLinguisticsReference
239 pages, Hardcover
First published December 3, 1999
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January 23, 2015
A couple of weeks ago, all I knew about ASL was what I could remember from watching Children of a Lesser God in the 80s (basically: Marlee Matlin is hot), plus a sign language joke that a colleague once told me. But we are about to start a new project which is meant to result in a prototype French-to-sign translation system, so I thought I needed to be better informed. I looked around a bit on Google and ended up ordering this book, which I've just finished. Excuse me while I rhapsodize a moment. Wow! ASL, where have you been all my life! I want to learn to sign too! Although I'm afraid to say that, so far at least, I have acquired no practical skills whatsoever, I was fascinated by the overview that Neidel and her colleagues present of ASL linguistics, a new but apparently rapidly growing field. The book is nearly 15 years old, so it may already be out of date; but it's been cited a lot, so hopefully it's had a positive influence and resulted in some progress.
It turns out that, at least when the book was written, there was a great deal of disagreement about the most fundamental issues. The authors start by discussing why this might be. First, formal syntacticians have only really been studying the subject since the 70s. Second, linguists, like all scientists, are dependent on their data, and it's difficult to know what information is reliable. It is impossible to write down ASL in a way that captures all the nuances, and Neidel et al repeatedly stress the importance of looking at video recordings of native signers. They express frustration with the fact that many groups treat their recorded data as proprietary and refuse to share it with the research community; this means that it is often hard to decide whether claims made in the literature are plausible or not. I hope things have now improved.
The book then presents a quick summary of how ASL works. For readers as ignorant as I was, this will be very interesting. When people are signing to each other, it turns out, they establish an imaginary space between them which contains places that represent the various things they are talking about. When they want to refer to one of these things, they indicate the corresponding place, which they can do by pointing, inclining their head towards it, or looking at it. I found this early example helpful for seeing how it all fits together:
As the title suggests, the authors' goal is to establish a number of claims about ASL syntax. I am in no way competent to evaluate the plausibility of their arguments, but was captivated all the same; they do their best to open up this exotic world so that outsiders can get some idea of what is going on there. The most striking chapter (also the longest one) studies the syntax of questions, where the claim is that WH-questions in ASL, in sharp contrast to virtually all spoken languages, involve moving the WH element to the right, not the left. Thus while English says "What did you buy yesterday?", with the "What" at the leftmost end of the sentence, ASL will use the order "YOU BUY YESTERDAY WHAT", with the "WHAT" at the opposite end. If this result holds up - in 2000, it was apparently rather controversial - it could have significant implications for linguistics as a whole.
I want to learn more about signing...
It turns out that, at least when the book was written, there was a great deal of disagreement about the most fundamental issues. The authors start by discussing why this might be. First, formal syntacticians have only really been studying the subject since the 70s. Second, linguists, like all scientists, are dependent on their data, and it's difficult to know what information is reliable. It is impossible to write down ASL in a way that captures all the nuances, and Neidel et al repeatedly stress the importance of looking at video recordings of native signers. They express frustration with the fact that many groups treat their recorded data as proprietary and refuse to share it with the research community; this means that it is often hard to decide whether claims made in the literature are plausible or not. I hope things have now improved.
The book then presents a quick summary of how ASL works. For readers as ignorant as I was, this will be very interesting. When people are signing to each other, it turns out, they establish an imaginary space between them which contains places that represent the various things they are talking about. When they want to refer to one of these things, they indicate the corresponding place, which they can do by pointing, inclining their head towards it, or looking at it. I found this early example helpful for seeing how it all fits together:
The arrangement presents the "manual content" (hand gestures) at the bottom, and the "non-manual content" (head, eyes etc) at the top, with the lines under the non-manual content showing when it happens. The speaker wants to say that John (associated with place i) thinks Mary (associated with place j) loves him (i.e. loves John). He indicates this at the end of the sentence by tilting his head towards place j and slightly later looking towards place i; "IX-i" means "point to place i". If you find the above incomprehensible or baffling, then avoid this book; it is stuffed full of similar examples, many of them far more complicated. If, on the other hand, you were delighted by this glimpse of an alien but strangely logical language, you might well want to consider acquiring a copy.
head tilt-j
----------------
eye gaze-i
-------------
JOHN-i IX-i THINK MARY-j LOVE e-i
As the title suggests, the authors' goal is to establish a number of claims about ASL syntax. I am in no way competent to evaluate the plausibility of their arguments, but was captivated all the same; they do their best to open up this exotic world so that outsiders can get some idea of what is going on there. The most striking chapter (also the longest one) studies the syntax of questions, where the claim is that WH-questions in ASL, in sharp contrast to virtually all spoken languages, involve moving the WH element to the right, not the left. Thus while English says "What did you buy yesterday?", with the "What" at the leftmost end of the sentence, ASL will use the order "YOU BUY YESTERDAY WHAT", with the "WHAT" at the opposite end. If this result holds up - in 2000, it was apparently rather controversial - it could have significant implications for linguistics as a whole.
I want to learn more about signing...
June 24, 2009
The info in this book is sooo technical and dense that I have to re-read, then page backward and read a previous chapter, then sit and stare into space for a while before trudging ahead. But, I'm loving it! I just don't have enough clarity yet to say "what I learned from this book." Maybe I'll eat a banana (for potassium) then go at it again.
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