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ERIC Number: EJ1013872
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2013-Oct
Pages: 12
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
Kinematic Parameters of Signed Verbs
Malaia, Evie; Wilbur, Ronnie B.; Milkovic, Marina
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v56 n5 p1677-1688 Oct 2013
Purpose: Sign language users recruit physical properties of visual motion to convey linguistic information. Research on American Sign Language (ASL) indicates that signers systematically use kinematic features (e.g., velocity, deceleration) of dominant hand motion for distinguishing specific semantic properties of verb classes in production (Malaia & Wilbur, 2012a) and process these distinctions as part of the phonological structure of these verb classes in comprehension (Malaia, Ranaweera, Wilbur, & Talavage, 2012). These studies are driven by the event visibility hypothesis by Wilbur (2003), who proposed that such use of kinematic features should be universal to sign language (SL) by the grammaticalization of physics and geometry for linguistic purposes. In a prior motion capture study, Malaia and Wilbur (2012a) lent support for the event visibility hypothesis in ASL, but there has not been quantitative data from other SLs to test the generalization to other languages. Method: The authors investigated the kinematic parameters of predicates in Croatian Sign Language ("Hrvatskom Znakovnom Jeziku" [HZJ]). Results: Kinematic features of verb signs were affected both by event structure of the predicate (semantics) and phrase position within the sentence (prosody). Conclusion: The data demonstrate that kinematic features of motion in HZJ verb signs are recruited to convey morphological and prosodic information. This is the first crosslinguistic motion capture confirmation that specific kinematic properties of articulator motion are grammaticalized in other SLs to express linguistic features.
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 10801 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. Tel: 800-638-8255; Fax: 301-571-0457; e-mail: subscribe@asha.org; Web site: http://jslhr.asha.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Croatia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A