Cognitive, Cultural, and Linguistic Sources of a Handshape Distinction Expressing Agentivity

In this paper the cognitive, cultural, and linguistic bases for a pattern of conventionalization of two types of iconic handshapes are described. Work on sign languages has shown that handling handshapes (H-HSs: those that represent how objects are handled or manipulated) and object handshapes (O-HSs: those that represent the class, size, or shape of objects) express an agentive/non-agentive semantic distinction in many sign languages. H-HSs are used in agentive event descriptions and O-HSs are used in non-agentive event descriptions. In this work, American Sign Language (ASL) and Italian Sign Language (LIS) productions are compared (adults and children) as well as the corresponding groups of gesturers in each country using "silent gesture." While the gesture groups, in general, did not employ an H-HS/O-HS distinction, all participants (signers and gesturers) used iconic handshapes (H-HSs and O-HSs together) more often in agentive than in no-agent event descriptions; moreover, none of the subjects produced an opposite pattern than the expected one (i.e., H-HSs associated with no-agent descriptions and O-HSs associated with agentive ones). These effects are argued to be grounded in cognition. In addition, some individual gesturers were observed to produce the H-HS/O-HS opposition for agentive and non-agentive event descriptions-that is, more Italian than American adult gesturers. This effect is argued to be grounded in culture. Finally, the agentive/non-agentive handshape opposition is confirmed for signers of ASL and LIS, but previously unreported cross-linguistic differences were also found across both adult and child sign groups. It is, therefore, concluded that cognitive, cultural, and linguistic factors contribute to the conventionalization of this distinction of handshape type.

[1]  Diane Brentari,et al.  What sign language creation teaches us about language. , 2013, Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science.

[2]  Diane Lillo-Martin.  The Cambridge Handbook of Child Language: Sign language acquisition studies , 2009 .

[3]  Susan Goldin-Meadow,et al.  Embodied Learning Across the Life Span , 2012, Top. Cogn. Sci..

[4]  Amy Weinberg,et al.  A COGNITIVE/FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE ACQUISITION OF "CLASSIFIERS" , 2003 .

[5]  Onno Crasborn,et al.  Enhanced ELAN functionality for sign language corpora , 2008, LREC 2008.

[6]  Laura L. Namy,et al.  The Changing Role of Iconicity in Non-Verbal Symbol Learning: A U-Shaped Trajectory in the Acquisition of Arbitrary Gestures , 2004 .

[7]  Irit Meir,et al.  Patterned iconicity in sign language lexicons , 2013 .

[8]  Sian L. Beilock,et al.  Grounding cognition in action: expertise, comprehension, and judgment. , 2009, Progress in brain research.

[9]  Susan Goldin-Meadow,et al.  Acquiring Word Class Distinctions in American Sign Language: Evidence from Handshape , 2013, Language learning and development : the official journal of the Society for Language Development.

[10]  Iain D. Gilchrist,et al.  Testing a Simplified Method for Measuring Velocity Integration in Saccades Using a Manipulation of Target Contrast , 2011, Front. Psychology.

[11]  Karen Emmorey,et al.  Perspectives on Classifier Constructions in Sign Languages , 2003 .

[12]  E. Bates,et al.  The Emergence of Symbols: Cognition and Communication in Infancy , 2014 .

[13]  Eve Sweetser,et al.  What Does It Mean to Compare Language and Gesture ? Modalities and Contrasts , 2008 .

[14]  C. Boyatzis,et al.  Preschool children's symbolic representation of objects through gestures. , 1993, Child development.

[15]  W. Overton,et al.  The representation of imagined objects in action sequences: a developmental study. , 1973, Child development.

[16]  Marianne Mithun,et al.  The emergence of agentive systems in core argument marking , 2008 .

[17]  Gary Morgan,et al.  The First Signs of Language: Phonological Development in British Sign Language. , 2007 .

[18]  Victoria Nyst,et al.  Sign Languages: Sign languages in West Africa , 2010 .

[19]  Asli Ozyurek,et al.  How do children learn to conflate manner and path in their speech and gestures? Differences in English and Turkish , 2000 .

[20]  Leonard Talmy,et al.  Semantics and syntax of motion , 1975 .

[21]  Christopher J. Moreland,et al.  The Form of Children's Early Signs: Iconic or Motoric Determinants? , 2008 .

[22]  Virginia Volterra,et al.  Motoric characteristics of representational gestures produced by young children in a naming task* , 2009, Journal of Child Language.

[23]  Virginia Volterra,et al.  Order of words, signs, and gestures: A first comparison , 1991, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[24]  L. Barsalou,et al.  Whither structured representation? , 1999, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[25]  S Goldin-Meadow,et al.  Silence is liberating: removing the handcuffs on grammatical expression in the manual modality. , 1996, Psychological review.

[26]  A. Kendon.  Gesture: Visible Action as Utterance , 2004 .

[27]  Milo Mileff,et al.  Head movements in the context of speech in Arabic, Bulgarian, Korean, and African-American Vernacular English , 2007 .

[28]  Judy Anne Shepard-Kegl,et al.  Locative relations in American Sign Language word formation, syntax and discourse , 1985 .

[29]  Brenda Schick,et al.  The acquisition of classifier predicates in American Sign Language , 1987 .

[30]  Diane Brentari,et al.  Where did all the arguments go?: argument-changing properties of classifiers in asl , 2004 .

[31]  Daniel Casasanto,et al.  Flexibility in Embodied Language Understanding , 2011, Front. Psychology.

[32]  J. Piaget,et al.  The Origins of Intelligence in Children , 1971 .

[33]  Susan Goldin-Meadow,et al.  Learning to talk in a gesture-rich world: Early communication in Italian vs. American children , 2008, First language.

[34]  Margaret Wilson,et al.  Six views of embodied cognition , 2002, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[35]  D. McNeill.  Hand and Mind: What Gestures Reveal about Thought , 1992 .

[36]  Virginia Volterra,et al.  Written & Unwritten Records from a Residential School for the Deaf in Rome , 1990 .

[37]  Sotaro Kita,et al.  What does cross-linguistic variation in semantic coordination of speech and gesture reveal? Evidence for an interface representation of spatial thinking and speaking , 2003 .

[38]  Ingeborg Elisabeth Petra Zwitserlood,et al.  Classifying hand configurations in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands) , 2003 .

[39]  Denis Burnham,et al.  Comparing action gestures and classifier verbs of motion: evidence from Australian Sign Language, Taiwan Sign Language, and nonsigners' gestures without speech. , 2005, Journal of deaf studies and deaf education.

[40]  P. B. Braem.  Acquisition of the Handshape in American Sign Language: A Preliminary Analysis , 1990 .

[41]  Susan Goldin-Meadow,et al.  When does a system become phonological? Handshape production in gesturers, signers, and homesigners , 2011, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory.

[42]  P. Rochat,et al.  Do young children use objects as symbols , 1999 .

[43]  E. Newport,et al.  When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input , 2004, Cognitive Psychology.

[44]  James Pustejovsky,et al.  The syntax of event structure , 1991, Cognition.

[45]  Valerio De Angelis,et al.  Learning to use gesture in narratives: developmental trends in formal and semantic gesture competence , 2011 .

[46]  Olga Capirci,et al.  Chapter 14. Learning to use gesture in narratives , 2011 .

[47]  Sotaro Kita,et al.  Cross-cultural variation of speech-accompanying gesture: A review , 2009, Speech Accompanying-Gesture.

[48]  Edith Freund Kaplan,et al.  Gestural representation of implement usage: an organismic-developmental study , 1968 .

[49]  M. Studdert-Kennedy,et al.  Approaches to the Evolution of Language , 1999 .

[50]  Galini Sapountzaki,et al.  Sign Languages: Transmission of sign languages in Mediterranean Europe , 2010 .

[51]  Heinz Werner,et al.  Symbol formation : an organismic-developmental approach to language and the expression of thought , 1964 .

[52]  Diane Brentari,et al.  Handshape coding made easier: A theoretically based notation for phonological transcription , 2008 .

[53]  Marc Swerts,et al.  Culture and Facial Expressions: A Case Study with a Speech Interface , 2011, INTERACT.

[54]  R. P. Meier.  The Form of Early Signs: Explaining Signing Children’s Articulatory Development , 2010 .

[55]  Daniel Casasanto,et al.  Mirror reading can reverse the flow of time. , 2014, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[56]  Elena Lieven,et al.  What Does It Mean to Compare Language and Gesture? Modalities and Contrasts , 2010 .

[57]  A. O'Reilly,et al.  Using representations: comprehension and production of actions with imagined objects. , 1995, Child development.