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)

minimal pair distinguished by hand orientation

COMPARE (ISL) VACILLATE (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

handshape variants that are contrastive in other sign languages: BANANA

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

KETTLE (compound sign) 1. variation

KETTLE 2. uniformity within a family

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.