The Semantics, Syntax and Phonology of Adverbial Nonmanuals in Austrian and American Sign ...

14 Pages·2008·0.24 MB·English

Sign Languages: spinning and unraveling the past, present and future. TISLR9, forty five papers and three posters from the
9th. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research Conference, Florianopolis, Brazil, December 2006. (2008) R. M. de
Quadros (ed.). Editora Arara Azul. Petrópolis/RJ. Brazil. http://www.editora-arara-azul.com.br/EstudosSurdos.php.
The Semantics, Syntax and Phonology of Adverbial
Nonmanuals in Austrian and American Sign Language

Katharina Schalber* Donovan Grose°
*Vienna, Austria °Purdue University

Abstract

This paper analyzes two types of adverbial nonmanual mouth gestures in Austrian and American
Sign Languages, termed Posture nonmanuals (P-NM) and Transition nonmanuals (T-NM). These
nonmanuals differ in their semantic, phonological and syntactic behavior. We argue that these
nonmanuals are adverbial in nature and sensitive to the underlying event structure of the predicate.

1. Introduction
This paper explores two morphologically and phonologically distinct types of adverbial nonmanual
behaviors (NM), produced on the lower face in two different sign languages: Austrian Sign
Language (ÖGS) and American Sign Language (ASL) 1. We claim that these NM are adverbials,
and thus are sensitive to distinct components of the predicate that they modify. Our analysis is
presented here only briefly, however, the fact that this analysis is based on two geographically
separated and historically unrelated sign languages suggests that it may be applicable to other sign
languages as well.
The current study includes nonmanual postures or movements of the lower face, which are
produced with the mouth, lips, cheeks, tongue and jaw. We exclude nonmanuals commonly termed
'mouthings', which have their origins in mouth patterns of spoken languages, and lexicalized
nonmanuals, which are obligatory components of predominantly manual signs. It is also necessary
to make a distinction between the analysis proposed here, and the 'echo-phonology' analysis
proposed by Woll (2001). An echo-phonological analysis addresses only the phonology of the co-
articulated manual and nonmanual forms. We will show that the behavior nonmanuals included
here cannot be predicted based solely on their co-articulated manual forms.

1 This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Grant No. 0345314, and by the
National Institues of Health Grant No. R01DC005241 at Purdue University. We are grateful to the Deaf communities in
Vienna, Austria, Chicago, Illinois, and Indianapolis, Indiana, USA for their story telling skills.
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The types of nonmanuals analyzed here are: Posture NM (P-NM), composed of a facial
posture, such as the pursed lips and cheek and mouth corner tension illustrated in
(1), and Transitional NM (T-NM), composed of a single abrupt change of aperture, such as an
opening or closing of the mouth, illustrated in (2):

(1) P-NM from ÖGS:

(2) T-NM from ÖGS:

We claim that both of these NM types are adverbial, and each contributes morphemically to
the predicate as a whole. P-NM function as modifiers of manner and degree, this includes
indicating the internal state of a participant, or indicating how or to what degree a participating
entity undergoes or experiences the predicate. T-NM adverbials indicate the achievement of a
transition, either the inception or completion of the event.
Crucially, neither type of NM included in the current study is an obligatory nonmanual component
of the manual forms with which they are co-articulated, thus they are not lexical. Both types of NM
are optional parts of the predicate. The frequency of occurrence and the choice of a particular NM is
up to the signer. Rather than discussing the forms and meanings of specific T- and P-NM, we focus
on the morphosyntactic and phonological behaviors of these adverbials as classes, including the
components of the underlying event structures they modify.
P-NM adverbials modify the dynamic component of the event, for example how an entity
moves along a path, but not the entity’s initial or final locations. Consistent with this function, the
phonological domains of P-NM include these components of the predicate. These phonological
domains correspond to the syntactic scope of the adverbial. P-NM may include multiple manual
forms within their phonological domains. These morphosyntactic ‘spreading’ domains, we claim
following Seidl (2001), are derived from syntactic phases (Chomsky, 2001). Specifically, for P-
NM the relevant phase is the V-phase, which includes the entire predicate, but importantly excludes
the subject of the clause.
In contrast, T-NM are segmental adverbials, and serve to mark the transitions between the
static and dynamic components of the predicate. This includes the transitions between an initial
state and the dynamic event, or the dynamic event and final state. The nature of T-NM restricts
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them to single syllables, and the nonmanual changes of aperture or other changes in the
configuration of the lower face are generally timed with various components of the co-articulated
manual form, such as changes of manual aperture, orientation and movements to points of contact.
The reason for this, we argue, is because T-NM are sensitive to the same transitions in the
underlying event structure marked manually in these ways.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 briefly provides some theoretical background,
including an overview of previous work on nonmanuals of the lower face, event structure and a
discussion of the phonological model assumed here. Our methodology is described in Section 3.
Section 4 presents the analysis of T- and P-NM with examples from both languages and some
discussion of the interfaces between semantics, syntax and phonology. The paper ends with a
conclusion in Section 5.

2. Theoretical Background
2.1. Nonmanuals of the Lower Face
Previous research has identified several types of nonmanuals produced on the lower face, including
nonmanual adverbials (Anderson and Reilly, 1998), some of which are identical in form and
function to the NM of the current study. The phonological domains of these adverbial nonmanuals
correspond to the scope of the adverbial within the clause. Other types of lower face nonmanuals,
including so-called 'mouthings' which mimic some or all of the shapes that appear on the mouth and
lips when producing spoken words, have been recruited into the grammars of various sign
languages and are either lexicalized components of manual forms, or serve to disambiguate
otherwise identical manual forms (Ebbinghaus and Heßmann, 1996, for example). In addition,
there are lexically associated nonmanuals that are not historically derived from the mouthing
patterns of spoken languages. Examples include the abrupt opening of the mouth or 'mouth pop',
which is an obligatory component of the ASL sign glossed 'PAH!' (Anderson and Reilly, 1998). The
current analysis includes only adverbial nonmanuals, and excludes mouthings and nonmanuals that
are obligatory components of lexical forms.
Woll (2001) identifies what is termed 'echo-phonology' in British Sign Language (BSL), in
which the phonological features, such as a change of aperture of a manual form, spread to a
nonmanual articulator, and are co-articulated with it. Many of the T-NM included in the current
study share phonological features with their co-articulated manual forms, and thus appear to be
instances of echo-phonology. However, in other cases, the features of the T-NM are distinct and do
not echo those of the manual form, for instance, when the manual form includes a movement to a
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point of contact and the co-articulated T-NM is a change of aperture (illustrated in the ASL example
(9)). Thus, the T-NM included here cannot be analyzed purely as echo-phonology, since a
phonological account does not address the morphosyntactic functions of T-NM and their sensitivity
to the underlying event structure. However, we assume here that the current analysis and an echo-
phonological analysis are not inconsistent with each other. In terms of syllable structure, sonority
and the relative timing of the nonmanual and manual components, Woll's analysis of nonmanuals in
BSL similar to the T-NM included here, is generally supported by our data from ASL and ÖGS.
It is important to note that all of these types of previously identified nonmanuals of the lower
face, including the P- and T-NM of the current study, are linguistic elements, distinct from emotive
facial expressions. In some cases, nonmanuals, such as the affirmative head nod (Neidle et al.,
2000) and the negative headshake (Veinberg and Wilbur, 1990), seem to have been recruited from
the gestural into the linguistic system. In these cases, the phonological domains, including onset
and offset times, are conditioned by linguistic factors. This may apply to some of the nonmanuals
included here, but these issues are beyond the scope of this paper.

2.2. Event Structure
We argue that T- and P-NM are adverbials that modify specific components of the internal structure
of the event denoted by the predicate. The term 'event' is used here to refer collectively to both telic
and atelic events, and the term 'event structure' is used to refer to the internal structures of both
static and dynamic events, or all types of 'situation aspect' (Smith, 1997). Research has
demonstrated that predicates are made up of two components: a lexical/conceptual component made
up of one or more morphemes that provide the idiosyncratic meaning, and the event structure that
forms the structural semantics of the predicate. Event structures may be represented in different
ways, but it is clear that these structures must be analyzed separately from the lexical/conceptual
components of predicates (Levin and Rappaport Hovav, 2005; Pustejovsky, 1991; 1995; Tenny and
Pustejovsky, 2000).
Here, event structures are decomposed into one or more subevents. Following Pustejovsky
(1991), we recognize two types: static (S) and dynamic (D). The simplest event structures are
composed of a single S or D subevent, these include States and certain types of Activities. Other,
more complex event structures contain multiple subevents, ordered relative to each other. Non-
identical subevents within the same event structure are ordered in transitional sequential
relationships. A transition from S to D (S⇒D) represents a transition from an initial state to a
dynamic state, or the inception of an event. A transition from D to S (D⇒S) represents telicity, the
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transition to a final state. Traditionally, two types of telic events, termed Achievements and
Accomplishments, are recognized. These telic events both contain a telic transition (D⇒S), and are
generally distinguished from each other in terms of duration. Since, for our purposes here, duration
is not relevant, we can treat these two types as a single class. Likewise, the notion of causation,
represented as subevents of the same type oriented simultaneously with each other, represented (D (cid:68)
D), can be ignored here.
We focus on transitional relationships, and restrict our analysis to the following types of
events: non-inceptive Activities (D), in which the initial state is not lexically specified, inceptive
Activities (S⇒D), telic events (D⇒S), and inceptive telic events (S⇒D⇒S). We do not include
States or the notion of causation in the current analysis. These event types are distinguished
following the principles of the Event Visibility Hypothesis (Wilbur, 2003; 2007), presented briefly
below.

2.3. The Visibility of Events
Our analysis of event structure assumes the basic framework of the Event Visibility Hypothesis
(EVH), proposed by Wilbur (2003; 2007; Grose et al., 2007). The EVH argues that telic and atelic
events are phonologically contrastive in ASL, as well as ÖGS (Schalber 2004). These event types
are contrastive because the underlying event structures are 'transparent' or 'visible' in the surface
morphology of these two languages.
The EVH identifies three phonological features in the surface forms of telic events: a)
changes of handshape (aperture); b) changes in the orientation of the hand; and c) movement to a
point of contact with the body or a plane. Further elaboration of the EVH (Grose et al., 2007) argues
that the inception of events is also phonologically marked in ASL, with a movement from a point of
contact with the body or a plane. This observation appears to apply to ÖGS as well.
Specific claims of the EVH apply to ASL and ÖGS, but these sign languages are not unique in
terms of the transparent representation of underlying event structures on the surface. Similar claims
have been made for certain types of predicates in Dutch (Van Hout, 2000), and overt markings of
telicity have been reported in Modern Hebrew, Finnish and Russian (Borer, 2005). What appears to
be unique in these sign languages, however, is how different event structures are represented in the
surface phonology.

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2.4. Phonology
Currently, the internal phonological structure of nonmanuals is still poorly understood, but it is
possible to proceed without a detailed analysis of these structures at this point. The phonological
framework assumed here is the Prosodic Model of sign language phonology (Brentari, 1998).
Forms are represented in this analysis in a feature geometry dominated by a single [root] node,
corresponding roughly to a prosodic word. The [root] node dominates the Inherent Feature [IF] and
Prosodic Feature [PF] nodes, representing the static and dynamic components of the signal
respectively. In the interests of space, we will discuss only those components of the Prosodic Model
that are directly relevant to the current analysis. We refer the reader to Brentari (1998) for a
detailed discussion. The relevant structure is presented in Figure 1:

[root]

[IF] [PF]

[Articulator] [POA]

[Nonmanual] [Manual]
(x) (x) ⇐timing slots

(σ) ⇐ syllable

Figure 1: Relevant components of the Prosodic Model

Under the [IF] node is the [Articulator] node, which dominates the [Manual] node and the
[Nonmanual] node. Substructures of features under the [Manual] node represent specific
configurations of selected fingers and joints, and under the [Nonmanual] node, presumably
equivalent nonmanual features. The [POA], or [Place of Articulation] node dominates substructures
representing places of articulation on the body, as well as the x, y and z planes. The phonological
domain for a set of [IF] features is the entire [root] node but it is through the [PF] node that a [root]
maps onto the abstract timing slots (x), the minimal units of the prosodic structure.
The EVH argues that in atelic events, the [PF] specifications which map onto the two timing
slots of a monosyllabic form are non-contrastive, producing movements such as [tracing] and [trill].
Telicity and inception are marked with contrastive specifications for these timing slots, including
changes of aperture, orientation and [direction] movements to and from points of contact.
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The [root] node, as shown in Figure 1, corresponds to a monosyllabic prosodic word. The
[root] node also represents the interface between the phonology and the morphosyntax. The
phonological [root] node corresponds to at least one, but often multiple, morphemes. Regardless of
the number of morphemes mapped onto a single [root], the [root] represents the phonological
domain of the [IF] features it dominates. In those cases in which a P-NM spreads over multiple
[root] nodes, we will argue it is necessary to propose a larger phonologically relevant constituent,
derived indirectly from the syntactic phase.

2.5. Syntax and Phases
In the framework we assume here, an event is composed of one or more verb phrases (VP) (Tenny,
2000; Ramchand, in progress; Borer, 2005,). In ASL and ÖGS, each sequentially ordered subevent
corresponds to a morpheme in the head (V0) of a VP (Grose et al., 2007; Ramchand, 2003). For
convenience, we will refer to all of these phrases as VPs, distinguished by subscript letters
representing their associated subevents (e.g. V P, V P). As we see in the examples (3) and (4)
S D
below, transitions between subevents, either (S⇒D) or (D⇒S), correspond to pairs of VPs headed
by non-identical subevents. An inceptive transition syntactically corresponds to the structure in (3).
Example (4) represents a telic structure:

(3) [ V P [V P ]...] (4) [...[V P [V P]]
S D D S

The VP headed by the first subevent in the transition dominates and c-commands the VP
headed by the second subevent. Thus, the temporal ordering of the subevents in the event structure
is reflected in the hierarchy of the syntactic structure as well as in the linear order of the constituents
in the surface form of the predicate.

3. Methodology
The current analysis is based on previous work on NM and event structure in ASL and ÖGS,
(Schalber, 2004; Grose et al.2007) and includes previously collected data, and new data collected
specifically for this project. Our subjects include 2 ÖGS and 5 ASL Deaf native and near native
signers. Each subject watched the seven part Canary Row cartoon in its entirety, and then watched
the cartoon again, episode by episode. After watching each individual episode, the subjects were
asked to describe the episode they had just seen. These productions were recorded on digital
videocassettes, and imported into computers and compressed. The responses were transcribed using
the transcription program ELAN.
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Given the nature of the elicitation material, the vast majority of the utterances produced by
our participants, from both languages, included classifier predicates (CLP), either in predicates
composed solely of CLP or in structures that contained lexical verbs as well. As CLP, these
structures are relatively restricted in term of their possible semantics, to change-of-state, specifically
size and shape, and path and manner predicates, however this also means that the components of the
underlying event can be easily identified. Since CLP are not lexical signs, we can eliminate the
possibility that the T- and P-NM included here are lexically associated.

4. The Analysis
4.1. Posture Nonmanuals (P-NM)
P-NM are composed of a continuous facial postures which are co-articulated with manual
predicates. In ÖGS and ASL the NM may be physically and semantically different, but are
consistent with the analysis. For instance, in examples (5) from ÖGS and (6) from ASL below, the
P-NM is composed of tension in the muscles at the corners of the mouth, and a protruding lower lip.
In the ÖGS example this P-NM also includes muscle tension in the cheeks. The manual forms these
P-NM are co-articulated with are also similar, and refer to the same part of the story.

(5) ÖGS

protruding lips
CAT bentV:pacing back and forth
‘The cat is pacing back and forth.’

(6) ASL

…
‘scowl -face’

CAT V:walking B/B:hands.on.hips.V:pace.back&forth V:look-up V:walk

‘The cat paces back and forth, frustrated, and looks up...’

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The P-NM in the ÖGS example (5) modifies the manner of motion, in contrast the P-NM in
the ASL example (6) modifies the internal state of the subject, the CAT, and how the subject engages
in the event. Manner adverbials of these types have scope over the dynamic component of the event,
the D subevent. Syntactically, the P-NM scopes over the V P, represented in (7). The line above
D
the relevant syntactic components indicates the scope of the adverbial, as well as its phonological
domain.
_____________
(7) [ V P [ (P-NM) V P ]]
S D

It has been known for some time that the phonological domains of nonmanuals of this type
may include multiple manual forms. This is illustrated in the ASL example (6), in which the P-NM
extends over multiple classifier predicate forms. We argue that the phonological domains of
adverbial P-NM are derived from syntactic V-phases, which represent the morphosyntactic input
into the phonology, but not syntactic structures themselves. This is illustrated in Figure 2:

[V-phase]

(P-NM) [root] [root] [root]

[IF] [IF] [PF] [IF] [PF] [IF] [PF]

[Nonmanual]
(σ) (σ) (σ)

Figure 2: The V-phase as a phonological domain

In this representation, the V-phase represents the phonological domain of the P-NM, a morpheme
composed of [IF] features, but lacking [PF] features. T-NM, in contrast, contain [PF] features, and
thus, have different phonological domains and behavior.

4.2. Transition Nonmanuals (T-NM)
T-NM are composed of a single abrupt change in a nonmanual articulator of the lower face. For the
purposes of this study, we provisionally treat all T-NM as changes of aperture, although it is not
clear at this point whether or not 'aperture' is the appropriate term for all of these changes. In any
case, T-NM are associated with transitions between subevents in the underlying structure, either
(S⇒D) or (D⇒S), and serve to mark the achievement of the transition. This includes marking the
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'completion' of a telic event, as in (8) and (9), or the inception of an event, as shown in (10) and
(11):

(8) ÖGS

(mouth)closed ⇒ open

BIRD 5-5: hold.ball ⇒ throw.ball.in.pipe

‘The bird throws a bowling ball into the rain pipe’

(9) ASL

(mouth)open ⇒ closed
CAT Vbent:fa l l .d o w n ⇒ to.ground
‘The cat falls down to the ground.

(10) ÖGS

mouth)closed ⇒ open

CAT Vhold: swing ⇒ swing
‘The cat starts swinging’

(11) ASL

(mouth)closed ⇒ open
CAT Vbent:launched.upwards.
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