Accordingly, their purpose is to present a more detailed — but exploratory — breakdown of iconicity across the four vocabularies.
First, we calculated the correlation between the iconicity ratings of each pair of languages. These results suggest that signs for particular meanings are fairly consistent in their level of iconicity in ASL and BSL, while there is greater variability between English and Spanish words.
This pattern may reflect that potential iconic mappings between form and meaning are more direct and transparent for many signs, and hence more consistently realized across different signed languages. In comparison, words may reflect vaguer, less obvious iconic mappings between form and meaning, which, as a consequence, appear less consistently across spoken languages. Intriguingly, in addition to being correlated with Spanish, the iconicity of English words was also weakly, but positively, correlated with the iconicity of the corresponding ASL and BSL signs.
However, this was not the case with Spanish, which showed — if anything — a negative correlation with the signed languages. In part, this may stem from the low iconicity of verbs in Spanish in comparison to English, as was previously reported by Perry et al. The following analyses examine how iconicity is spread across these four vocabularies in more detail, shedding light on their commonalities and differences.
For each language, we examined the relationship between iconicity ratings and ratings of a host of semantic properties: concreteness, imageability, sensory experience, and perceptual strength with respect to vision, audition, touch, gustation, and olfaction. Figure 1 shows plots of the correlations between the iconicity ratings in each language and these variables.
To test whether the strength of these relationships differed between language modalities i. The models included main effects for the semantic variable and modality both centered , and a term for their interaction. Random intercepts were included for language and meaning, and random slopes were included for the semantic variable on language.
More concrete meanings tended to have more iconic signs and words. This indicated that concreteness was more highly correlated with iconicity ratings in signed languages.
Meanings higher in sensory experience were associated with more iconic signs and words. More imageable meanings tended to have more iconic signs and words. Meanings with greater visual strength tended to have less iconic signs and words. The relationship between visual strength and iconicity ratings was more strongly negative in signed languages. This revealed that the positive relationship between auditory strength and iconicity ratings was stronger in spoken languages.
Meanings with greater haptic strength were associated with more iconic signs and words. Across languages, the olfactory strength of meanings was negatively associated with iconicity ratings. These results reveal several interesting patterns across the four languages in the relationship between iconicity and the semantics of signs and words. One notable finding is that iconicity is strongly associated with the concreteness of meanings in the signed languages, but not in the spoken languages.
In comparison, while the correlation between iconicity with both sensory experience and imageability is weaker, it is found across the four languages. The relationship between sensory experience and iconicity in English matches previous results using much of the same data Sidhu and Pexman, ; Winter et al. In this latter model, Winter et al. A somewhat counterintuitive result was that ratings of visual perceptual strength were negatively correlated with iconicity ratings in both signed languages.
Part of the explanation for this may stem from meanings referring to color e. To examine this possibility, we removed color words from the set, and then retested the model of visual strength ratings as a predictor of iconicity ratings. Thus, while visual strength was still negatively correlated with iconicity ratings across the languages, after removing color words, this relationship was weaker overall, particularly within the signed languages.
Along with concreteness, haptic strength proved to be the strongest positive predictor of iconicity ratings, both overall, and especially in signed languages. For signed languages, this is an intuitive finding. The haptic sense is largely channeled through manipulative actions of the hands, and therefore, these meanings may afford a high degree of iconicity in signs. The positive correlation between haptic strength and iconicity in English fits with the similar finding by Winter et al.
Ongoing work suggests that part of the basis for the high iconicity of tactile words may relate to surface texture, and particularly the dimension of roughness versus smoothness Winter et al. However, Spanish appears to contradict this trend common to English and the two signed languages. As expected, auditory strength was a strong predictor of iconicity in the spoken languages in particular, with an opposing tendency in ASL and BSL.
This again replicates Winter et al. These results likely reflect the highly compatible format of the vocal-auditory modality of speech for the iconic representation of sound-related meanings e. Across the four languages, the relationship between gustatory and olfactory strength and iconicity was less consistent.
For the signed languages and English, it appears to be, if anything, a somewhat negative relationship. Meanings strongly associated with smell and taste tended to have less iconic forms. Spanish, on the other hand, hints at the opposite: a positive relationship between iconicity and meanings related to smell and taste.
These preliminary — and tentative — findings with Spanish are unexpected. Smell and taste are distinct from the sensory modalities primarily involved in signed and spoken communication, which directly involve vision, audition and the kinesthetic sense, vis-a-vis the visual and auditory perception of the sights and sounds of bodily movements. And while meanings related to smell and taste are represented by ideophones across languages, they have been counted as less common Dingemanse, In interpreting these different results, it should be considered that all of the ratings for semantic properties were based on the ratings of English glosses judged by English speakers.
Thus, the way these ratings characterize the semantics of the translated ASL and BSL signs and the Spanish words is likely to be inaccurate to a degree.
Additionally, as a result of this procedure, more English words were covered by the ratings than were the signs and words of the other languages. Consequently, our inferences about English may be more finely tuned than those for the other languages. Conversely, the fewest items were covered for Spanish, leading to wider margins for error in our estimates.
In the next set of analyses, we focused on the meanings for which we had iconicity ratings in all four languages. First, we examined how iconicity varied across the vocabularies of the four languages according to broad semantic categories based on the lexical class of the English gloss. Figure 2 shows iconicity ratings by lexical class — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs and grammatical words — for each language, displayed as z -scores.
To test for differences in iconicity between lexical classes, for each language, we constructed a generalized linear model with lexical class as a predictor of iconicity rating. Means and standard errors of normalized iconicity ratings for each language by English lexical class.
The values were calculated from the meanings for which we had iconicity ratings in all four languages. To determine whether there was an interaction between modality and lexical class, we constructed a linear mixed-effects model of iconicity rating.
The model included main effects for centered modality and lexical class and a term for their interaction. Random intercepts were included for language and meaning.
These analyses point to some interesting differences between signed and spoken languages in how iconicity is spread across broad semantic categories of signs and words. In signed languages, verbs — and thus, presumably, actions — were consistently high in iconicity. This may derive from the natural correspondence between sign and action, as signs are themselves comprised of manual and bodily actions Armstrong and Wilcox, Like Perry et al.
English verbs may be more iconic because they tend to express information about the manner of motion, in contrast to Spanish verbs which do not. Manner of motion might be especially amenable to iconic expression in speech, as, for example, reflected in ideophones Imai and Kita, Notably, in all four languages, nouns — which typically refer to various kinds of things — exhibited an average level of iconicity.
Previous work in BSL has suggested that signs for objects, along with actions, are more likely to be iconic Perniss et al. Yet, the current results suggest that signs for actions, on the whole, tend to be more iconic than signs for things. At least part of the explanation for this discrepancy may be that there are considerably more nouns in our analyses than other lexical classes. Thus, the nouns may extend to more abstract and complex meanings that are less well suited to iconicity.
As in previous studies Perry et al. This contrasts to ASL and BSL, in which adjectives were relatively low in iconicity, at least as compared to nouns and especially to verbs.
Similarly, Perniss et al. Such findings may be seen to fall out of line with accounts such as Dingemanse et al. One possible reason is that the iconicity for the apparently low degree of iconicity in signs for properties is that the iconicity of signed vocabularies is dominated by even more easily representable actions, and to a lesser degree, things. Or it may be that many properties e.
Finally, we observed that the miscellaneous category of grammatical words and adverbs tended to be relatively low in iconicity across both the signed and spoken languages. This conclusion is limited by the smaller sample of these meanings, but replicates previous results in English from Perry et al. It fits with the prediction of Dingemanse et al. Finally, we zoomed in and looked at iconicity across more specific semantic categories for the same meanings.
The top panel of Figure 3 shows the means and standard errors of the z -scored iconicity ratings for semantic categories of nouns, and the bottom panel shows these values for categories derived from adjectives, verbs, and the class of grammatical words and adverbs. Specific examples of words with high, low, and mixed iconicity across signed and spoken languages are presented in Table 3.
Means and standard errors of normalized iconicity ratings by specific semantic category. Top Shows categories of nouns. Bottom Shows categories spanning adjectives, verbs, and other lexical classes. TABLE 3. Examples of meanings with high and low iconicity in signed and spoken languages. As shown in the figure, among nouns in the signed languages, small artifacts i.
These results demonstrate that in signed languages, iconicity is elevated in meanings related to the hands and other body parts, supporting the observation of Meir et al.
On the other end of the scale, iconicity is extremely low in signs for colors. As noted above, the low iconicity of colors contributes to the negative correlation between iconicity and visual strength.
Iconicity was also low in signs for time-related meanings and evaluative adjectives, as well as food, buildings and rooms, and terms for different kinds of people including familial relationships and occupations. In the spoken languages, over all the noun categories, Spanish words were consistently higher in iconicity than English words, with Spanish nouns for people being especially iconic.
Iconicity was highest in nouns for vehicles in both English and Spanish. Outside of nouns, words for other properties were highest in iconicity in both spoken languages. Iconicity in English was also high for feelings and emotions, although this was not the case in Spanish. These results hone previous findings that adjectives, as a broad lexical class, tend to be more iconic in spoken languages, and they fit with cross-linguistic studies showing that ideophones tend to express sensory meanings Dingemanse, Of verbs, manual actions and verbs of locomotion were highly iconic in English, but not in Spanish.
This pattern may reflect a further refinement of the typological preference of English verbs to express information about manner of motion, which may be more easily rendered into iconic word forms.
Considered together, these findings suggest specific ways in which some semantic categories are more iconic in signed languages, while others are more iconic in spoken languages. Thus, they illustrate the important role of modality in determining how iconicity is distributed across the lexicon of a language. Prominently, the isomorphism between gestures and manual actions appears to motivate a heightened level of iconicity for signs mapping the two cf.
Streeck, For comparison, however, meanings related to vocal tract actions — that is, those that would afford the spoken parallel of this isomorphism i. Although words for sound-related meanings are generally prevalent in spoken languages, and included in our ratings for English and Spanish, vocabulary to talk about sound is presumably much less common in signed languages. Nevertheless, previous research has shown that, as a domain, sound-related words do tend to be highly iconic Dingemanse et al.
Considerable evidence now shows that languages of all sorts, signed and spoken, exhibit iconicity, or resemblance between form and meaning Perniss et al. From a typological and comparative perspective e. Some of the most basic questions to be answered relate to the modality of the language. Are signed languages really more iconic than spoken languages? How does the modality of a language influence which lexical forms are iconic and which are not?
To investigate these questions, we used previously collected iconicity ratings of signs and words to compare iconicity in the vocabularies of BSL and ASL with those of English and Spanish. Our analyses produced four main sets of findings that serve to characterize how iconicity is spread across the vocabularies of the four languages. These patterns include both interesting similarities between signed and spoken languages, as well as differences between them.
First, we found positive correlations between the iconicity ratings of all four languages, including between English and both ASL and BSL, and between English and Spanish. The one notable exception to this pattern was between Spanish and both of the signed languages — perhaps reflecting the distinctly non-iconic character of Spanish verbs, which tend not to express information about the manner of movement.
This may indicate that the iconicity of signs is, on the whole, more direct and transparent than the iconicity of words — a point to which we return below. Second, we found that iconicity is distributed overs signs and words in systematic ways according to an array of semantic properties. On the whole, signs and words related to the senses — meanings that are more imageable and more connected to sensory experience — are likely to be more iconic. Critically though, concreteness is only associated with more iconicity in signs, not words.
Such an asymmetry makes sense, as manual gestures may provide a more concrete semiotic resource for iconicity than do vocalizations. In both types of languages, iconicity is strongest for lexical items with sensory meanings corresponding to the respective language modality — touch in signed languages, and sound in spoken languages.
Third, we found that lexical items for some semantic domains tend to be higher in iconicity than others, and there are characteristic patterns that distinguish between signed and spoken languages. These patterns of iconicity are found at the level of broad semantic categories — for example, actions, things, and properties, as reflected by English glosses as verbs, nouns, and adjectives, respectively.
They are also found at the level of more specific semantic categories — manual actions, clothes, emotions, and colors, for example. For the most part, these patterns fit with predictions derived from rationale regarding the semiotic resources of sign versus speech cf. For example, in signed languages, signs for actions, and particularly manual actions, are quite high in iconicity, while in spoken languages, words for properties tend to be higher. Critically, this set of analyses was restricted to the meanings with ratings in all four languages, and so the differences between languages cannot be attributed to differential coverage of the ratings.
Finally, one somewhat unexpected set of findings was the relatively low iconicity of nouns and visual words in signed languages, particularly those lacking connection to manual manipulation and the body. While the domain of color was an extreme case of this pattern, it does not provide the complete account. An additional explanation may be that many signs for objects may actually be limited in the level of iconicity possible, especially in comparison to the iconicity afforded by actions.
For example, there may be a certain degree of abstractness involved in using the hands to represent different kinds of things, particularly those that are highly visual. Taub observed that the same iconic resources are modified to represent different kinds of cylinders — water pipes, batons, or a rolled-up poster.
Although this scheme makes a productive iconic device, it also demonstrates a baseline of abstractness that derives from mapping the hands to other kinds of objects. This may drive a more moderate level of iconicity for many object meanings, even those with characteristic shapes that can be modeled with the hands.
These four sets of findings point to some interesting new directions for future research into how iconicity is distributed across different kinds of languages.
However, it is important to emphasize that our conclusions are preliminary and tentative, and they should be weighed against some notable limitations of our methodology. For one, our study relied opportunistically on samples of rated signs and words that were not originally selected for cross-modal comparison. As a consequence, the ratings that overlapped across languages were somewhat lacking in systematic coverage of the semantic domains that might be of most interest.
Additionally, the sample of four languages was not especially well suited to cross-modal comparison. That said, there is a lot of contact between sign language and spoken language deaf people read and write or lipread in the surrounding language , and sign languages reflect this.
English can be represented through fingerspelling or artificial systems like Signed Exact English or Cued Speech. But these are codes for spoken or written language, not languages themselves. There are rules for well-formed sentences in sign language.
For example, sign language uses the space in front of the signer to show who did what to whom by pointing. However, some verbs point to both the subject and object of the verb, some point only to the object, and some don't point at all. Another rule is that a well-formed question must have the right kind of eyebrow position. If you use the rules wrong, or inconsistently, you will have a "foreign" accent! The stages of sign language acquisition are the same as those for spoken language.
Babies start by "babbling" with their hands. When they first start producing words, they substitute easier handshapes for more difficult ones, making for cute "baby pronunciations.
This has lead ASL to develop different methods of expression Liddell These differing methods have manifested themselves in many facets of dialog. For example, pluralization is often expressed in spoken English through the adding of prefixes and suffixes. While this does occur in ASL, it is very rare, as it can also be done so many other ways, such as signing a quantifier sign, reduplicating the sign, or incorporating a number directly into the sign.
Time is also expressed differently in ASL. In English, tenses are amended to verbs to indicate when they occurred; in ASL there is an "imaginary time line running from behind the speaker's body the past [ One of the reasons for the confusion surrounding ASL's identity is the practice of glossing signs with English words.
While a necessary and useful translation method, assigned word glosses are often "inadequate and approximate," as so much of the meaning surrounding a sign depends on the context in which it is placed. Furthermore, word glosses may "mislead one to suppose that the sign and word are grammatical as well as semantic counterparts," but this would be an incorrect assumption, as ASL uses "a different system of syntax. Signed English is a way of using gestures and signs to "represent specific English words.
Usually it does not matter. Families learning sign language will first learn single signs, most of which are nouns, that will help a non-verbal child communicate his or her needs and thoughts. Once the child has lots of nouns and verbs, adding prepositions and adjectives provides more opportunity to communicate clearly.
All these words can be strung together in English word order, even if the signing vocabulary you learn is ASL. They teach ASL vocabulary, but they use English word order in their songs. Children with Down syndrome typically become fluent English speakers who outgrow the need for sign language eventually. Your choice may also be influenced by other factors.
For example, if your child with Down syndrome is also deaf, ASL may better serve your child and your family in the long run because communicating in sentences and paragraphs is much more efficient and natural in ASL.
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