Phrase Boundary Blinks in American Sign Language MON SKRATT HENRY - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Phrase Boundary Blinks in American Sign Language MON SKRATT HENRY - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Phrase Boundary Blinks in American Sign Language MON SKRATT HENRY MENTOR: DR. MARTHA TYRONE, LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY- DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN & HASKINS LABORATORIES 1 Background American Sign Language (ASL) is a sign language used in the

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Phrase Boundary Blinks in American Sign Language

MONÉ SKRATT HENRY

MENTOR: DR. MARTHA TYRONE, LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY- DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN & HASKINS LABORATORIES

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Background

  • American Sign Language (ASL) is a sign language used in the United States and

Canada

  • Population: ~250,000 signers in US
  • In ASL, besides using hands as articulators, other parts of the body function to

provide important grammatical information.

  • Nonmanual articulators: body parts.
  • Nonmanuals: movements of those body parts.

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Background (cont.)

  • Wilbur (1994) found that the lower face nonmanuals (e.g., mouth shape) are used

for adjectival and adverbial functions.

  • Upper face nonmanuals provide grammatical and prosodic functions (e.g.,

eyebrow movement for interrogatives).

  • Blinking is example of upper face nonmanual.

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Nonmanual Examples

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Upper nonmanual Lower nonmanual

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Background (cont.)

  • Blinking behavior in speakers of English is different than signers of ASL.
  • Hypothesized to result of visual nature of sign language (Baker & Padden, 1978).
  • Baker and Padden (1978) suggested that blinks occur systematically at phrase

boundaries.

  • Wilbur (1994) observed that blinks were sensitive to syntactic structure.
  • However, blinking location and frequency are highly variable due to differences in

signers and rate of production.

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Research Questions

  • Do native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) blink systematically at phrase

boundaries?

  • Does signing rate affect how often signers blink?
  • Based on prior research (Baker & Padden, 1978; Wilbur, 1994), this study predicted

that signers would be more likely to blink at phrase boundaries.

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Phrase Boundary

English Example: 1) I see the dog outside. There’s a cat too. 2) I see the dog. Outside there’s a cat too. ASL Example: 1) KNOW DAD DISAPPOINTED NOT. PROUD. 2) KNOW DAD DISAPPOINTED. NOT PROUD. 3) KNOW DAD? DISAPPOINTED. NOT PROUD.

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Methods

  • Analysis of video, which was collected simultaneously with motion capture data

(Tyrone & Mauk, 2016 ).

  • Included four participants who were Deaf native signers of ASL.
  • Signers’ productions were scripted and presented in English Glosses with

accompanying images.

  • Productions were directed to a Deaf research assistant to facilitate naturalistic

speech samples.

  • The amount of utterances analyzed per signer ranged from 419-588.
  • Utterances were coded for where blinking occurred.

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English Glosses Example

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Results

Normal Rate of Production 1. Signers more likely to blink at phrase boundary than elsewhere in utterance. 2. All signers patterned basically the same. Faster Rate of Production 1. Signers less concerned with accuracy  more random blinking. 2. Higher variability between signers.

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Results: Normal Signing Rate

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100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900

RB AS VB TE

Number of Blinks Signer

Blinks Per Signer

Overall Blinks Phrase Boundary Blinks Non Phrase Boundary Blinks

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Results: Normal Signing Rate

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Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAG E] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAG E]

RB

Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

AS

Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

TE

Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

VB

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Results: Normal Signing Rate

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Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

ALL SIGNERS

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Results: Faster Signing Rate

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20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180

RB AS VB TE

Number of Blinks Signer

Blinks Per Signer

Overall Blinks Phrase Boundary Blinks Non Phrase Boundary Blinks

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Results: Faster Signing Rate

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Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENT AGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENT AGE]

AS

Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

TE

Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

RB

Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

VB

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Results: Faster Signing Rate

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Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE] Non Phrase Boundary Blinks [PERCENTAGE]

ALL SIGNERS

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Summary

  • Findings support hypothesis that Deaf native signers of ASL are more likely to blink

at phrase boundaries.

  • Results indicate signers are using blinking as a way to provide suprasegmental

information.

  • Increase rate of production reduces suprasegmental information, similar to

speech.

  • Example: In speech, pauses less prominent at phase boundaries.

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Implications & Broader Impact

  • Helps develop a better understand prosodic and suprasegmental functions across

modalities.

  • When articulators are replaced what happens?
  • Using oral articulators for language, blinking is physiological need.
  • Understand if there are commonalities between speech and sign language

production.

  • Help foster better information to inform sign recognition technology, ASL

interpreters and second language acquisition.

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Acknowledgements

  • This research was partially supported by the NSF REU Site: The Intersection of Linguistics,

Language and Culture grant SBE-1659607 and the National Institutes of Health grant DC009466.

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Utterances

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