PSYC 336 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Sign Language, Handshape, Allophone
Document Summary
1: to compare sign language to other languages, to understand sign language phonology, morphology and syntax, to understand how deafness and signing affect: Signers: there are ~300,000 individuals in the u. s. who communicate primarily by sign, ~3-7% of these are native signers. Sign language is language not pantomime: sign languages have: Lexicon (word inventory); parts of speech (verb, noun, adj. ) Recursion (imbed structure within a structure), displacement. Morphological systems that express tense and aspect, etc. Syllabic structure: pantomime has none of these, pantomime and sign production and comprehension are neural dissociable. They break down independently following brain damage: sign language also have: Constraints on how signs combine. i. e. photactics and syntax. Constraints on what signs can be made and where. Poetics: signed languages are simply language in another modality. An aside: phonologial features for spoken language: consonant sounds can differ in . Where we make these sounds: vowel sounds can differ in .
