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A concise overview of key findings and ideas in sign language phonology and its contributions to related fields, including historical linguistics, morphology, prosody, language acquisition and language creation. Working on sign languages not only provides important new insights on familiar issues, but also poses a whole new set of questions about phonology, because of the use of the visual communication modality. This book lays out the properties needed to recognize a phonological system regardless of its modality. Written by a leading expert in sign language research, the book describes the current state of the field and addresses a range of issues that students and researchers will encounter in their work, as well as highlighting the significant impact that the study of sign languages has had on the field of phonology as a whole. It includes lists of further reading materials, and a full glossary, as well as helpful illustrations that demonstrate the important aspects of sign language structure, even to the most unfamiliar of readers. A text that will be useful to both specialists and general linguists, this book provides the first comprehension overview of the field.

List of Figures page 
List of Tables 
Acknowledgments 

1 Introduction: Sign Language versus Gesture; Sign Language versus Speech 
1.1 Introduction to the Topics of this Volume 
1.2 Historical Perspectives on Sign Language Phonology 
1.3 Sign Language and Gesture 
1.3.1 Neuroimaging 
1.3.2 Conventionalization 
1.4 Sign Language and Speech at the Word Level 
1.4.1 The Core Lexicon 
1.4.2 The Spatial Lexicon 
1.4.3 The Non-native Lexicon: Fingerspelling, Mouthings, and the Foreign Component 
1.5 New Theoretical Contributions to Sign Language Phonology 
1.5.1 Optimality Theory 
1.5.2 Cognitive and Usage-Based Approaches 
1.6 Summary 
1.7 Further Reading 

2 Modality Effects
2.1 Why Is Communication Modality So Important? 
2.2 Signal Differences 
2.3 Phonetic Differences: Perception 
2.4 Phonetic Differences: Articulation 
2.5 Complexity 
2.5.1 Articulatory Complexity 
2.5.2 Frequency as Complexity 
2.5.3 Complexity as Expressed by Order of Acquisition 
2.5.4 Complexity as Expressed by Phonological Structure 
2.6 Prominence: Single versus Multiple Oscillators 
2.7 Modality Effects on Phonology 
2.7.1 Movements, Segments, Features: How Are They Organized? 
2.7.2 Sonority 
2.7.3 Sonority, Movement, and Syllable Nuclei 
2.7.4 Syllable Weight 
2.7.5 Morphophonology and Word Shape 
2.8 Summary 
2.9 Further Reading 

3 Iconicity 
3.1 Introduction to Central Issues of Iconicity in Sign Languages 
3.1.1 Types of Iconicity 
3.1.2 Avoiding the “Gesture-Is-Iconic/Language-Is-Not” Trap: Clarifying the Relevant Terms 
3.2 Iconicity across the Lexicon 
3.2.1 Iconicity in Word Building: Movement and Event Structure 
3.2.2 Arbitrary Distribution of Orientation in Iconic Classifier Constructions 
3.2.3 The Feature [Stacked] and Iconicity 
3.3 Iconicity in the Grammar: Agreement 
3.4 Iconicity in Sign Language Processing 
3.5 Conclusion 
3.6 Further Reading 

4 Interfaces 
4.1 Introduction to Interface Phenomena in Sign Languages 
4.2 The Language–Gesture Interface 
4.2.1 The Inter-modality Gestural Interface 
4.2.2 The Intra-modality Gestural Interface 
4.3 Interfaces of Phonology and Other Grammatical Components 
4.3.1 Phonetics–Phonology Interface: Constrained Flexibility 
4.3.2 Morphology–Phonology Interface 
4.3.3 Prosodic Units and Sentence/Discourse Meaning 
4.3.4 Nondominant Hand (H2)-Spread 
4.4 Conclusion 
4.5 Further Reading 

5 The Emergence of Phonology 
5.1 Introduction to the Issues 
5.2 Where Do Phonological Features and Phonological Patterns Come From? 
5.3 Applying Internal Phonological Principles to Emerging Sign Languages 
5.3.1 The Development of Grammatical Non-manuals and Their Alignment 
5.3.2 Dispersion and Handshape Morphology within the Phonemic Space 
5.3.3 Repetition: Loss and Reorganization of Iconicity in Distinguishing Nouns and Verbs 
5.4 External Pressures on a Phonological System 
5.4.1 Applying Principles External to the Phonological System in Emerging Sign Languages 
5.4.2 Are Internal or External Factors More Important in Emerging Phonologies? 
5.5 Conclusions 
5.6 Further Reading 

6 Sign Language Phonological Processing 
6.1 Introduction 
6.2 Language Processing of Phonological Units 
6.2.1 Production Evidence: Slips of the Hand 
6.2.2 Production Evidence: Tip-of-the-Finger Phenomena 
6.2.3 Perceptual Evidence: Movement 
6.2.4 Perceptual Evidence: Handshape 
6.3 Phonological Processing and Neighborhood Density 
6.4 Neurological Mapping of Sign Language Phonology 
6.5 Conclusions 
6.6 Further Reading 

7 Sign Language Acquisition 
7.1 Introduction 
7.2 Typical First-Language (L1) Acquisition 
7.2.1 Iconicity in L1 Acquisition 
7.2.2 IDS and Iconicity 
7.2.3 Time Course of L1 Acquisition in ASL Phonology 
7.2.4 Acquisition of Classifier Handshapes 
7.2.5 Prosodic Acquisition 
7.2.6 Acquisition of Fingerspelling 
7.3 Second-Language (L2) Acquisition 
7.3.1 L2 Acquisition of Sign Parameters 
7.3.2 L2 Acquisition and Iconicity 
7.3.3 Acquisition of Classifier Constructions in L2 Signers 
7.3.4 Acquisition of Prosody in L2 Signers 
7.4 The Critical Period for Language Acquisition and the “Phonological Bottleneck” 
7.5 Connection between Sign Language Phonology and Reading 
7.5.1 The Use of Spoken and Signed Phonological Codes in Deaf Readers 
7.5.2 Cross-Modal Activation 
7.5.3 Phonological Readiness for Reading in Deaf Children 
7.6 Conclusions 
7.7 Further Reading 

8 Sign Language Phonological Variation and Change 
8.1 Introduction 
8.1.1 Sources of Data 
8.1.2 Language Variation, Change, and Emergence  
8.2 Synchronic Variation 
8.2.1 Synchronic Variation Based on Linguistic Factors 
8.2.2 Synchronic Variation Based on Sociolinguistic Factors 
8.3 Diachronic Change 
8.3.1 Frishberg’s Contribution 
8.3.2 Further Developments in ASL Historical Studies 
8.4 Combining Synchronic and Diachronic Sources 
8.5 Conclusions 
8.6 Further Reading 
8.7 Further Corpus Information 

Glossary

References

Index