Language & Linguistics
This field uses scientific methods to study the structure and use of languages, including ASL.
What is linguistics?
This field examines the smallest contrastive units of language and how signs are structured and organized.
What is phonology?
This linguist challenged the belief that signs were indivisible wholes by proposing that they have smaller analyzable parts.
Who is William C. Stokoe?
These two linguists developed a model that analyzes signs as sequences of movement and hold segments.
Who are Scott K. Liddell and Robert E. Johnson?
This feature of language allows signers to combine linguistic elements to create messages they have never produced before.
What is productivity?
The signs SUMMER and DRY share handshape, movement, and orientation but differ in this parameter.
What is location?
These three components form the basis of Stokoe's notation system, in the order they are written.
What are TAB, DEZ, and SIG?
In this model, an H segment represents a steady state, while an M segment represents a period of change.
What is the Movement–Hold Model?
TREE resembles part of what it represents, while WRONG does not. These are the two types of symbolic form illustrated by these signs.
What are iconic and arbitrary forms?
RED/CUTE and SIT/CHAIR illustrate this linguistic relationship, in which a difference in one parameter distinguishes meaning.
What are minimal pairs?
In Stokoe notation, this component describes handshape, while TAB describes location and SIG describes movement.
What is DEZ (designator)?
The handshape changes during UNDERSTAND, while the location changes during FALSE. Both changes occur during this type of segment.
What is a movement (M) segment?
In signs such as MAYBE and DRAMA, both hands move with matching handshapes and types of movement. This condition explains that pattern.
What is the Symmetry Condition?
The signs SOON and TRAIN differ in this parameter, even though their handshape, location, and movement are the same.
What is palm orientation?
Stokoe used this term for the meaningless contrastive elements that combine to form signs, similar to phonemes in spoken languages.
What are cheremes?
This term describes the collection of features such as handshape, location, orientation, and nonmanual signals associated with a segment.
What is an articulatory bundle?
In a two-handed sign with different handshapes, the passive hand serves as a stationary base while the active hand moves. This condition describes that restriction.
What is the Dominance Condition?
A signer produces NOT-YET without its expected mouth configuration. This fifth parameter of ASL phonology is missing.
What are nonmanual signals?
Stokoe's system has difficulty describing a sign that changes from one location to another because it does not adequately represent this aspect of sign structure.
What is sequentiality, or the order of changes within a sign?
GOOD is represented as H–M–H, while THINK is represented as X–M–H. The X indicates this type of segment.
What is a short hold segment?