Sign language users all over the world have been struggling for years to eradicate the notion that because they do not use speech, their languages are not "real." One universal characteristic of human language is the arbitrary relation between words and what they represent. You can't hear the English words 'purslane', 'smallage' or 'transom', for example, and know simply by their sound what they refer to. Critics of sign languages have often described them as an iconic series of gestures for acting out the real world and thus dismissed them as nothing more than complex mime. Consider the issue of iconicity in American Sign Language (ASL) in light of the evidence in A-E.
A. The signs for male and female:
original:
female: running thumb along jaw toward chin, mimicking bonnet
strings
male: grasping an invisible cap near the forehead
current:
female: thumb on chin, with a hand shape as if thumbing
nose at someone
male: thumb on forehead, same handshape.
How have these signs changed over time? How does this development affect the debate over whether signs are iconic or not?
B. First and second person pronouns:
When hearing children first learn to speak, they often display an amusing tendency to confuse the pronouns 'you' and 'me'. For instance, when asked, "Do you want milk," they reply, "Yes, you want milk," believing that they are describing themselves. In an analogous way, deaf children who are learning to sign will display, at the same age, the tendency to confuse the signs for 'you' and 'me'. The adult will point to the child and ask a question, and the child will point at the adult in reply, even though, once again, these children are describing themselves.
Why do you think children make these mistakes? Based on the assumption that ASL is a true language, would you expect hearing children (who are not exposed to ASL) to make the same mistake as deaf children when responding to pointing? Why or why not?
C. Character placing:
When telling a story, an ASL signer is likely to name the characters at the beginning (or whenever they appear) and in doing so, to "place" them at some location in space (one to the left, and one to the right, for example). From that point on, the signer will refer to those locations by pointing instead of repeating the names.
Do these rules for pointing remind you of anything in spoken language?
D. Handshapes:
Although fingerspelling is not an inherent part of ASL, many signs in ASL are signed with the handshape of the first letter in the English word. For instance, 'language' is signed with the 'l' shape, 'class' with a 'c', and 'water' with a 'w'. The colors blue, purple, green, orange and yellow are all signed with the same motion, shaking the initial letter ('b', 'p', 'g', 'o', or 'y') back and forth. 'Apple' is an 'a' shape rotated at cheek level. However, 'onion' is an 'x' shape moved the same way, so this pattern does not always not hold.
How do these facts bear on the iconicity debate?
E. Iconicity in spoken language:
There are iconic elements in ordinary spoken English. Give some examples. Compare them to the iconic features of ASL.
A. Consider (1). Why is (1b) ungrammatical?
| (1) | a. | Two paintings are on the wall. | |
| b. | * | Two paintings is on the wall. |
B. Now consider (2). Do the grammaticality judgments indicated correspond to your own? Assuming the correctness of the judgments, what rule(s) could a speaker use to generate the grammatical (2a) and (2c), but not the ungrammatical (2b). Keep in mind that your rule(s) should also be able to account for the data in (1). How does your description of the data in (1) and (2) differ from prescriptions that govern standard usage?
| (2) | a. | There are two paintings on the wall. | |
| b. | * | There is two paintings on the wall. | |
| c. | There's two paintings on the wall. |
C. The sentences in (3) show a similar pattern to that in (1), but the pattern in (4) differs from that in (2). What rules are needed to generate the grammatical sentences in (3) and (4)? Your rules should not generate the ungrammatical sentences.
| (3) | a. | A painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee are hanging on the wall. | |
| b. | * | A painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee is hanging on the wall. | |
| (4) | a. | * | There are a painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee hanging on the wall. |
| b. | There is a painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee hanging on the wall. | ||
| c. | There's a painting by Picasso and a painting by Klee hanging on the wall. |
| (1) | To the bank. |
| (2) | The cat the dog chased escaped. |
| (3) | The rat the cat the dog chased bit escaped. |
| (4) | Being so flat, the Dutch bicycle everywhere. |
| (5) | Who do you wonder whether they will invite? |
| (6) | Ivan a tin of caviar ate quickly. |
| (7) | Its mayor praised her village. |
| (8) | If you go to school, there's an elephant on the corner. |
| (9) | Susan told John that washing herself in public is a bad idea. |
| (10) | The candy ate the boy. |
| (11) | Immediately he opened the door, he saw the murderer standing there. |
| (12) | This is just between you and I. |
| (13) | Earlobe seven by hexed fruitless. |
| (14) | Please take dog for walk. |
| (15) | Beat till lemon yellow before folding into batter. |
| (16) | Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. |
| (17) | Someone isn't disposing of their trash properly. |
| (18) | Who do you think that will come to the party? |
| (19) | Why don't you be at the corner in an hour, and we'll pick you up. |
| (20) | They didn't be at the corner, so we didn't pick them up. |
| (21) | Both you and your husband are tall, so why doesn't your daughter be tall? |
| (22) | Who which section has registered for? |
| (23) | Which boxes did you toss without opening? |
| (24) | The man, whom the witnesses said was wearing a backpack, walked away after the shooting. |
| (25) | I'm amazed how many difficulties that they've overcome. |
B. It is often possible to make sense of an ungrammatical sentence. Conversely, a grammatical sentence can be semantically anomalous or even incomprehensible. Mark the grammatical but semantically anomalous sentences in (1)-(25) with a pound sign (#).
Consider the following Fijian pronouns.
| (1) | a. | au | 1st sg | 'I' |
| b. | iko | 2nd sg | 'you' | |
| c. | koja | 3rd sg | 'he/she/it' | |
| (2) | a. | kedaru | 1st dual | 'I and you' |
| b. | keiru | 1st dual | 'I and one other (not you)' | |
| c. | kemudrau | 2nd dual | 'you two' | |
| d. | rau | 3rd dual | 'they two' | |
| (3) | a. | kedatou | 1st trial | 'I and two others, including you' |
| b. | keitou | 1st trial | 'I and two others, excluding you' | |
| c. | kemudou | 2nd trial | 'you three' | |
| d. | iratou | 3rd trial | 'they three' | |
| (4) | a. | keda | 1st plural | 'we four or more, including you' |
| b. | keimani | 1st plural | 'we four or more, excluding you' | |
| c. | kemuni | 2nd plural | 'you four or more' | |
| d. | ira | 3rd plural | 'they four or more' |
A. Which concepts are grammaticized in the Fijian pronoun system that are not grammaticized in the English one?
B. Which concept is grammaticized in the English pronoun system that is
not grammaticized in the Fijian one?
Last modified: 9/15/97