Seeing sentence boundaries : the production and perception of visual markers signalling boundaries in signed languages
Current definitions of prosody present a problem for signed languages since they are based on languages that exist in the oral-aural modality. Despite this, researchers have illustrated that although signed languages are produced in a different modality, a prosodic system exists whereby a signed stream can be structured into prosodic constituents and are marked by systematic manual and non-manual phenomena (see Nespor & Sandler, 1999; Wilbur, 1999, 2000). However, there is little research examining prosody in British Sign Language (BSL). This thesis represents the first serious attempt to address this gap in the literature by investigating the type and frequency of a number of visual markers at intonational phrase (IP) boundaries in BSL narratives. An analysis of 418 IP boundaries shows linguistic visual markers are not frequently observed. The most frequent marker observed were single head movements (46%) followed by holds (30%) and brow movement (22%) and head nods (21%). This finding suggests that none of the visual markers included in this study can be considered a consistent marker to IP boundaries in BSL narratives. As well as examining the production of markers at IP boundaries, the perception of boundaries
Fenlon, J. J.
Seeing sentence boundaries : the production and perception of visual markers signalling boundaries in signed languages. Current definitions of prosody present a problem for signed languages since they are based on languages that exist in the oral-aural modality. Despite this, researchers have illustrated that although signed languages are produced in a different modality, a prosodic system exists whereby a signed stream can be structured into prosodic constituents and are marked by systematic manual and non-manual phenomena (see Nespor & Sandler, 1999; Wilbur, 1999, 2000). However, there is little research examining prosody in British Sign Language (BSL). This thesis represents the first serious attempt to address this gap in the literature by investigating the type and frequency of a number of visual markers at intonational phrase (IP) boundaries in BSL narratives. An analysis of 418 IP boundaries shows linguistic visual markers are not frequently observed. The most frequent marker observed were single head movements (46%) followed by holds (30%) and brow movement (22%) and head nods (21%). This finding suggests that none of the visual markers included in this study can be considered a consistent marker to IP boundaries in BSL narratives. As well as examining the production of markers at IP boundaries, the perception of boundaries
seeing sentence boundary production_perception visual marker signal boundary sign_language current definition prosody present problem sign_language since base language exist oral aural modality despite researcher illustrate although sign_language produce different modality prosodic system exist whereby sign stream structure prosodic constituent mark systematic manual non manual phenomenon see and however_little examine prosody british_sign_language_bsl represent_first serious_attempt address_gap literature investigate type frequency number visual marker intonational phrase boundaries bsl narrative analysis boundary show linguistic visual marker frequently observe frequent marker observe single head_movement follow hold movement head nod find suggest none visual marker include study consider consistent marker boundaries bsl narrative well examine production marker boundary perception boundary