Abstract
How do the signs of sign language differ from the gestures that speakers produce when they talk? We address this question by focusing on pointing. Pointing signs play an important role in sign languages, with some types functioning like pronouns in spoken language (e.g., Sandler & Lillo-Martin 2006). Pointing gestures, in contrast, are not usually described in linguistic terms even though they play an important role in everyday communication. Researchers have focused on the similarities between pointing in signers and speakers (e.g., Cormier et al. 2013), but no studies to date have directly compared the two at a fine-grained level. In this paper, we compare the formational features of 574 pointing signs produced by British Sign Language signers (BSL Corpus) and 543 pointing gestures produced by American English speakers (Tavis Smiley Corpus) with respect to three characteristics typically associated with language systems: conventionalization, reduction, and integration. We find that, although pointing signs and pointing gestures both exhibit regularities of form, pointing signs are more consistent across uses, more reduced, and more integrated into prosodic structure than pointing gestures. Pointing is thus constrained differently when it is produced along with a signed language vs. when it is produced along with a spoken language; we discuss possible sources of these constraints.
Highlights
How do the signs of sign language differ from the gestures that speakers produce when they talk? signs and gestures are produced in the same modality and can look superficially similar, they have been given different theoretical treatments
How do the signs of sign language differ from the gestures that speakers produce when they talk? We address this question by focusing on pointing
We analyze whatever formational differences we find between pointing signs and pointing gestures in terms of the three changes that have been described in evolving languages: conventionalization, reduction, and integration
Summary
How do the signs of sign language differ from the gestures that speakers produce when they talk? Signs and gestures are produced in the same modality and can look superficially similar, they have been given different theoretical treatments. We investigate the similarities and differences in pointing signs and pointing gestures with respect to form. We focus on pointing for a few reasons. Pointing is ubiquitous in both spoken and signed communication and, importantly, is used in both cases for the same broad function of drawing attention to locations or entities; pointing presents a critical opportunity to examine how communicative forms differ when used within a sign language versus a spoken language system.
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