“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.” A functional description of time expressions through fingers based on Chinese Sign Language naturalistic data

Hao Lin,Yan Gu

doi:10.1017/langcog.2021.22

Abstract

AbstractThis paper investigates the relationship between fingers and time representations in naturalistic Chinese Sign Language (CSL). Based on a CSL Corpus (Shanghai Variant, 2016–), we offer a thorough description of finger configurations for time expressions from 63 deaf signers, including three main types: digital, numeral incorporation, and points-to-fingers. The former two were further divided into vertical and horizontal fingers according to the orientation of fingertips. The results showed that there were interconnections between finger representations, numbers, ordering, and time in CSL. Vertical fingers were mainly used to quantify time units, whereas horizontal fingers were mostly used for sequencing or ordering events, and their forms could be influenced by Chinese number characters and the vertical writing direction. Furthermore, the use of points-to-fingers (e.g., pointing to the thumb, index, or little finger) formed temporal connectives in CSL and could be patterned to put a conversation in order. Additionally, CSL adopted similar linguistic forms in sequential time and adverbs of reason (e.g., cause and effect: events that happened earlier and events that happen later). Such a cause-and-effect relationship was a special type of temporal sequence. In conclusion, fingers are essential for time representation in CSL and their forms are biologically and culturally shaped.

Highlights

Across cultures, time can be represented in various ways, such as using the spatial representations of water clocks, hourglasses, calendars, etc. (Sinha et al, 2011)
We identified three major mechanisms of finger-time representations: (1) digital series, (2) numeral incorporation finger series, and (3) points-to-fingers series
There is a system of lexicalized finger configurations of time expressions in Chinese Sign Language (CSL), in which three fingers can be pointed at as temporal connectives: pointing to the thumb is a grammaticalized form to express the initial stage of events or an order, pointing to the index finger means ‘following’ or ‘secondly’, and pointing to the little finger refers to the meaning of ‘lastly’ or ‘’

Summary

Introduction

Time can be represented in various ways, such as using the spatial representations of water clocks, hourglasses, calendars, etc. (Sinha et al, 2011). Time can be represented in various ways, such as using the spatial representations of water clocks, hourglasses, calendars, etc. In addition to cultural artefacts, humans use language creatively to express time. Time can be marked by a tense system or lexical words. Some additional linguistic devices such as tense markers, aspectual verbs, and temporal connectives can be used to express more complex temporal relations (e.g., “The man married three times before he met his ideal lover.”). Language can communicate a sequence of events by using an order of mention that reflects the order in which events occurred. In Caesar’s “Veni, Vidi, Vici” ‘I came, I saw, I conquered’, the order of elements in the utterance mirrors the temporal sequence of events

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Conclusion