The Transparency of Meaning of Sign Language Gestures

Abstract

Breger (1970) has presented evidence that the meaning of 30 signs from the American Sign Language lexicon is transparent to persons with no prior experience with the language. In a 30-item multiple choice test administered live by a deaf person, 31 of Breger's 35 Ss made correct responses in more than half the trials, and all but four of the items were correctly identified at better than chance levels. These results might have both theoretical and practical implications, if confirmed. On a theoretical level, Breger's findings suggest that the trend from iconic to formal signs described by Tervoort (1961) has not proceeded very far from the signs' original motivations. They suggest, further, that historical trends in the formation of signs described by Bellugi and Klima (in press) have left the imitative, ideographic component of the signs fairly well intact. Breger's results have practical significance, since the opinion has sometimes been expressed that the ideographic lexicon of American Sign Language makes it an inferior language (Myklebust, 1964). This opinion may have to be revised, since there is evidence from translations into and out of Sign Language that Sign is able to preserve all of the meanings and nuances of an original text in English (Hoemann & Tweney 1973, Tweney & Hoemann 1973). On the other hand, if the meaning of signs is relatively transparent even to persons unfamiliar with the language, Myklebust's reservations may need to be taken seriously. Breger's results, however, must be viewed with considerable caution, since the difficulty level of a multiple choice test is affected by the test composer's selection of incorrect alternatives for each item. From the one example presented in Breger's paper and from the most frequent errors reported, it appears that almost all of the incorrect alternatives for each item appeared elsewhere in the test as response choices for other stimulus