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Abstract
Three studies are presented in this paper that address how nonsigners perceive the visual prosodic cues in a sign language. In Study 1, adult American nonsigners and users of American Sign Language (ASL) were compared on their sensitivity to the visual cues in ASL Intonational Phrases. In Study 2, hearing, nonsigning American infants were tested using the same stimuli used in Study 1 to see whether maturity, exposure to gesture, or exposure to sign language is necessary to demonstrate this type of sensitivity. Study 3 addresses nonsigners' and signers' strategies for segmenting Prosodic Words in a sign language. Adult participants from six language groups (3 spoken languages and 3 sign languages) were tested. The results of these three studies indicate that nonsigners have a high degree of sensitivity to sign language prosodic cues at the Intonational Phrase level and the Prosodic Word level; these are attributed to modality or 'channel' effects of the visual signal. There are also some differences between signers' and nonsigners' sensitivity; these differences are attributed to language experience or language-particular constraints. This work is useful in understanding the gestural competence of nonsigners and the ways in which this type of competence may contribute to the grammaticalization of these properties in a sign language.
Keywords
gesture, Intonational Phrase, Prosodic Word, prosody, sign language
1 Introduction
The studies presented in this paper address the ways in which nonsigners interpret visual prosody relative to their gestural system as well as the ways in which signers interpret the same visual prosody. By 'visual prosody' we mean the facial expressions and movements of the body, which serve a function in the co-speech gesture systems of hearing people, and which also serve both a prosodic and grammatical purpose in sign languages. This work may illuminate not only the cues relevant to the gestural system for nonsigners, but also the ways in which these may or may not overlap with cues in a linguistic system. There is growing evidence that hearing, nonsigners possess what might be called gestural competence, and gestures have been found to be integral to the interpretation of the spoken message on many levels in both adults and children. McNeill (1992) has argued that gestures are a part of linguistic representation, and in...