Table Of ContentNonmanuals in Sign Language
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Volume 53
Nonmanuals in Sign Language
Edited by Annika Herrmann and Markus Steinbach
These materials were previously published in Sign Language & Linguistics 14:1
(2011)
Nonmanuals in Sign Language
Edited by
Annika Herrmann
Markus Steinbach
University of Göttingen
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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Nonmanuals in sign language / edited by Annika Herrmann, Markus Steinbach.
p. cm. (Benjamins Current Topics, issn 1874-0081 ; v. 53)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sign language--Grammar. I. Herrmann, Annika. II. Steinbach, Markus.
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Table of contents
Nonmanuals in sign languages 1
Annika Herrmann and Markus Steinbach
Syntax and prosodic consequences in ASL: Evidence from multiple
WH-questions 7
Sarah Churng
Negation in Turkish Sign Language: The syntax of nonmanual markers 47
Kadir Gökgöz
Eye gaze and verb agreement in German Sign Language: A first glance 73
Jana Hosemann
Mouth gestures in British Sign Language: A case study of tongue
protrusion in BSL narratives 91
Donna Lewin and Adam Schembri
Nonmanual markings for topic constructions in Hong Kong
Sign Language 111
Felix Sze
Nonmanuals, semantic operators, domain marking, and the solution to
two outstanding puzzles in ASL 143
Ronnie B. Wilbur
Linguistics as structure in computer animation: Toward a more effective
synthesis of brow motion in American Sign Language 175
Rosalee Wolfe, Peter Cook, John C. McDonald, and Jerry Schnepp
Index 195
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Nonmanuals in sign languages
Annika Herrmann and Markus Steinbach
University of Göttingen
1. What do nonmanual articulators reveal about the grammar
of sign languages?
Recent research on sign languages has shifted the focus of interest from the man-
ual articulators to so-called nonmanual articulators, which express a variety of
important grammatical functions. All sign languages investigated so far have a
wide range of nonmanual articulators at their disposal. Nonmanuals are defined
as the actions produced by parts of the body other than the hands. Typical non-
manual articulators are the upper part of the body, the head, and the face includ-
ing the mouth, the cheeks, the eyes, the eyebrows, and facial expressions. These
nonmanuals are usually used simultaneously with both manual and other non-
manual markers. They accompany lexical signs or may align with syntactic or
prosodic phrases (cf. Sandler 1999; Wilbur & Patschke 1999; Brentari & Crossley
2002; Sandler & Lillo-Martin 2006; Dachkovsky & Sandler 2009; Herrmann 2012;
Sandler 2012).
Nonmanuals play an important role at all levels of sign language grammar.
They express a variety of lexical, morphosyntactic, prosodic, semantic, and prag-
matic functions such as attributive, adverbial, and aspectual modification, ne-
gation, sentence types, reported speech, constructed action, and information
structuring. Nonmanuals have two interesting properties: They are multifunc-
tional and they can be layered with both manual and other nonmanual markers.
One specific nonmanual marker may express various grammatical functions and
vice versa. This multifunctionality seems to be an inherent property of all kinds of
nonmanuals. In addition, simultaneous layering of different articulatory channels
exhibits a complex interplay between manuals and nonmanuals on the one hand
and between different kinds of nonmanuals on the other (cf. Wilbur 2000; Pfau &
Quer 2010).
Most nonmanual markers are either loan elements from the surrounding
(neighboring) spoken language (such as mouthings, cf. Boyes Braem & Sutton-
Spence 2001) or they are grammaticalized gestures (such as specific facial
2 Annika Herrmann and Markus Steinbach
expressions, raised eyebrows, and body shift, cf. Wilcox 2004; Pfau & Steinbach
2006, 2011). In sign languages, nonmanuals have become a genuine part of the
grammatical system because the visual-manual modality, unlike the oral-auditory
modality, offers the unique property to grammaticalize nonmanual and manual
gestures. The reason for this is that gestures use the same articulatory channel that
is also active in the production of signs, whereas spoken languages use a com-
pletely different articulatory and perceptual system. Thus, manual and nonmanual
gestures frequently used in communication cannot become an integral part of the
grammatical system of spoken languages. In spoken languages, nonmanuals can
only be used as co-speech gestures. Since in sign languages, nonmanuals and non-
manual gestures use the same articulatory channel, it is not always easy to tease
apart linguistic and affective nonmanuals. However, there are some systematic dif-
ferences between both kinds of nonmanuals. First of all, they differ in their scope
and timing. Grammatical nonmanuals have clear on- and offsets, whereas affective
nonmanuals are more gradual and inconsistent. Second, different facial muscles
are used for the production of both types. And third, grammatical nonmanuals
are aligned with constituent structures. By contrast, affective nonmanuals are not
timed to occur parallel to specific signs or constituents (cf. Emmorey 1999; Reilly
& Anderson 2002; Wilbur 2003).
Since sign languages use many articulatorily and grammatically different non-
manual markers to express a wide range of functions, a thorough empirical de-
scription and theoretical analysis of the forms and the functions of nonmanuals in
typologically different sign languages will give new insights into modality-specific
and modality-independent aspects of natural languages. In addition, corpus stud-
ies, computer simulation, and experimental research on the acquisition, produc-
tion, and processing of affective and grammatical nonmanuals will provide further
insights into the specific grammatical, psychological, and neurobiological proper-
ties of nonmanuals in sign languages (cf. Corina et al. 1999; Atkinson et al. 2004;
Zeshan 2004ab; Thompson et al. 2006; Hosemann, this volume; Wolfe et al., this
volume).
To get a comprehensive picture of nonmanuals in sign languages, (at least) the
following questions have to be addressed: (i) How can these specific components
of sign language grammar be formally and functionally distinguished and catego-
rized? (ii) What are the lexical, syntactic, semantic, and prosodic restrictions and
functions of nonmanuals? (iii) How do manual and nonmanual markers as well
as different kinds of nonmanual markers interact? (iv) Why do signers show some
variation and optionality in the use of nonmanuals? (v) Why do sign languages
use multiple appearances of nonmanuals to express specific functions? (vi) What
is the typological variation with respect to form and function of nonmanuals?
(vii) How can nonmanuals be analyzed at the interfaces between prosody, syntax,
Nonmanuals in sign languages 3
semantics, and pragmatics? (viii) What are the differences between grammatical
nonmanuals used in sign languages and affective nonmanuals used in spoken and
sign languages? (ix) How are nonmanuals acquired, produced, and processed? (x)
How can nonmanuals be elicited, and how can corpus data containing nonmanu-
als be transcribed, annotated, and statistically evaluated? (xi) How do nonmanuals
emerge, and what does this tell us about the design of the interface between ges-
ture and grammar in sign and spoken languages?
2. Content of this book
This collected volume is an updated version of a special issue of Sign Language
& Linguistics (14:1). The articles are based on presentations given at the confer-
ence ‘Nonmanuals in Sign Languages (NISL)’, held in April 2009 at the University
of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. They take up many of the topics mentioned in
the previous section and discuss various formal and functional properties of non-
manuals in different sign languages from different perspectives. As a collection
of original papers on empirical, theoretical, experimental, and applied aspects of
nonmanuals, this book contributes findings and arguments that will foster future
studies and discussions.
The first contribution ‘Syntactic and prosodic consequences in ASL:
Evidence from multiple WH-questions’ by Sarah Churng investigates the syntax
and prosody of three multiple wh-constructions in American Sign Language
(ASL) and presents new generalizations to characterize their prosody. Churng
proposes that multiple wh-questions in ASL involve Parallel Merge structures
and she argues that A-bar movement triggers prosodic breaks and ‘prosodic re-
sets’. In his paper ‘Negation in Turkish Sign Language: The syntax of nonman-
ual markers’, Kadir Gökgöz presents a detailed description of the interaction of
manual and nonmanual markers in negative sentences in Turkish Sign Language
(Türk İşaret Dili, TİD). He argues that in TİD, certain (syntactic) nonmanuals
are used to mark the syntactic domain of negation. Jana Hosemann in her con-
tribution ‘Eye gaze and verb agreement in German Sign Language: A first glance’
presents the findings of a pilot eye-tracking study on the correlation of eye gaze
and manual agreement in German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache,
DGS). The results show that in DGS, unlike in ASL, eye gaze does not co-oc-
cur systematically with agreeing verbs. Nevertheless, the study can be taken as
evidence that also in DGS there is a dependency relation between eye gaze and
manual agreement. The contribution ‘Mouth gestures in British Sign Language:
A case study of tongue protrusion in BSL narratives’ by Donna Lewin and Adam
Schembri investigates the claim that in British Sign Language (BSL), tongue
