Backwards Signing and ASL Syllable Structure

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LANGUAGE AND SPEECH. 1997. 4O(1]. 63-9O

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Backwards Signing and ASL Syllable Structure * RONNIE B. WILBUR and LESA PETERSEN Purdue University

KEY WORDS

ABSTRACT

American Sign Language (ASL]

A recurrent question raised by the study of signed languages concerns the linguistic effect of the modality in which the language is produced. Is the modality difference between speech and sign reflected merely in the nature backwards speech of the phonetic features that map into production and perception, or is it the case that there might be higher level organizational differences between modality effects the two linguistic modalities? The present study addresses the nature of the modality effect inside the syllable, namely whether syllables in ASL display syllable structure evidence of segmental composition. Data from backwards signing are presented to demonstrate that the phonological representations that must be available to signers when they perform backwards signing tasks cannot be adequately represented with the current models that posit segmental composition of ASL syllables. Instead, it is argued that it is sufficient to make reference to distinctive features, in syllable initial and syllable fmal positions, and that there is no support for any further internal segmental divisions.

INTRODUCTION One of the intriguing questions raised by the study of signed languages concerns the linguistic effect of the modality. In particular, if the grammar is viewed as composed of several components or modules, where does the modality in which a language is produced affect its grammar? Is the modality difference between speech and sign reflected merely in the nature of the phonetic features that map into production and perception? Or, given the substantial differences in the physics of speech and sign, might there not be higher level organizational differences between the two linguistic modalities, and if so, what and where? The past 30 years of investigation of American Sign Language (ASL) indicate that mere modality difference is insufficient to significantly affect the grammatical structure in the domains of syntax, semantics, and morphology (cf Wilbur, 1987, for review). More recent •Acknowledgements: This project was fiinded by NIH grant R01-DC00935 from the National Institute of Deafness and other Communication Disorders. Previous work on ASL syllables was fiinded by NSF grant BNS-8317572. Special thanks to David Geeslin, Kim Bjarkman, Sandy Wood, and members of the Indianapolis Deaf Community for assistance with this project. We are grateful to Lisa Goffman, Junko Ito, and two anonymous Language and Speech reviewers for their helpful suggestions about making the arguments herein more accessible. Illustrations of sign productions were drawn by Lesa»Petersen. Address for correspondence: Ronnie B. Wilbur, ASL Linguistics Lab, Heavilon Hall, Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN 47907-1353. E-mail: [email protected]

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research indicates that prosody and pragmatics are also modality-independent in structure and function, if not in form (Wilbur, 1994a, 1994b, in press). There is increasing support for the hypothesis that the modality effect is seen only inside the syllable, that is, there are clear indications that the modality does affect phonological organization, representation, and form, but only below or inside the syllable level. To date, syllabic input to metrical structures, word formation, phrasal domains, and sentence structure show no distinctive differences in spoken and signed modalities (Wilbur, 1994c, in press). The present study addresses the question of the modality effect inside the syllable, namely whether syllables in ASL display evidence of segmental composition. The segmental view of syllable structure holds that ASL syllables contain distinctive features that are distributed among phonological segments parallel to spoken language consonants and vowels. The nonsegmental view of syllable structure holds that ASL syllables contain distinctive features which may be accessed by phonological rule only in terms of their tiers or syllabic positions (syllable initial and final, and possibly also ambisyllabic, tautosyllabic, extrasyllabic) without further subdivision or organization (cf. Brentari, 1990b; Wilbur, 1990, 1993). One critical difference between these two claims is the implication of the segmental model that there may be three or more segmental parts to the syllable (one such model: onset, nucleus, coda; another version: a syllable containing three, four, five, ... segments). The nonsegmental syllabic model would recognize at most two: syllable initial specification and syllable final specification. The nonsegmental model does not reduce to a segmental model with a constraint of two segments per syllable; our expectation would be that two segments in the same syllable would represent different categories (e.g., C and V), whereas it appears that the two positions in the syllable model are representatives of the same class, namely features. The behavior of features on tiers in backwards signing will support this observation. The nonsegmental syllabic model also does not reduce to a single segment model (of the type proposed in Crain, 1996). The backwards signing productions of signs like FLY will provide evidence in support of this claim. Arguments against segmental models have cited lack of phonological relevance or necessity and lack of support from psycholinguistic studies of perception and production. The present report provides additional empirical support for this position from the domain of backwards signing. Backwards signing demonstrates that signers have access both to syllable sequences and to individual features within syllables which can be exchanged in temporal sequence, but not to units corresponding to segments. Before describing the empirical study, we will present a review of the basic phenomena and the basic descriptive and theoretical issues, for the benefit of readers who are not familiar with sign language phonology. BACKGROUND ON ASL PHONOLOGY Background on Syllables in ASL In talking about why one might want to use the notion of syllable for signed languages, it is important to understand*how syllables participate in descriptions of spoken languages. In spoken languages, syllables appear to be everywhere, participating prominently in hyphenation in text, the assignment of linguistic stress, meter and rhyme in poetry, tip-of-

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the-tongue phenomena, clues in charades and crossword puzzles, the production of language games like Pig Latin, and even the determination of melodious names for children and commercial products. The debate regarding syllables concerns what linguistic status and function syllables should have in the grammar. As Hyman (1975) notes, three questions tend to recur in any discussion of syllables: How does one define syllable? How does one determine syllable boundaries? Is the syllable concept necessary? Yip (1994) argues that syllable is one of three prosodic units which are part of Universal Grammar (the other two are mora and foot). However, as Ladefoged (1982, p. 218) notes, "there is no agreed phonetic definition of syllable" and Kenstowicz and Kisseberth (1979, pp. 255-256) observe that "the syllable is probably the most elusive of all phonological/phonetic notions ... The primary reason for the great confusion surrounding the syllable is a lack of any adequate phonetic definition." Lass (1984, p. 248), with tongue in cheek, begins his introductory chapter on syllables with the definition: "Everyone knows that 'a syllable is what syllable has three of."' Consider various approaches to defining spoken syllables. One is to specify articulatory correlates—to treat syllables as the result of what the speaker produces. Ladefoged (1982) considers and rejects two such proposals: (1) that each syllable is initiated by a chest pulse, a contraction of the rib cage that forces more air out of the lungs, and (2) that syllables can be defined in terms of some combination of laryngeal and respiratory activity. Another articulatory-based approach is taken by Browman and Goldstein (1986), who build on Anderson's (1974) observation that articulation can be decomposed into four subsystems: an energy source, a laryngeal system, an oral system, and a nasal system. Syllables can be seen as the coordinated trajectories of articulatory gestures in each of these systems. Another approach to syllable definition is to specify the acoustic properties of the speech stream—what the listener hears. Probably the best known of these theories is the one based on sonority, which is the loudness of a sound relative to other sounds that have the same length, stress, and pitch. In a sequence of sounds, the most sonorous sounds are the syllable peaks. Ladefoged (1982, p. 222) notes, however, that this theory does not account for all the facts, and cites words like "spa" which have one syllable but two sonority peaks. There are also phrases, such as "hidden aims" and "hid names" which have the same number of sonority peaks but a different number of syllables (three in the first, two in the second). Clements (1988) approaches sonority as an emergent property that is derived from more basic binary categories (obstruent, nasal, liquid, vowel) in terms of their major class features. In the preferred syllable, the sonority of sequential sounds rises maximally at the beginning (up to and including the vowel) and drops minimally at the end. The implications of Clements's approach to sonority is that the phonological syllable can be defined using sonority, but that sonority is not a phonetic property that can be found by instrumental investigation of the speech stream. Another approach is to view syllables as abstract units that exist at a higher level of mental activity (phonological) than speech production or perception (phonetic) — for example, at the level where utterances are organized for production. Hyman (1975) uses the word bedroom to demonstrate how phonetic and phonological syllables can coexist but have different boundaries. Phonologically and morphologically, bedroom has two syllables: /bEd.rum/. Phonetically, bedroom is pronounced [bE.jrum] because the [d] is adjacent to the [r], hence the intermediate [bE.drum]. This distinction illustrates that acceptance and

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use of the notion of phonological syllables does not preclude additional syllable analysis at the phonetic level. Indeed, resyllabification plays an important role in many formulations, creating numerous situations in which the syllabification that might be associated with a lexical entry and the additional affixes is different from the syllabification after all relevant associations, deletions, and changes have been effected (Clements & Keyser, 1983; Goldsmith, 1989). From this perspective, there may be one definition of syllable for the lexical representations (the phonological syllable) and another definition for actual productions (the phonetic syllable).' Another approach to syllable definition determines the syllable boundaries rather than the syllable contents. Kahn (1976) proposed a mechanical procedure for syllabification without proposing any model of what the syllable looks like. He assumes that each grammar contains a listing of the possible syllable-initial and syllable-final clusters, to which three rules are sensitive. Kenstowicz and Kisseberth (1979, p. 259) accept Kahn's rules as providing a "consistent definition of the syllable that is required for the statement of other phonological rules of English." In summary, there are approaches to spoken syllable definition based on articulation, acoustics, and phonological characteristics such as the structuring of sequences of segments and the location of boundaries between syllables. Relevant to the discussion of signed languages is the fact that although the syllable is a well-accepted and useful concept in spoken language phonology, there is no generally accepted definition for syllables. Instead the notion of syllable justifies itself by its utility in the statement of phonological processes. For many of the proposals that have been made for spoken language, similar proposals have been made for ASL. Suggested approaches include kinematic divisions, for example that syllable peak is equal to velocity peak (Coulter 1985), that syllable boundary is equal to velocity minimum (Green, 1984; Wilbur & Nolen, 1986), and that syllables can be defined on signed sonority (Brentari, 1990b, 1990c; Corina & Sagey, 1989; Edmondson 1986a, 1990; Perlmutter, 1992, 1993; Sandier, 1989, 1990, 1993b). Early phonological attempts include Kegl and Wilbur (1976) and Chinchor (1978); models that have been proposed since then include flat syllables (Liddell, 1984; Sandier, 1986; Wilbur, 1990), hierarchical syllables (Wilbur 1982), boundary-based syllables (Wilbur & Nolen, 1986; Wilbur & Schick, 1987), and moraic based syllables (Perlmutter, 1988). In a study of over 3,000 ASL syllables produced in conversational and elicited contexts, Wilbur and Nolen (1986) demonstrated that syllables can be reliably counted and their duration measured. The different signing samples reflected different degrees of naturalness, and the means for each sample varied accordingly. The most natural context, conversational signing, had a mean of 249.7ms, comparable to the quarter of a second reported for spoken English syllables. Less natural situations, involving elicitation tasks, showed higher means (292.1 to 360.7ms). The notion of syllables has proven to be useful in the statement of a variety of historical changes (Frishberg, 1978; Battison, 1978), synchronic morphological processes (Chinchor, ' Most recently, Pierrehumbert and Nair (1995) argue that the evidential basis for claiming syllable internal structural distinctions, such as onset and rime/coda, has been overinterpreted, and that careful study of these data indicates no such support.

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1981), and phonological processes (Wilbur, 1990, 1993; Coulter, 1982). For example, certain monosyllabic monomorphemic signs have two contacts with the body. If the preceding sign is closer in the place of formation to the second contact than the first, assimilation results in the switching of the two contacts. This process is permitted only if the two contacts are in the same syllable. Padden (1993), and the work of Brentari (1990a, 1990b, 1993, 1996) provide f\irther arguments in favor of the role of syllable structure in ASL phonology. Segments in ASL? Linguistic arguments

The initial proposals. The issue of the appropriate nature of the phonological representations of lexically simple and morphologically complex signs has occupied a central role in discussions of ASL phonology for well over ten years (Ahn, 1990; Brentari, 1990a, 1990b, 1990c, 1995,1996; Edmondson, 1990; Liddell, 1982,1984,1990; Padden & Perlmutter, 1987; Perlmutter, 1990,1992; Sandier, 1986,1987,1989,1990,1993a; Wilbur, 1982,1985,1987, 1990). An overview of the debate is given in Wilbur (1993), which appears in a volume that is overwhelmingly devoted to aspects of this issue (Coulter, 1993). Another overview is Corina and Sandier (1993). Comparable work has been conducted on British Sign Language (Edmondson, 1986b, 1990) and on Sign Language of the Netherlands (Van der Hulst, 1993). Liddell's earliest argument for sequential structure in ASL included an assumption that linear sequentiality must be segmental. This "default" assumption that sequentiality is equal to segmental structure appears to have been continued throughout other sign analyses without question. That is, whereas a linear sequence could also be handled by sequential features (as for example in autosegmental phonology), such a possibility was never considered for sign structure by the proponents of segmental structure. For example, in a discussion of the motivation for a templatic analysis of morphological processes in ASL comparable to what is observed in Hebrew, Corina and Sandier (1993, p. 177) state "both the form of the template and the segmental nature of the input from the base argue for sequentially organized feature groups, or segments [emphasis added]." The segmental structure of the base input to the morphological process is assumed, as is the equivalence between "sequentially organized feature groups" and "segments." Similar comments throughout the paper attest to the treatment of "linearity," "sequentially organized," and "segments" as essentially synonymous. Liddell's model proposed segments of M and H —essentially abstract units corresponding to movements and holds. Sandier provided convincing arguments against this particular conception and proposed instead a model with segments of M and L—movement and location. Perlmutter suggested instead M and P — movement and position. More recently Liddell (1993) argued against Perlmutter's MP model and provided another set of arguments for his own MH model. Arguments against these proposals. Since 1982, Wilbur has argued against segments in ASL and for a model of ASL phonology based on two crucial assumptions. First, phonological generalizations are stated in terms of distinctive features on autosegmental "tiers" related to appropriate syllable positions, rather than segments (for the notion of feature tiers and

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its use in spoken language phonological theory see Goldsmith, 1989). Second, movement itself is the emergent result of change in handshape, location, and/or orientation, but is not itself a phonological primitive (a similar argument for the derived nature of movement from the perspective of Dependency Phonology is given in Van der Hulst, 1993; Hayes, 1993, reiterates some of the arguments against M as a segment). Wilbur (1993) considers four possible definitions of what "segment" might mean: (1) vertical slices of the physical stream, (2) labels for distinctive feature matrices, (3) contrasting categories of elements such as consonant and vowel, and (4) labels for segmental/skeletal tier timing slots. (1) In the vertical slice approach, the signing stream is divided into segments as a function of time intervals, some of which have movement and others of which do not. However, in the absence of any demonstration that these intervals contribute to ASL phonology, these vertical slice segments remain purely the result of the fact that the hands move and stop. This was the conception against which Sandier (1986,1987,1989) provided arguments. (2) In the labels for distinctive feature matrices approach, it is easily demonstrated for any segmental model with M as a proposed segment that the features of M can never be completely independent of the features for H/L/P, since in virtually all cases, M and H/L/P share the distinctive feature sets. If the features are defined for H/L/P, then they spread to M; if they are defined for M, then they spread to H/L/P. The only H/L/P that can occur with a particular M in a syllable (say, HM or ML) is the one that shares the same features for handshape, location, orientation, contact, and so forth, as the M itself There are no signs that contain an initial position that is different from the one at the onset of the movement and similarly no signs that have an ending position that is different fiom the offset of the movement. To see how this is so, consider an example gesture. Make a flat hand with all fingers touching (the B handshape). Now move the hand in any linear direction while closing to a fist (the S handshape). In this gesture, the hand can maintain the initial B handshape before starting the linear movement for as long as one likes, but the linear movement cannot start with any other handshape (for example, the fingers spread apart as in the 5 handshape), because one has to move the hand (spread the fingers) just to make this handshape change (movements like spreading are referred to as hand-internal or local movement). Similarly, once the handshape is a fist, it can be held for as long as one likes, but a hold following this movement cannot be made with any other handshape because there needs to be movement to get to that new handshape. Hence, all movements that follow initial holds/locations/positions must start with the specifications of those initial H/L/P, and all holds that follow movements must have the same specifications as the end of the movement. One does not change handshapes, locations, or orientations between initial specifications and movement the way that one changes articulator positions from a consonant to a vowel. One can argue, as in Gestural Phonology, that the spoken syllable is the gestural transition from the consonant to the vowel (cf Browman & Goldstein, 1986, for discussion of the pros and cons of this approach), but in speech there is no sense in which the features contained in the feature matrix for the consonant are shared by, or determined by, the features contained in the feature matrix for the vowel that follows it. Yet this is exactly the case inside syllables in signed languages, hence the notion that segments are labels for distinctive feature matrices corresponding to M and H/L/P cannot be maintained.

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(3) The common use of the term segment to refer to a contrasting category of elements cannot be maintained for signed languages either. For example, the spoken language segment V can represent a set of elements a, e, i. o, u, while C can represent the set containing;?, /, k, b, d, g, and so on. Sequences of different CVC can occur. But as we have seen with respect to distinctive feature matrices, the combinations in signed languages are limited to only those H/L/P that share features (initial or final) with the M that is chosen. Alternately, if one chooses an initial H/L/P, then that determines the onset of the M. These arguments are elaborated in Wilbur (1993) and in Sandier (1987, 1989). (4) The term segment could be used to refer to positions on the segmental/skeletal tier, as posited in autosegmental phonology. There are several arguments against such an approach, (a) We have no evidence that there are contrasting categories that require positions on the segmental tier to be labeled, (b) Liddell (1990) defines M as having two sets of associated articulatory features and H as having only one, thus the labels M and H are already redundant, (c) There are no phonological facts that are explained by a M/H or other such distinction at the segmental tier level (if indeed there is a segmental tier). There are no phonological generalizations that require reference to M and H/L/P or sequences of M and H/L/P. (d) Even for spoken language, it is not clear that, if there is a segmental tier, the slots need to be labeled. Clements and Keyser (1983) favor labeled C and V slots. In contrast, Hyman (1984) argues that the CV tier can be successfiilly and profitably replaced by a weight tier, each position of which is marked only by X. The weight tier is the tier relevant for tone assignment and is the input tier for syllabification. Hyman argues that his weight tier also serves as input to the determination of phonetic properties of speech timing. Hayes (1989) extended Hyman's line of reasoning by proposing a moraic phonology without segmental tiers. Edmondson (1990) provided some arguments that unlabeled slots on a skeletal tier will also suffice for signed languages. Lack of utility of segments. As a practical matter, phonological generalizations in ASL do not make reference to segments. To date, every generalization offered by proponents of segmental models can be successfully stated without reference to segments and without proposing additional phonological mechanisms for ASL. Indeed, as Wilbur (1993) notes, some of these generalizations were originally stated without reference to segments by authors in their arguments ybr segmental models. To increase syllable duration, Liddell (1990) used a rule of H insertion and Sandier (1987) used a rule of L gemination; however, Perlmutter (1988) used mora insertion, which accomplishes the same result without reference to segments. Similarly, to eliminate non-phrase-final H segments, Liddell uses a rule of H deletion; Perlmutter (1988, 1993) avoids the problem by inserting extra moras only in final position to begin with (again, no reference to segments is needed). Similarly, none of the phonological generalizations provided in Padden and Perlmutter (1987) were written with reference to segments. Ahn (1990) further discusses these generalizations (rules of Weak Hand Freeze and Weak Hand Drop) entirely in terms of tiers and features, with Weak Hand Drop represented as delinking of the Weak Hand tier, and Weak Hand Freeze as delinking the second set of location articulatory features associated with the Weak Hand tier. Another example is provided by Brentari< 1990a, p. 66), who revises Sandier's (1989) Handshape Sequence Constraint as: "The syllable may license only one set of features that specifies selectedfingers,and the word may license a maximum of one [-peripheral] handshape." Both

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original (Sandler's) and revision (Brentari's) are stated without reference to segments. Finally, flirther work by Corina (1990, 1993) describes a variety of phonological processes in ASL entirely without reference to segments (his root nodes are associated with unlabeled skeletal slots). Thus, the models have proposed the existence of segments, but they have not provided any evidence that there is any need for such divisions. The data to be presented here will further demonstrate that the internal syllable structure in signed languages is not like that of spoken languages, even though both modalities have syllables. If features are capable of projecting syllables (as per Hayes 1989) or if syllable trees are projected from place features as heads (Van der Hulst 1993), and generalizatiotis can be stated without crucial reference to segments (by using features and syllables instead), then those who would propose segments as an additional level of representation must provide positive support by demonstrating that segments perform some necessary function. Psycholinguistic evidence

Data from perception show significant differences between speech and signing. Allen (1972) showed that spoken language syllables have a rhythmic focus at the onset of the nuclear vowel. That is, native speakers of English, tapping in time to speech, cluster their taps in the vicinity of the stressed vowel onset.^ In a comparable study of the rhythmic structure of ASL (Allen, Wilbur, & Schick, 1991), native deaf signers, native hearing signers, and sign-naive hearing subjects tapped to signed stimuli. Analysis of the distribution of their taps shows that for all three groups, taps are evenly distributed within syllables and do not differ from chance distribution. That is, no syllable-internal rhythmic focus is apparent (Wilbur & Allen, 1991). This result is predicted if the signed syllable is composed of constantly changing movement (e.g., gesturally)—no single point in time attracts attention to itself the way that the onset of a stressed vowel does, with large changes in muscular and acoustic energy (Allen, 1972). The absence of such peaks is consistent with the hypothesis that there is no further segmentation inside the syllabic signal. It is also important to note that subjects* taps were not attracted to holds (when present), nor were they attracted to contacts of the hands with the body or each other, to velocity peaks, or to movement onsets

In her review comments, Junko Ito has brought to my attention the fact that tapping in the vicinity of the stressed vowel onset has been taken as supporting evidence for the existence of foot structure, a rhythmic structure above the level of the syllable (Hayes 1995). She notes that tapping at the onset of a foot is not universal for speech, in that Japanese speakers tap at every syllable, and suggests that it may not be appropriate to attribute the tapping position differences entirely to the diflFerence between speech and signing. There are two separate issues here. First, there is clearly an important difference in what attracts taps in speech (syllable target) and signing (word target), and second, there is also an important difference in how the syllable level targets are implemented in speech (perhaps foot vs. syllable). The fact that tapping to the onset of a foot is not universal does not bear directly on the modality (spoken/signed) issue, as the tap locations inside the syllable are the same (syllable peak; transition to main vowel) whether stressed or unstressed but are more pronounced with stressed syllables. Whether Japanese speakers tap to every syllable should not affect where they tap in^de the syllable. For our purposes, what is relevant is that they have a target at this level. In contrast, signers tap to signs of various types, but they do not have syllable-internal targets. The data on signers clearly demonstrates that nothing at this level attracts their taps (hence the random distribution of taps throughout the syllable duration).

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or off-sets. Subjects' taps were attracted to various types of signs: repeated signs, stressed signs, and/or signs at phrase boundaries (Allen et al., 1991). But no particular/jorr/on of such syllables received the taps, providing no evidence for supporting a sequential syllable peak. Brentari (1990b) argues on other grounds that syllable peak, if the notion is meaningful, is probably best defined as a simultaneous, rather than sequential, notion for signed languages. Data from sign errors also do not support segmental models (Wilbur, 1993; Meier, 1993). If the features that compose a sign are distributed across M and H/L/P segments as suggested in the segmental models, all features which are associated to one segment should be able to behave together as group. In English slips of the tongue, the vast majority involve all the features of the segment, although occasional occurrences of single feature exchanges are found (Fromkin 1971, 1973). The slips of the hand reported by Klima and Bellugi (1979) for ASL do not support a segmental analysis. In their corpus, nine examples of whole sign exchanges (out of 131 slips) were found, but these involved all the features for both signs, not all the features for one segment within each sign. What did not happen was an exchange between the features associated with, say, the initial H of signs 1 and 2 (which is parallel to the kinds of segmental exchange observed in speech). Instead, observed slips of the hand involve either handshape, location, orientation, or handedness (one vs. two hands) features, with handshape involvement the most common, or in some cases two of these, handshape and orientation, as would be predicted by the arguments given in Sandier (1986, 1987) for a node joining Handshape and Orientation tiers. As an example, in one slip involving the signs BLACK and WHITE (in that order), the handshape sequence in WHITE (open 5 [thumb and all fingers extended and spread] to closed flat 0 [thumb and all fingers touch at tips but generally flattened rather than round]) is anticipated in the prior formation of BLACK, so that BLACK's regular handshape (B handshape [thumb and fingers extended but not spread]) is completely replaced by the handshape change fTom WHITE (open 5 to flat 0) while its location (at the forehead) and movement direction (brushing across) remained unaffected (Klima & Bellugi, 1979, p. 139). Hence, what did not happen is an assimilation whereby the initial handshape feature and remaining initial features (notably the location feature) for WHITE are regressively assimilated into BLACK, which would have created a form that would start at the chest (not the forehead) and close to flat 0 at the chest (note that this nonoccurring form would have put the hand in a perfect position to begin the sign WHITE, which is made at the chest; that is, the form is not blocked by any apparent phonotactic violations). In another example, the circling movement of PLEASE intruded into the formation of HELP Significantly, the location features and orientation features of PLEASE did not accompany the circling intrusion (the handshapes involved are already the same). In none of the examples given in Klima and Bellugi did the features act together as a group, as would be predicted from the segmental models.

BACKGROUND TO THE EXPERIMENTAL STUDY Language games

It has been well-established that language games and backwards speaking allow investigation of phonological representations, especially the syllable level (Cowan, 1989; Cowan,

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Cartwright, Winterowd, & Sherk, 1987; Cowan & Leavitt, 1981, 1990; Cowan, Leavitt, Massaro, & Kent, 1982; Cowan, Braine, & Leavitt, 1985; Sherzer, 1970;Treiman, 1983). Sherzer, who studied the backwards talking game of the Cuna Indians, found that the Indians reversal methods provided evidence for the psychological reality of linguistic delineations of segments. Cowan, Braine, and Leavitt (1985, p. 680) report that "rather than producing something resembling a tape recording played in reverse, subjects appear to segment speech into phonemic or syllabic units and reverse the order of units." Cowan et al. observed that individuals who were adept at reversing words fell into two main groups, using either orthography or phonology as the basis for the reversal. For example, if the word to be reversed was "terrace," the orthographic reverser would say /Ekaret/, which recognizes the presence of the final "silent e" and applies phonological rules to the pronunciation of "c" followed by back vowels, yielding /k/. The phonological reverser would say hiiet/, a simple reversal of phonological segment order. For both types of reversers, there is clear indication of structure within the syllables. Cowan, Braine, and Leavitt (1985) identify several principles of syllabification that backwards speakers tend to obey. One principle that was obeyed absolutely by all backwards talkers was that of phonotactic constraints. If a sequence of segments would violate the constraints on what is allowable in single syllables, then the backwards talkers would syllabify in such a way as to avoid producing such violations. Some of the other principles of syllabification that backwards talkers obey to greater or lesser degree are that stressed syllables attract phonemes, that lax vowels are avoided at the end of a stressed syllable, that morphological structure should be preserved as much as possible, and the principle of maximal onset (put as many consonants at the beginning of a syllable as possible rather than at the end of the previous syllable) (Cowan & Leavitt, 1990). In essence, backwards speech, according to Cowan and colleagues, reveals subjects' knowledge of syllable boundaries and segments. This discovery is especially germane to Cowan's studies with children who reverse speech or preliterate children who use Pig Latin, as they would have little or no acquaintance with formal grammar or linguistic training. In addition. Cowan, Braine, and Leavitt (1985) report data from an adult woman who was extremely skilled at playing a syllable-reordering game which she had played since childhood. This woman, unlike other subjects, had three techniques. For example, if the word to be reversed was "basket," the woman would produce three reversed versions in succession: (1) /ketbaes/, which reflects reversal of syllable order but no internal syllable changes; (2) /saebtek/, which reflects reversal of segments within each syllable but no change in the syllable order; and (3) /teksaeb/, which reflects a reversal from back to front of the segments, which is also equivalent to reversing the order of syllables and then reversing the internal order of the segments in each syllable. Techniques 1 and 2 both demonstrate the woman's access to syllable boundaries. In cases where more than one syllabification might be possible, she indicated that her choice of syllable boundaries depended on the exact details of how stimulus words were pronounced by the experimenter, which may be taken as evidence that this is an online productive process an'd not merely retrieval of a prestored set of reversal pronunciations. Bagemihl (1989) provides an extensive discussion and analysis of the various language games and their implications for phonological theory. Bagemihl adopts the term "ludling"

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from Laycock (1969,1972) to cover systems of phonological and morphological manipulation of ordinary words so as to focus on the formal characteristics of the manipulations rather than on the soeiolinguistic functions involved, such as "language game" or "speech disguise." Bagemihl considers in depth several types of "reversals" and different proposed analyses of ludlings. He offers an analysis with a parameterized Crossing Constraint (CC), one of the basic tenets of autosegmental phonology. In normal phonology, association lines between tiers may not cross. Bagemihl observes that reversals in ludlings can be appropriately accounted for by noting first that ludlings allow the marked value of CC, namely that association lines may cross, and further that ludlings differ as to whether they allow "maximum crossing" or "minimum crossing." Additional parameters are needed to indicate whether the crossing occurs at the syllable level or segment level, and whether the crossing stays within a syllable or exchanges across a syllable. The values and defaults (in parentheses) for CC are: a. Crossing

(no crossing)/crossing

b. Amount

maximum/minimum

c. Level

(syllable)/segment

d. Type

(intersyllable)/intrasyllable

Bagemihl demonstrates how different types of reversals are the result of interaction of the parameters with the various settings. For example, transposition is the apparent movement of the first syllable to the end of the word or the movetnent of the last syllable to the beginning of the word. Interchange involves apparent movement of the second syllable to the beginning of the word, or of the penultimate syllable to the end of the word. These, he proposes, are the result of affixation of a syllable template to the word edge (initial or final) and the subsequent application of the maxitnum crossing (transposition) or minimum crossing (interchange) of association lines intersyllabically. Exchange is the switching of the position of segments or sequences of segments between syllables (intersyllabic) or within syllables (intrasyllabic): (1) Representation of transposition (Bagemihl, 1989) a. NL (NL=non-ludling form)

a /\

a /l\

o /\

a+

a

o

CY

CYC C Y

C V CYC C Y

ma

g a n

rn a

da

c. template satisfaction (maximum crossing)

(5+

b. prefixation

o

a

a

g a n

d

d. uncrossing O /\

4

(Start at 1, move to 2, to 3, to 4)

Because these signs involve two distinct syllables, we can see the effects of making exchanges within syllables as well as across syllables. Some signers exchanged the syllable order as well as the movement within each syllable. There were basically two approaches— treatment of disyllables as sequences of syllables (within-syllable) and treatment of the sign movement as a path spanning the syllables (across-syllable). Phonologically, the "across-syllable" approach exchanged both the order of syllables and the movement within each syllable, while the "within-syllable" approach exchanged only the movement within each syllable. Within-syllable exchanges display changes within the first syllable followed by changes in the second syllable. Across-syllable exchanges display reordering of the syllables and changes within syllables. For within-syllable reversals, syllables were kept in the original order, feature specifications were exchanged within the first syllable, and then feature specifications were exchanged within the second syllable:

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(b)

(5)

•^3

1 For across-syllable reversals, the order of the syllables is reversed in addition to within syllable exchange so that the movement of the sign is afluidbackwards trace of the normal movement: 4 (6) -•1

As with many such experimental studies, there were some task-induced errors, as illustrated in (7), where the first syllable has been reversed (cf 4) and the second syllable remains in its canonical form:

84

Backwards signing (7)

-•4

1 Similarly, there were production errors in the across-syllable reversals, primarily in the form of signers' failure to complete exchanges within the second syllable after exchanges had been made in the first. In short, signers seem to lose track, managing to exchange the syllables, and exchanging within the now-first syllable, but failing to exchange within the now-second syllable. In a complete backwards production, the signers produced the reverse order (final, initial) of the first syllable, followed by the reverse order (final, initial) of the second syllable. In partial reversals, the signers produced the reverse order (final, initial) of the first syllable and the canonical order (initial, final) of the second syllable: (8)

1 •-

Partial reversals of both ITALY and CANCEL were identical in structure and sequence: second syllable reversed (final, initial) followed by first syllable canonical (initial, final). These data support the argument that signers have access to syllables and to syllable initial and syllable final positions. The observed forms can be accounted for without resort to further segmentation of the syllable as proposed by segmental models. Wiggling

Signs made with finger wiggling were especially difficult for signers to reverse. The old sign for GERMANY is a two-handed sign which contains a wiggling movement of the fingers. Because it seemed impossible for subjects to reverse a wiggle, they tried various other methods. One signer changed hand dominance (which hand is on top) as a solution (Figure 5). Another signer played with the sign a few moments, eventually performing a well-established ASL (morpho)phonological substitution of "spritz"-opening movement for wiggling (Klima & Bellugi, 1979; Wilbur, Klima, & Bellugi, 1983). The signer then reversed the spritz-opening movement, producing a form in which the fingers extended (the end part of spritz) and then collapsed to a fist (the initial part of spritz). The other signers were unable to suggest anything for the backwards forms. The sign COLOR is a one handed wiggling sign which is located at the chin. All subjects decided that there was no possible reversal for COLOR. This was the only sign which all subjects felt they could not reverse. The inability to reverse wiggling itself supportsfreatmentof wiggling movement as a single feature. Segmental models, most

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Figure 5: GERMANY: Change ofdominant (on top) hand. of which treat wiggling as a single segment, are not inconsistent with these data, as they are with all of the other categories. What is not clear though, is what, if any difference, is implied by their referring to wiggling as a single segment rather than as a single feature. CONCLUSION Consistently, movements were exchanged from end specification to start specification, as though initial and final features were exchanged on their own tiers: from end location to beginning location; from end handshape to beginning handshape; from end orientation to beginning orientation. Syllable models capture these reversals perfectly (Brentari, 1995; Wilbur, 1990, 1993) by referring only to syllable initial and syllable final position; that is, adjacent distinct feature specifications on the same tier are exchanged. These same specifications — adjacent distinct features — are all that are needed to project syllable structure (Wilbur, 1993, following Hayes, 1989, who argues that syllables are never in the underlying representation). The feature geometry proposed by Sandier (1989, 1993a) with variation suggested in Wilbur (1993) is supported by the data without any need to refer to proposed segments. That is, as yet no cases of phonological behavior in these data or elsewhere require segments as a unit intermediate between features and syllables; features and syllables are sufficient for stating the phonological generalizations of ASL. There are no cases where the further division of features into segments prior to syllabification has been shown to be necessary. With respect to the larger typology of languages and ludling/non-ludling phonology, Bagemihl makes the observation that no ludling displays the exchanging of, for example, just laryngeal or place nodes, and claims that only root nodes can be referenced by ludling manipulation. Indeed, the fact that only root nodes work this way in spoken language provides positive evidence for the segment in spoken phonology. This evidence is lacking for ASL. The backwards signing data demonstrate that what ASL does is exactly what spoken languages do not do, exchanging features only on the handshape tier, or the location tier, and so forth. In ASL it is not the case that only root nodes can be referenced. The backwards signing data indicate that other subsegmental nodes can be referenced, in particular Sandler's proposed nodes of Hand Configuration (HC) and Orientation. It is important to recognize that the backwards signing data provide additional support for claims made by Sandier on the basis of normal phonology, and that the backwards signing data themselves are not the only basis for these claims.

86

Backwards signing

One observation that Bagemihl makes is supported by the backwards signing data reported here. He notes that crossing at the syllable level is less marked than crossing at the segmental level and that if a ludling has both, syllable reversals always take precedence over segmental reversals. Further, he observes that segmental reversal is a last resort strategy, used only for monosyllabic items when no other types of reversals are possible. ASL has a predominantly monosyllabic lexicon (Coulter, 1982) and displays both types of reversals. However, this similarity between spoken and signed languages is immediately qualified by the claim made here, namely that ASL does not have segments. Like slips of the hands, what is exchanged in ASL is not segmental matrices, but rather features on tiers. These data indicate that backwards signing is also not just a "videotape playing backwards" — signers use their mental models to determine what should be reversed and how. In this respect, backwards signing is like backwards speech (Cowan & Leavitt, 1990); there is strong support for the syllable basis of the mental models used by backwards speakers. However, what is available to be reversed differs qualitatively in the two modalities below the syllable level, with segments (feature matrices referenced by root nodes) available in speech and featiires on individual tiers available in sign. Taken together, these observations from backwards signing provide flirther support for our hypothesis that the effects of the modality in which language is produced are seen below/inside the syllable level of the grammar and for the claim that signed syllables have only initial and final feature specifications without additional internal segmentation. Speech and signing differ fundamentally on internal syllable organization and these differences can be observed in backwards productions. Received: January 31, 1996; revised manuscript received: August 29, 1996; accepted: September 20, 1996

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