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We provide an analysis of the distribution of handshapes on the dominant and non-dominant hand in the incipient village sign language found in the Maxakal´ı community in Brazil. The most frequent handshapes reflect tendencies in choosing from the crosslinguistically unmarked set of handshapes, and are particularly well-suited to quantitative analyses of handshape complexity found in models such as Ann (2006) and Brentari (2003), in addition to favouring a core set chosen from the most maximally dispersed handshapes. This in fact suggests that emergent sign languages, no matter how young, show quantitative correlations between token frequency and articulatory complexity, despite tendencies that they may have otherwise to be iconically referential. We demonstrate that these trends hold for the non-dominant hand as well, an element of sign language phonologies with no analogue in the spoken domain. Finally, we demonstrate how allophonic thumb extension can be understood as contrast enhancement in signed languages, leading to a visual analogue of acoustic prominence.

We provide an analysis of the distribution of handshapes on the dominant and non-dominant hand in the incipient village sign language found in the Maxakal´ı community in Brazil. The most frequent handshapes reflect tendencies in choosing from the crosslinguistically unmarked set of handshapes, and are particularly well-suited to quantitative analyses of handshape complexity found in models such as Ann (2006) and Brentari (2003), in addition to favouring a core set chosen from the most maximally dispersed handshapes. This in fact suggests that emergent sign languages, no matter how young, show quantitative correlations between token frequency and articulatory complexity, despite tendencies that they may have otherwise to be iconically referential. We demonstrate that these trends hold for the non-dominant hand as well, an element of sign language phonologies with no analogue in the spoken domain. Finally, we demonstrate how allophonic thumb extension can be understood as contrast enhancement in signed languages, leading to a visual analogue of acoustic prominence.

We propose that contour nasals such as [mb,mb] come from three principal sources. One source, articula- torily driven, comes from underlying voiced stops, as nasal venting in order to sustain voicing. The other, perceptually driven, comes from underlying nasal consonants, as shielding next to contrastively oral vow- els. Although both of these first processes are phonetically well motivated, we argue that the contoured allophones specifically arise in languages in which systemic or phonotactic restrictions allow for easy re- coverability of the corresponding underlying segment. Finally, we present a few cases of contour nasals in preconsonantal contexts that seem to be neither venting nor shielding, and suggest that these arise due to place-of-articulation enhancement in clusters, arguably behind intrusive nasals in cases like Spanish rambla (< ramla). We offer diagnostics for distinguishing nasal venting from shielding and present case studies from South American languages in which understanding such phenomena as enhancement involves analyt- ical commitments to what is contrastive in the language. We then present a maximum entropy model of loanword adaptation for nasal harmonization in languages that borrow from Portuguese, which has nasality but with no onset-vowel dependencies.

]]> https://lpp.cnrs.fr/evenement/andrew-nevins-seminaire-1/ Thu, 02 Sep 2021 13:36:44 +0000 https://lpp.cnrs.fr/?post_type=evenement&p=5506 Continue reading Andrew Nevins – Séminaire 1 ]]> Lectures 1-2: Nasality: Enhancement, Position, and Place of Articulation

We propose that contour nasals such as [mb,mb] come from three principal sources. One source, articula- torily driven, comes from underlying voiced stops, as nasal venting in order to sustain voicing. The other, perceptually driven, comes from underlying nasal consonants, as shielding next to contrastively oral vow- els. Although both of these first processes are phonetically well motivated, we argue that the contoured allophones specifically arise in languages in which systemic or phonotactic restrictions allow for easy re- coverability of the corresponding underlying segment. Finally, we present a few cases of contour nasals in preconsonantal contexts that seem to be neither venting nor shielding, and suggest that these arise due to place-of-articulation enhancement in clusters, arguably behind intrusive nasals in cases like Spanish rambla (< ramla). We offer diagnostics for distinguishing nasal venting from shielding and present case studies from South American languages in which understanding such phenomena as enhancement involves analyt- ical commitments to what is contrastive in the language. We then present a maximum entropy model of loanword adaptation for nasal harmonization in languages that borrow from Portuguese, which has nasality but with no onset-vowel dependencies.

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