Nonmanual clash of the lower face nonmanuals in American Sign Language
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2016
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
Nonmanuals in American Sign Language (ASL) provide syntactic, lexical,
prosodic, and affective information. While, in general, nonmanuals with different
functions are expressed through different articulatory channels, allowing them to
be layered and produced simultaneously, there are nonmanuals with different
fimctions that involve the same articulator. Since a given articulator cannot be
used in two ways at once, we have the potential for what I am calling, in this
context, a "clash". The simultaneous articulation of certain nonmanuals of the
lower face, those that are modifiers or obligatory parts of lexical items, has the
potential to result in a clash. I present the theoretical potential for this particular
clash, detailing the forms in which it can theoretically appear. This clash and its
resolution are then examined in a pilot study, conducted with a native signer. In
the pilot study, the signer used four methods to avoid or resolve a clash: a verb-sandwich
construction, displacement of the lexical nonmanual, dropping of the lexical nonmanual
and paraphrase of the elicited sentence. These methods are examined within the framework
of autosegmental phonology, while compared to similar processes in tone languages.