Dating among lexical and you may phonological characteristics
Next we examined relationships among the lexical and phonological properties of the signs in ASL-LEX to gain insight into how phonological, lexical, and semantic factors interact in the ASL lexicon. s = –0.14, p < 0.001. Although it is possible that this inverse correlation is driven by the relatively higher frequency of closed-class words which may be lower in iconicity than other signs, the negative correlation remains when closed-class words (i.e., words with a “minor” Lexical Class) are excluded (r s = –0.17, p < 0.001). This result is compatible with the early proposal that with frequent use, signs may move away from their iconic origins, perhaps due to linguistic pressures to become more integrated into the phonological system (Frishberg, 1975). Interestingly, the direction of this relationship was the opposite of that found for British Sign Language; that is, Vinson et al. (2008) reported a weak positive correlation between frequency and iconicity: r = .146, p < .05. Alternatively, the different correlations might be due differences in stimuli selection. Vinson et al. (2008) intentionally selected stimuli that had a range of iconicity values which resulted in a bimodal iconicity distribution while we did not select signs for inclusion in ASL-LEX based on their iconicity.
Volume and you can iconicity z-results (SignFrequency(Z) and you will Iconicity(Z)) have been significantly negatively synchronised together (get a hold of Desk step one), with repeated signs ranked because the faster renowned; yet not, it relationship is actually weak, roentgen
Enough phonological attributes https://datingranking.net/college-dating/ are highly synchronised and also in of several instances simply because how they was defined (come across Table step 1). Such as for instance, for each big venue is composed of one or more slight towns-high frequency lesser places usually ergo nearly invariably be found when you look at the large regularity biggest towns, and handshape regularity try furthermore related to chosen fist and you may flexion frequency. Additionally, all around three strategies from Community Thickness is actually highly coordinated which have one another partly since they’re also laid out and partly once the any neighbors you to definitely express four of the four sub-lexical attributes (Maximal Neighborhood Thickness) will always also express certainly one of five sub-lexical characteristics (Restricted Area Thickness). In the long run, every about three People Occurrence strategies try correlated with each of your own sub-lexical frequency strategies. This is going to make feel since of the definition, common sandwich-lexical attributes are available in of numerous signs.
Interestingly, the basic sub-lexical frequencies are completely uncorrelated with each other, with the exception of selected fingers and minor location which are significantly but weakly correlated (r = .10, p < .01). This finding suggests that the space of possible ASL signs is rather large as each sub-lexical property can (to a first degree of approximation) vary independently of the others. This property contrasts with spoken languages where phoneme frequency is correlated across different syllable positions. For example, using position-specific uniphone frequencies from Vitevitch and Luce (2004) we estimate that in English monosyllabic words, vowel frequency is negatively correlated with the frequency of the preceding consonant (r = –.07, p < .001) and positively correlated with the following consonant (r = .17, p < .001), and that onset consonants have highly correlated frequencies (r = –.51, p < .001). We speculate that the relative independence of ASL sub-lexical features is related to both the motoric independence of the manual articulators (e.g., finger flexion is unaffected by the location of the hand in signing space) as well as the relative simultaneity of manual articulation (as opposed to serial oral articulation). We note that these non-significant correlations are for sub-lexical frequency only; specific sub-lexical properties have been argued to co-vary systematically (e.g., signs produced in locations far from the face may be more likely to be symmetrical, two-handed, and have larger, horizontal, and vertical motions; Siple, 1978).