This type of other abilities was on account of get across-linguistic differences in the new functions of BSL and you may ASL lexicons

Relationships one of lexical and you will phonological attributes

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.

Frequency and you can iconicity z-scores (SignFrequency(Z) and you can Iconicity(Z)) was basically somewhat negatively coordinated together (discover Table step one), with additional regular signs ranked just like the shorter iconic; not, it matchmaking try poor, roentgen

An abundance of phonological qualities Cougar free and single dating site is actually very synchronised as well as in of many cases simply because how they was laid out (see Table step 1). Such as for example, each significant place contains a minumum of one small locations-high frequency lesser towns and cities usually hence nearly invariably be discovered in large frequency big towns, and handshape frequency try furthermore related to chose little finger and you can bending frequency. While doing so, every three steps of People Density try very coordinated that have one to some other partly since they are likewise defined and you may partially while the one natives that express five of your own five sandwich-lexical features (Maximal Area Thickness) tend to always in addition to display one of five sub-lexical features (Restricted Community Thickness). Finally, all the about three Community Occurrence steps was synchronised with each of sub-lexical regularity measures. This will make sense once the by the definition, common sub-lexical characteristics can be found in of a lot 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).