speed of movement in signs

[Dan Parvaz]

> Are there any sign languages where the speed of hands is
> phonologically contrastive?  It's not in ASL.  Maybe the only role
> variation in speed has in ASL is for emphasis, but even then I'm not
> sure whether it is the change in distance in sign "space" travelled
> or speed, or both, that convey emphasis.

According to Ronnie Wilbur's article in _Language and Speech_ last year,
peak velocity may have some tie with prosodic prominence (like F0
frequency in spoken languages), what has some dicourse/pragmatic
uses. Barb Shaffer's dissertation describes the difference between modals
used in various constructions. I'm not sure anyone has teased apart the
function of phrase-final modals from the discourse functions of the
phrase-final prominence. In any event, it looks like "speed" might play a
role in contrasting the epistemic and deontic uses of some modals.

Boy, that was was a long way of "I don't know," wasn't it? :-)

-Dan.

____________
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.. .   D A N  P A R V A Z  --  Geek-in-Residence
 U    University of New Mexico Linguistics Dept
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