intonation=prosody=non-man.marking ??

Thu Oct 10 14:14:10 UTC 2002

Hello all,

I have been working in this area for over a decade. I think it does make a
difference, and here are some reasons why I am worried.  People have been
making sweeping generalizations and I find it disturbing.

1) Prosody typically includes: intonation, rhythm, and stress.  In speech,
intonation is tracked by fundamental frequency (f0) /pitch, which ASL may or
may not have an analog to, empirically determined as Joerg indicated.

2) I worked on stress during the 80s and 90s (see a summary in Language &
Speech 1999) and determined both where word and phrasal stress are placed and
how stress is represented physically (high peak velocity).

3) I've also worked on rhythm, the establishment of a pattern of beats and the
breaking of that pattern to highlight stressed items (Allen et al, below).
Furthermore, rhythmic patterns are maintained over changes in signing rate
(another prosodic factor).

4) That leaves questions about intonation.  
        a) Do we mean strictly analogous to speech, e.g., fundamental
frequency?  Poizner has done work on the frequencies (Fourier transforms) of
various verb movements and aspectual modifications, but I don't think that's at
all intonation.
        b) When we talk about intonation in spoken English on say, a yes/no
question with subject-aux inversion ("Can you speak French?"), the intonation
is billed as a question marker (i.e. a syntactic or pragmatic function), but
the question would still be a question without the question intonation. What is
the role of intonation in speech, and how would we know if we had an analog? 
        c) Consider the brow raise on yes/no questions in ASL... also, what do
we say about the brow raise on the other structures that are not questions? 
Coulter 1978 argued that these structures were all one structure, marked by
brow raise, and they were "modified" by other nonmanuals to create different
versions (allomorphs?) of the basic form.  But Coulter's data excluded other
structures that also have brow raise, rendering his original analysis void. My
work on brow raise shows that the presence of brow raise can be predicted from
the (formal) semantics of the structure  (whether there is a restrictive
operator at work) and where the brow raise will go (that part that is the
restrictor of the operator). 
        d) SO let's assume that I'm correct, and that there is a predicable
semantic basis for brow raise placement and scope - do we say that the brow
raise is or is not intonation? What do we make of the fact that the actual
number of brow raises (counting times brows go up and down) is affected by
signing rate (fewer when signing faster, more when signing slower), whereas the
actual structures covered by brow raise (determined semantically) is unaffected
by rate of signing? What about my earlier thought that the brow raise was a
morphological marker of the operator (FLSM 1995)? I'm withholding final
judgment now that I'm more cautious about making analogies.
        e) Similarly, inhibited periodic eyeblinks are predictable. But the
predictor, the right edge of Selkirk's Intonational Phrases, is not a strictly
intonationally defined concept - it is derived instead from a syntactic
configuration, the ungoverned maximal projection. What if it's not possible to
separate intonation from syntax, or semantics, or pragmatics?  This is a
theoretical as well as an empirical issue, but it is also heavily dependent on
thorough knowledge of the theories involved - intonational, syntactic,
semantic, etc.
Here are some of my references related directly to these issues - you can see
from the titles that I've struggled with how to interpret each of these
concepts: 

wilbur, R. B. & A. Martinez (in press). Physical correlates of prosodic
structure in American Sign Language. Chicago Linguistic Society 38.
wilbur, R. B. (2000). Phonological and prosodic layering of non-manuals in
American Sign Language. In Lane, H. and Emmorey, K. (eds.), The signs of
language revisited: Festschrift for Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, pp.
213-241. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
wilbur, R. B. (1999). Stress in ASL: Empirical evidence and linguistic issues.
Language & Speech 42: 229-250.
wilbur, R. B. & C. Patschke (1999). Syntactic correlates of brow raise in ASL.
Sign Language & Linguistics 2: 3-40.
wilbur, R. B. (1999). Metrical structure, morphological gaps, and possible
grammaticalization in ASL. Sign Language & Linguistics 2: 217-244. 
wilbur, R. B. (1995). What the morphology of operators looks like: A formal
analysis of ASL browraise. In L. Gabriele, D. Hardison, & R. Westmoreland
(eds.), FLSM VI: Formal Linguistics Society of MidAmerica: Vol. 2. Syntax II &
semantics/pragmatics, pp. 6778. Bloomington, IN: IULC Publications.
wilbur, R. B. (1994). Eyeblinks and ASL phrase structure. Sign Language Studies
84: 221240.
Allen, G. D., R. B. wilbur & B. S. Schick (1991). Aspects of rhythm in American
Sign Language. Sign Language Studies 72: 297320. 
wilbur, R. B. (1991). Intonation and focus in American Sign Language. In Y. No
& M. Libucha (Eds.), ESCOL '90: Eastern States Conference on Linguistics, pp.
320331. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.
wilbur, R. B. & B. S. Schick  (1987). The effects of linguistic stress on ASL
signs. Language & Speech 30: 301-323.
wilbur, R. B. & S. B. Nolen (1986). Duration of syllables in ASL. Language &
Speech 29 (3): 263-280.

At 03:06 AM 10/10/2002 , Jörg Keller wrote:
>Hi all
>as such an equation of non-manual with prosodic as well as prosodic with 
>intonational is an empirical and a theoretical matter, I don't really see 
>any reason to worry. 
>
>If the boundaries of a non-manual marking of say a wh-constituent in one 
>modality corresponds to an intonational marking of such a constituent in 
>another, well, fine - call it the same or equate terms. But then, maybe one 
>might find that e.g. the exclusively non-manual indication of adverbial 
>modification has no counterpart in an intonational pattern in spoken 
>language. Well, even better, as we know more and will have to differentiate 
>terms with respect to functions. And turning to prosodic units that crosscut 
>constituent boundaries such as assimilatory processes or cliticization, we 
>know even more, as these will help to segregate and separate intonation from 
>prosody. Well, great - or in other words: we all know that non-manual 
>markings do not constitute a uniform set. So anyone who argues for the 
>equation of non-manual with prosodic or prosodic with intonational has the 
>burden of proof.  So, nothing to worry in my opinion - just an exciting
puzzle!
>Cheers 
>Jörg

Ronnie Wilbur, Ph.D.
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