Cover not available
Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 22:2 (2023) ► pp.154–188

Evidence of Zipfian distributions in three sign languages

ORCID logo | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
ORCID logo | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
ORCID logo | Bar Ilan University
ORCID logo | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
One striking commonality between languages is their Zipfian distributions: A power-law distribution of word frequency. This distribution is found across languages, speech genres, and within different parts of speech. The recurrence of such distributions is thought to reflect cognitive and/or communicative pressures and to facilitate language learning. However, research on Zipfian distributions has mostly been limited to spoken languages. In this study, we ask whether Zipfian distributions are also found across signed languages, as expected if they reflect a universal property of human language. We find that sign frequencies and ranks in three sign language corpora (BSL, DGS and NGT) show a Zipfian relationship, similar to that found in spoken languages. These findings highlight the commonalities between spoken and signed languages, add to our understanding of the use of signs, and show the prevalence of Zipfian distributions across language modalities, supporting the idea that they facilitate language learning and communication.
Keywords: Zipfian distributions, sign language, universal properties of language
Article outline
  • Introduction
    • Lexical frequency in sign languages
  • Method
    • Corpora
      • The British Sign Language (BSL) corpus project
      • The DGS-korpus project
      • Corpus NGT
    • Coding
      • ELAN
      • Exclusion and inclusion criteria for sign categories
      • Sign categories included
        • Fully lexical signs (core lexicon)
        • Depicting constructions
        • Pointing signs
        • Buoys
        • Gestures
      • Excluded sign categories
        • Uncertain signs
        • Mouthing
        • Extra-linguistic manual activity
        • Fingerspelling
        • Names
        • Cued speech and initializations
      • Collapsing over specific tokens within a sign type
      • Creating a frequency distribution and assessing the fit to a “Zipfian” one
  • Results
    • What do the most frequent signs look like across the three corpora?
  • Discussion
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Data and code availability
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 April 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.23014.kim
References (92)
References
Bank, R., Crasborn, O., & van Hout, R. (2016). The prominence of spoken language elements in a sign language. Linguistics, 54 (6), 1281–1305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bentz, C., Alikaniotis, D., Samardžić, T., & Buttery, P. (2017). Variation in word frequency distributions: Definitions, measures and implications for a corpus-based language typology. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics, 24 (2–3), 128–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bickerton, D. (1983). Creole languages. Scientific American, 249 (1), 116–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blasi, D. E., Michaelis, S. M., & Haspelmath, M. (2017). Grammars are robustly transmitted even during the emergence of creole languages. Nature Human Behaviour, 1 (10), 723–729. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Borstell, C. (2022). Searching and utilizing corpora [Review of Searching and utilizing corpora]. In J. Fenlon & J. A. Hochgesang (Eds.), Signed Language Corpora, pp. 115–118. Gallaudet University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brennan, M. (1982). An introduction to the visual world of BSL. In D. Brien (Ed.), Dictionary of British Sign Language/English, pp. 1–133. Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Brentari, D. (1998). A prosodic model of sign language phonology. MIT Press.Google Scholar
(2006). Effects of language modality on word segmentation: An experimental study of phonological factors in a sign language. In S. Anderson, L. Goldstein, & C. Best (Eds.). Papers in laboratory phonology (Vol. 81), pp. 155–164. De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brentari, D., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2017). Language emergence. Annual review of linguistics, 3 1, 363–388. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brentari, D., & Padden, C. A. (2001). Native and foreign vocabulary in American Sign Language: A lexicon with multiple origins. In D. Brentari (Ed.), Foreign vocabulary in sign languages: A cross-linguistic investigation of word formation, pp. 87–119. Lawrence Erlbaum. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caselli, N. K., & Pyers, J. E. (2017). The road to language learning is not entirely iconic: Iconicity, neighborhood density, and frequency facilitate acquisition of sign language. Psychological Science, 28 (7), 979–987. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Caselli, N., Sevcikova Sehyr, Z., Cohen-Goldberg, A. M., & Emmorey, K. (2017). ASL-LEX: A lexical database of American Sign Language. Behavior Research Methods, 49 (2), 784–801. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chater, N., & Brown, G. D. (1999). Scale-invariance as a unifying psychological principle. Cognition, 69 (3), B17–B24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christiansen, M. H., & Chater, N. (2008). Language as shaped by the brain. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31 (5), 489–508; discussion 509–558. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clauset, A., Shalizi, C. R., & Newman, M. E. J. (2009). Power-law distributions in empirical data. SIAM Review, 51 (4), 661–703. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clerkin, E. M., Hart, E., Rehg, J. M., Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2017). Real-world visual statistics and infants’ first-learned object names. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 372 (1711), 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cooperrider, K., Abner, N., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2018). The palm-up puzzle: Meanings and origins of a widespread form in gesture and sign. Frontiers in Communication, 3 1, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cormier, K., Fenlon, J., Gulamani, S., & Smith, S. (2017). BSL corpus annotation conventions. Annotation Convention, Vol. 31, 2–15.Google Scholar
Cormier, K., Quinto-Pozos, D., Sevcikova, Z., & Schembri, A. (2012). Lexicalisation and de-lexicalisation processes in sign languages: Comparing depicting constructions and viewpoint gestures. Language & Communication, 32 (4), 329–348. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coupé, C., Oh, Y., Dediu, D., & Pellegrino, F. (2019). Different languages, similar encoding efficiency: Comparable information rates across the human communicative niche. Science Advances, 5 (9), eaaw2594. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Crasborn, O. & Zwitserlood, I. (2008). The Corpus NGT: An online corpus for professionals and laymen, In O. Crasborn, T. Hanke, E. Efthimiou, I. Zwitserlood & E. Thoutenhoofd (eds.), Construction and exploitation of Sign Language corpora. 3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages, pp. 44–49. ELDA.Google Scholar
Crasborn, O., Bank, R., Zwitserlood, I., Van Der Kooij, E., De Meijer, A., Sáfár, A., & Ormel, E. (2015). Annotation conventions for the Corpus NGT, version 3. Centre for Language Studies & Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Crasborn, O., Sloetjes, H. (2008). Enhanced ELAN functionality for sign language corpora. In: 6th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2008)/3rd Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Languages: Construction and Exploitation of Sign Language Corpora, pp. 39–43.Google Scholar
Crasborn, O., Zwitserlood, I. & Ros, J. (2008). The Corpus NGT. An open access digital corpus of movies with annotations of Sign Language of the Netherlands. Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University Nijmegen. Available at [URL] (last access 12 March 2024). ISLRN: [URL] (last access 13 March 2024).
De Vos, C. (2012). Sign-spatiality in Kata Kolok: How a village sign language in Bali inscribes its signing space [Doctoral dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen].
Diessel, H. (2007). Frequency effects in language acquisition, language use, and diachronic change. New Ideas in Psychology, 25 (2), 108–127. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, N. C. (2002). Frequency effects in language processing: A review with implications for theories of implicit and explicit language acquisition. Studies in second language acquisition, 24 (2), 143–188. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Emmorey, K. (2001). Language, cognition, and the brain: Insights from sign language research. Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Erting, C. J., Prezioso, C., & O’Grady Hynes, M. (1990). The interactional context of deaf mother-infant communication. In From gesture to language in hearing and deaf children, pp. 97–106. Springer Verlag. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenlon, J., Cormier, K., & Schembri, A. (2015a). Building BSL SignBank: The lemma dilemma revisited. International Journal of Lexicography, 28 (2), 169–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenlon, J., Schembri, A., Johnston, T., & Cormier, K. (2015b). Documentary and corpus approaches to sign language research. Research methods in sign language studies: A practical guide, pp. 156–172. Wiley-Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenlon, J., Schembri, A., Rentelis, R., Vinson, D., & Cormier, K. (2014a). Using conversational data to determine lexical frequency in British Sign Language: The influence of text type. Lingua, 143 1, 187–202. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenlon, Jordan, Kearsy Cormier, Ramas Rentelis, Adam Schembri, Katherine Rowley, Robert Adam, & Bencie Woll. (2014b). BSL SignBank: A lexical database of British Sign Language (1st edn). London: Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre, University College London.Google Scholar
Ferrer-i-Cancho, R. & Solé, R. V. (2003). Least effort and the origins of scaling in human language. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 100 (3), 788–791. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ferrer-i-Cancho, R. (2016). Compression and the origins of Zipf’s law for word frequencies. Complexity, 21 (S2), 409–411. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gibson, E., Futrell, R., Piantadosi, S. T., Dautriche, I., Bergen, L., & Levy, R. (2019). How efficiency shapes human language. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23 (5), 389–407. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, A. E., Casenhiser, D. M., & Sethuraman, N. (2004). Learning argument structure generalizations. Cognitive Linguistics, 15 (3), 289–316. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hendrickson, A. T., & Perfors, A. (2019). Cross-situational learning in a Zipfian environment, Cognition 189 1, 11–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holzrichter, A. S., & Meier, R. P. (2000). Child-directed signing in American sign language. In C. Chamberlain, J. P. Morford, & R. I. Mayberry (Eds.), Language acquisition by eye, pp. 25–40. Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Johnston, T. (2012). Lexical frequency in sign languages. Journal Of Deaf Studies And Deaf Education, 17 (2), 163–193. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnston, T., & De Beuzeville, L. (2016). Auslan corpus annotation guidelines. Auslan Corpus.Google Scholar
Johnston, T., & Schembri, A. (2007). Australian Sign Language (Auslan): An introduction to sign language linguistics. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnston, T. (2010). From archive to corpus: transcription and annotation in the creation of signed language corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 15 1, 10–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Klima, E. S., & Bellugi, U. (1979). The Signs of Language. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Konrad, R., Hanke, T., Langer, G., Blanck, D., Bleicken, J., Hofmann, I., Jeziorski, O., König, L., König, S., Nishio, R., Regen, A., Salden, U., Wagner, S., Worseck, S., Böse, O., Jahn, E., Schulder, M. (2020a). MEINE DGS – annotiert. Öffentliches Korpus der Deutschen Gebärdensprache, 3. Release / MY DGS – annotated. Public Corpus of German Sign Language, 3rd release [Dataset]. Hamburg University.Google Scholar
Konrad, R., Hanke, T., Langer, G., König, S., König, L., Nishio, R., and Regen, A. (2020b). Öffentliches DGS-Korpus: Annotationskonventionen / Public DGS Corpus: Annotation conventions. Project Note AP03-2018-01, DGS-Korpus project, IDGS, Hamburg University.Google Scholar
Kurumada, C., Meylan, S. C., & Frank, M. C. (2013). Zipfian frequency distributions facilitate word segmentation in context. Cognition, 127 (3), 439–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Langer, G., Müller, A., & Wähl, S. (2018). Queries and Views in iLex to Support Corpus-based Lexicographic Work on German Sign Language (DGS). In M. Bono, E. Efthimiou, S. E. Fotinea, T. Hanke, J. Hochgesang, J. Kristoffersen, J. Mesch & Y. Osugi (eds.) Involving the Language Community. Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on the Representation and Processing of Sign Language. 11th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018), Miyazaki, Japan, pp. 107–114. ELRA.Google Scholar
Lavi-Rotbain, O., & Arnon, I. (2019). Children learn words better in low entropy. Proceedings of the 41thth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, pp. 631–637. Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
(2020). The learnability consequences of Zipfian distributions: Word segmentation is facilitated in more predictable distributions. PsyArXiv. [preprint MS, pp. 1–17] DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2021). Visual statistical learning is facilitated in Zipfian distributions. Cognition, 206 1, 1044921, 1–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2022). The learnability consequences of Zipfian distributions in language. Cognition, 223 1, 1050381, 1–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2023). Zipfian distributions in child-directed speech. Open Mind, 7 1, 1–30. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liddell, S. K. (2003). Grammar, gesture and meaning in American Sign Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lillo-Martin, D. C., & Gajewski, J. (2014). One grammar or two? Sign Languages and the nature of human language. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 5 (4), 387–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lillo-Martin, D., & Klima, E. S. (1990). Pointing out differences: ASL pronouns in syntactic theory. Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research, 1 1, 191–210Google Scholar
Linders, G. M., & Louwerse, M. M. (2020). Zipf’s law in human-machine dialog. Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents, pp. 1–8. Association for Computing Machinery. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mandelbrot, B. (1953). An informational theory of the statistical structure of language. Communication Theory, 2 1, 486–502.Google Scholar
Manin, D. (2008). Zipf’s law and avoidance of excessive synonymy. Cognitive Science, 32 (7), 1075–1098. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Masataka, N., Morford, J., & Mayberry, R. (2000). The role of modality and input in the earliest stage of language acquisition: Studies of Japanese Sign Language. In Chamberlain, C., Morford, J. P., & Mayberry, R. (Eds.), Language acquisition by eye, pp. 3–24. Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
McDonald, B. H. (1985). Productive and frozen lexicon in ASL: An old problem revisited. In W. Stokoe & V. Volterra (Eds.), SLR ’83: Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Sign Language Research, pp. 254–259. CNR & Linstok Press.Google Scholar
McKee, D., & Kennedy, G. D. (2006). The distribution of signs in New Zealand Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, 6 (4), 372–390. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mehri, A., & Jamaati, M. (2017). Variation of Zipf’s exponent in one hundred live languages: A study of the Holy Bible translations. Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics, 381 (31), 2470–2477. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meier, R. (1990). Person deixis in ASL. In S. Fischer & P. Siple (Eds.), Theoretical issues in sign language research, Vol. 11, pp. 175–190. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Meir, I., & Sandler, W. (2007). A language in space: the story of israeli sign language. Psychology Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Meir, I., Sandler, W., Padden, C., & Aronoff, M. (2010). Emerging sign languages. In M. Marschark & P. Spencer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of deaf studies, language, and education, Vol. 21, pp. 267–280. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Morford, J. P., & MacFarlane, J. (2003). Frequency Characteristics of American Sign Language. Sign Language Studies, 3 (2), 213–225. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newman, M. E. J. (2005). Power laws, Pareto distributions and Zipf’s law. Contemporary Physics, 46 (5), 323–351. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Novogrodsky, R., & Meir, N. (2020). Age, frequency, and iconicity in early sign language acquisition: Evidence from the Israeli Sign Language MacArthur–Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory. Applied Psycholinguistics, 41 (4), 817–845. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orfanidou, E., Adam, R., Morgan, G., & McQueen, J. M. (2010). Recognition of signed and spoken language: Different sensory inputs, the same segmentation procedure. Journal of Memory and Language, 62 (3), 272–283. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orfanidou, E., McQueen, J. M., Adam, R., & Morgan, G. (2015). Segmentation of British Sign Language (BSL): Mind the gap! Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 68 (4), 641–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Perlman, M., Little, H., Thompson, B., & Thompson, R. L. (2018). Iconicity in signed and spoken vocabulary: a comparison between American Sign Language, British Sign Language, English, and Spanish. Frontiers in psychology, 9 , 1433, pp. 2–14. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Piantadosi, S. T. (2014). Zipf’s word frequency law in natural language: A critical review and future directions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 21 (5), 1112–1130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandler, W., & Lillo-Martin, D. (2001). Natural sign languages. In M. Aronoff and J. Rees-Miller (Eds.), Handbook of linguistics, pp. 533–562. Blackwell.Google Scholar
(2006). Sign Language and linguistic universals. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sandler, Wendy. (2016). What comes first in language emergence? In N. Enfield (Ed.) Dependency in language: On the causal ontology of language systems (Studies in Diversity in Linguistics 99), pp. 67–86. Language Science Press.Google Scholar
Schembri, Adam, Jordan Fenlon, Ramas Rentelis, & Kearsy Cormier. (2017). British Sign Language Corpus Project: A corpus of digital video data and annotations of British Sign Language 2008–2017 (3rd edn). University College London. Available at [URL] (last access 12 March 2024).
Schick, B. S. (1987). The acquisition of classifier predicates in American Sign Language. [Doctoral Dissertation, Purdue University Indiana].
Schuler, K. D., Reeder, P. A., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (2017). The Effect of Zipfian Frequency Variations on Category Formation in Adult Artificial Language Learning. Language Learning and Development, 13 (4), 357–374. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sehyr, Z. S., Caselli, N., Cohen-Goldberg, A. M., & Emmorey, K. (2021). The ASL-LEX 2.0 Project: A database of lexical and phonological properties for 2,723 Signs in American Sign Language. The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, 26 (2), 263–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Semple, S., Ferrer-i-Cancho, R., & Gustison, M. L. (2022). Linguistic laws in biology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 37 (1), 53–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Senghas, A., & Coppola, M. (2001). Children creating language: How Nicaraguan Sign Language acquired a spatial grammar. Psychological science, 12 (4), 323–328. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Shufaniya, A., & Arnon, I. (2022). A cognitive bias for Zipfian distributions? Uniform distributions become more skewed via cultural transmission. Journal of Language Evolution, 7 (1), 59–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siegel, J. (2008). The emergence of pidgin and creole languages. Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, R. G., & Hofmann, M. (2020). Lexical frequency analysis of Irish Sign Language. TEANGA, the Journal of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, 11 1, 18–47. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stamp, R., Ohanin, O. & Lanesman, S. (2022). The Corpus of Israeli Sign Language. Conference Proceedings (LREC): Language Resources (LRs) and Evaluation for Human Language Technologies (HLT), pp. 192–197. ELRA.Google Scholar
Sümer, B., Grabitz, C., & Küntay, A. (2017). Early produced signs are iconic: Evidence from Turkish Sign Language. In The 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017), pp. 3273–3278. Cognitive Science Society.Google Scholar
Supalla, T. (1982). Structure and acquisition of verbs of motion and location in American Sign Language. [Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at San Diego].
Talmy, L. (2001, June). Spatial structuring in spoken and signed language. Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 27 (1), pp. 271–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Woltz, D. J., Gardner, M. K., Kircher, J. C., & Burrow-Sanchez, J. J. (2012). Relationship between perceived and actual frequency represented by common rating scale labels. Psychological Assessment, 24 (4), 995–1007. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zipf, G. K. (1949). Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Human behavior and the principle of least effort. Addison-Wesley Press.Google Scholar
Zwitserlood, I. (2012). Chapter 8 Classifiers. In R. Pfau, M. Steinbach, & B. Woll (Eds.), Sign Language: An international handbook, pp. 158–181. De Gruyter Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar