Neurobiological bases of visual phonology: What sign languages show

Malaia, Evie; Wilbur, Ronnie B.

doi:10.1075/la.194.12mal

Part of

Towards a Biolinguistic Understanding of Grammar: Essays on interfaces
Edited by Anna Maria Di Sciullo
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 194] 2012
► pp. 263–276

What sign languages show

Neurobiological bases of visual phonology

Evie Malaia | University of Texas, Arlington, Texas, USA

Ronnie B. Wilbur | Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

The chapter presents analysis of the motion properties of the environment that humans use to parse natural scenes, and the kinematics of articulator (hand) motion in American and Croatian Sign Languages, asking whether the kinematic distinctions between linguistic categories in sign languages are important to phonological and syntactic systems in sign languages. Based on motion capture and neuroimaging data from native signers and sign-naïve non-signers, we propose that sign languages grammaticalize perceptual features already available from the human visual system for the phonology-syntax interface.

Published online: 5 September 2012

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.194.12mal

Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Blumenthal‐Dramé, Alice & Evie Malaia

2019. Shared neural and cognitive mechanisms in action and language: The multiscale information transfer framework. WIREs Cognitive Science 10:2

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