As an interface phenomenon, prosody interacts with all components of grammar, even though it is often subsumed under the broad area of phonology. In sign languages, an equivalent system of prosody reveals interesting results with regard to modality-independent notions of language structure. This paper presents data from a study on German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS) and investigates prosodic cues on the basis of annotated video data. The focus of the study was on eye blinks and their use in prosodic structuring of signed utterances. Systematic methodology, annotation, and statistical evidence provided the basis for a thorough analysis of blinking behavior in DGS. The results suggest a consistent use of certain eye blinks as markers to indicate prosodic phrase boundaries. A constant 70%/30% ratio of prosodic and non-prosodic blinks further indicates the efficient use of this device. Even though some aspects of blinking are subject to inter-signer variation, the prosodic use of blinks is intriguingly similar across signers. However, blinks are not obligatory boundary markers in DGS. I propose an analysis that takes into account various factors such as syntactic constituency, prosodic structuring, and particularly the interplay of various nonmanuals such as eye gaze, head nods, and facial expressions. The fine-grained distinction of blinks resulting from a modified categorization for eye blinks and additional statistical computations give insight into how visual languages realize phrase boundaries and prosodic marking and to what extent they use the system consistently.
2012. Gaze and blinking in dyadic conversation: A study in coordinated behaviour among individuals. Language and Cognitive Processes 27:10 ► pp. 1525 ff.
Dachkovsky, Svetlana, Christina Healy & Wendy Sandler
2013. Visual intonation in two sign languages. Phonology 30:2 ► pp. 211 ff.
Herrmann, Annika
2015. The marking of information structure in German Sign Language. Lingua 165 ► pp. 277 ff.
2019. What Makes Eye Contact Special? Neural Substrates of On-Line Mutual Eye-Gaze: A Hyperscanning fMRI Study. eneuro 6:1 ► pp. ENEURO.0284-18.2019 ff.
Koike, Takahiko, Hiroki C. Tanabe, Shuntaro Okazaki, Eri Nakagawa, Akihiro T. Sasaki, Koji Shimada, Sho K. Sugawara, Haruka K. Takahashi, Kazufumi Yoshihara, Jorge Bosch-Bayard & Norihiro Sadato
2016. Neural substrates of shared attention as social memory: A hyperscanning functional magnetic resonance imaging study. NeuroImage 125 ► pp. 401 ff.
2023. La valutazione delle competenze narrative e linguistiche, in italiano scritto e in LIS
. In Valutazione linguistica in italiano e nella LIS e strategie di intervento
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Perniss, Pamela & Asli Özyürek
2015. Visible Cohesion: A Comparison of Reference Tracking in Sign, Speech, and Co‐Speech Gesture. Topics in Cognitive Science 7:1 ► pp. 36 ff.
Sadato, Norihiro
2017. Shared Attention and Interindividual Neural Synchronization in the Human Right Inferior Frontal Cortex. In The Prefrontal Cortex as an Executive, Emotional, and Social Brain, ► pp. 207 ff.
Shultz, Sarah, Ami Klin & Warren Jones
2011. Inhibition of eye blinking reveals subjective perceptions of stimulus salience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108:52 ► pp. 21270 ff.
Winston, Elizabeth A. & Cynthia Roy
2015. Discourse analysis and sign languages. In Sociolinguistics and Deaf Communities, ► pp. 95 ff.
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