Publications

Publication details [#17589]

McClave, Evelyn. 2001. The relationship between spontaneous gestures of the hearing and American Sign Language. Gesture 1 (1) : 51–72.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
ISBN
1568-1475
Journal DOI
10.1075/gest

Annotation

This paper presents evidence of non-manual gestures in American Sign Language (ASL). The types of gestures identified are identical to non-manual, spontaneous gestures used by hearing non-signers which suggests that the gestures co-occurring with ASL signs are borrowings from hearing culture. A comparison of direct quotes in ASL with spontaneous movements of hearing non-signers suggests a history of borrowing and eventual grammaticization in ASL of features previously thought to be unique to signed languages. The electronic edition of this article includes audio-visial data. Keywords: American Sign Language, deixis, direct quotes, gesture, head movements, intensifiers