We now know that natural signed languages such as American Sign Language, French Sign Language, British Sign Language and others are fully independent languages. But natural signed languages are only one way of conveying language in the visual/gestural modality. Signed languaged also have mechanisms for representing the material of oral languages. Fingerspelling is one example of such a representational system. This book examines fingerspelling from a phonetic perspective. Several studies of the kinematics of fingerspelling articulators are reported. From these detailed analyses of articulator timings and velocities, conclusions are drawn which suggest that, like speech, fingerspelling may be explained in terms of co-ordinative structures and task dynamics. The thrust of the book is to explore the notion that signed and spoken languages can be compared not only as abstract linguistic systems but also at the physical level as dynamically structured articulations. An implication of these studies is that a common basis in gesture can be found for the production, perception and neural organization of signed and spoken languages.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Co
ISBN-13
9789027243348
eBay Product ID (ePID)
91172092
Product Key Features
Book Title
The Phonetics of Fingerspelling
Author
Sherman Wilcox
Format
Hardcover
Language
English
Publication Year
1992
Number of Pages
108 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height
245mm
Item Width
164mm
Volume
4
Item Weight
300 g
Additional Product Features
Title_Author
Sherman Wilcox
Issn
0927-1813
Series Title
Studies in Speech Pathology and Clinical Linguistics