Cover not available

Article published In: Sign Language & Linguistics
Vol. 28:1 (2025) ► pp.1–48

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

The interaction of syntax, non-manuals, and prosodic cues as potential topic markers in Austrian Sign Language

ORCiD logo with link | University of Salzburg
ORCiD logo with link | Purdue University
ORCiD logo with link | University of Salzburg
ORCiD logo with link | University of Alabama
Published online: 18 November 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sll.23003.kre
Abstract
Topic is often marked only by prosody across languages. In sign languages, prosody is expressed by features similar to those in speech: i.e., sign duration, velocity and amplitude of movement (cf. slope and range of pitch). Topicalized signs usually occur sentence-initially, are followed by a pause, and may show longer duration than nontopics. We used pausing and duration characteristics to resolve a puzzle concerning the status of OSV sentences in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS): are they a nonmanually unmarked variant of non-manually marked topic sentences (O,SV), or are they a within-clause variant of the basic SOV order serving an as-yet-unknown discourse function? We investigated the temporal parameters of prosodic cues of 160 sentences produced by a fluent ÖGS signer: 40 in each of four conditions — SOV, OSV, S,OV, and O,SV. Overt topic marking effects on signing dynamics consisted of (1) lengthening of the sentence-initial topic phrases, causing a delay of the onset of the argument following the topic-marked item, and (2) a shortened duration of the noun phrase following the topic-marked item. Critically, the initial argument of OSV sentences did not show these prosodic cues, indicating that the initial argument O is not treated as being the same kind of topic as in the non-manually marked O,SV sentences. In accordance with the previous literature on pausing and lack thereof, we suggest that OSV might be akin to spoken German scrambling (within-clause movement), although the function performed remains to be investigated. The findings characterize parameters of temporal structure in the physical markers of topic in ÖGS and point to cross-linguistic variability in prosodic marking for topicalized structures.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: The relationship between prosody and information structure
    • 1.1What is meant by ‘word order’ of a language?
      • 1.1.1Issues in interpreting word order sequences
      • 1.1.2Measurable differences in sign language production related to word order
      • 1.1.3Non-manual markings and their role in word order
      • 1.1.4Word order and ÖGS
    • 1.2Structuring information: The changing concept of ‘topic’
      • 1.2.1How are these features marked?
      • 1.2.2Büring’s notion of S(entence)-topic
      • 1.2.3Topic function and ÖGS
    • 1.3Word order and topic marking in sign languages
      • 1.3.1Prosody in sign languages
      • 1.3.2Topic marking in sign languages
      • 1.3.3Goals of the present study
  • 2.Part 1 — Rating study: Perception of sentences with and without overt topic marking
    • 2.1Part 1 — Method
      • 2.1.1Materials
      • 2.1.2Participants
      • 2.1.3Procedure
      • 2.1.4Analysis
    • 2.2Part 1 — Results
  • 3.Part 2 — Linguistic analysis: production of sentences with and without overt marking
    • 3.1Part 2 — Method
      • 3.1.1Materials
      • 3.1.2Analysis
    • 3.2Part 2 — Results
      • 3.2.1Unmarked SOV and OSV
      • 3.2.2Marked S,OV and O,SV
      • 3.2.3Further exploration for dynamic (timing) differences: comparison of unmarked and marked stimuli
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1What is marked in ÖGS?
    • 4.2Differences in overt topic marking across sign languages
    • 4.3Holds indicating intonational breaks in signing vs. speaking
    • 4.4Timing of prosodic cues
      • 4.4.1Lengthening and shortening observed in overtly marked topic orders
      • 4.4.2Complex timing of prosodic cues during prosodic break in signing
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (150)
References
Aarons, Debra. 1994. Aspects of syntax of American Sign Language. Boston: Boston University PhD dissertation.
. 1996. Topics and topicalization in American Sign Language. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics 30(1). 65–106.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aboh, Enoch O. 2007a. Focused versus non-focused wh-phrases. In Katharina Hartmann & Malte Zimmermann (eds.), Focus strategies in African languages: The interaction of focus and grammar in Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic, 287–314. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2007b. Leftward focus versus rightward focus: The Kwa-Bantu conspiracy. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics 151. 81–104.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2010. Information structure begins with the numeration. Iberia: An International Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 21. 12–42.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2016. Information structure: A cartographic perspective. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 147–164. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aldridge, Edith. 2018. C-T inheritance and the left periphery in Old Japanese. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 3(1). 26.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, R. Harald, Douglas J. Davidson & Douglas M. Bates. 2008. Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language 59(4). 390–412. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bade, Nadine & Konstantin Sachs. 2019. EXH passes on alternatives: A comment on Fox and Spector (2018). Natural Language Semantics 271. 19–45. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker-Shenk, Charlotte L. 1983. A microanalysis of the nonmanual components of questions in American Sign Language. Berkeley: University of California PhD dissertation.
Baker, Charlotte & Dennis Cokely. 1980. American Sign Language: a teacher’s resource text on grammar and culture. Silver Spring, MD: TJ Publishers.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Martin Mächler, Benjamin M. Bolker & Steven C. Walker. 2015. Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 671. 1–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beckman, Mary E. & Janet B. Pierrehumbert. 1986. Intonational structure in Japanese and English. Phonology Yearbook 31. 255–309. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bianchi, Valentina, Giuliano Bocci & Silvio Cruschina. 2016. Focus fronting, unexpectedness, and evaluative implicatures. Semantics & Pragmatics 9(3). 1–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bogliotti, Caroline & Frederic Isel. 2021. Manual and spoken cues in French Sign Language’s lexical access: Evidence from mouthing in a sign-picture priming paradigm. Frontiers in Psychology 121. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1985. Intonation and its parts: melody in spoken English. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boyes Braem, Penny. 1999. Rhythmic temporal patterns in the signing of deaf early and later learners of Swiss German Sign Language. Language & Speech 42(2–3). 177–208. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Braun, Bettina. 2006. Phonetics and phonology of thematic contrast in German. Language and Speech 49(4). 451–493. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brentari, Diane. 1998. A prosodic model of sign language phonology. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brentari, Diane & Laurinda Crossley. 2002. Prosody on the hands and face: Evidence from American Sign Language. Sign Language & Linguistics 5(2). 105–130. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brentari, Diane, Carolina González, Amanda Seidl & Ronnie B. Wilbur. 2011. Sensitivity to visual prosodic cues in signers and nonsigners. Language & Speech 54(1). 49–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brozdowski, Chris & Emmorey, Karen. 2023. Using transitional information in sign and gesture perception. Acta Psychologica 2361. 103923. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Büring, Daniel. 1997. The meaning of topic and focus: The 59th street bridge accent. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016a. (Contrastive) Topic. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 64–85. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2016b. Intonation and meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Calderone, Chiara. 2020. Can you retrieve it? Pragmatic, morpho-syntactic and prosodic features in sentence topic types in Italian Sign Language (LIS). Venice: Università Ca’Foscari PhD dissertation.
Capek, Cheryl M., Dafydd Waters, Bencie Woll, Mairéad MacSweeney, Michael J. Brammer, Philip K. McGuire, Anthony S. David & Ruth Campbell. 2008. Hand and mouth: Cortical correlates of lexical processing in British Sign Language and speechreading English. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20(7). 1220–1234. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Coerts, Jane. 1992. Nonmanual grammatical markers: An analysis of interrogatives, negations and topicalizations in Sign Language of the Netherlands. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam PhD dissertation.
Constant, Noah. 2012. Topic abstraction as the source for nested alternatives. A conservative semantics for contrastive topic. In Nathan Arnett & Ryan Bennett (eds.), West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL) 301, 120–130. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Contrastive topic: Meanings and realizations. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts PhD dissertation.
Coulter, Geoffrey R. 1993. Phrase-level prosody in ASL: Final lengthening and phrasal contours. In Geoffrey R. Coulter (ed.), Phonetics and phonology: Current issues in ASL phonology, 263–272. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crasborn, Onno, Els van der Kooij, Johan Ros & Helen de Hoop. 2009. Topic agreement in NGT (Sign Language of the Netherlands). The Linguistic Review 26(2–3). 355–370. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dachkovsky, Svetlana & Wendy Sandler. 2009. Visual intonation in the prosody of a sign language. Language & Speech 52(2–3). 287–314. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dachkovsky, Svetlana, Christina Healy & Wendy Sandler. 2013. Visual intonation in two sign languages. Phonology 30(2). 211–252. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ebbinghaus, Horst & Jens Heβmann. 2001. Sign language as multidimensional communication: Why manual signs, mouthings, and mouth gestures are three different things. In Penny Boyes Braem & Rachel Sutton-Spence (eds.), The hands are the head of the mouth. The mouth as articulator in sign languages, 133–151. Hamburg: Signum Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Esposito, Anna & Maria Marinaro. 2007. What pauses can tell us about speech and gesture partnership. In Anna Esposito, Maja Bratanić, Eric Keller & Maria Marinaro (eds.), Fundamentals of verbal and nonverbal communication and the biometric issue, NATO Publishing Series, Sub-Series E: Human and Societal Dynamics — Vol. 18., 45–57. The Netherlands: IOS Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fenlon, Jordan, Tanya Denmark, Ruth Campbell & Bencie Woll. 2007. Seeing sentence boundaries. Sign Language & Linguistics 10(2). 177–200. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fenlon, Jordan & Diane Brentari. 2021. Prosody: Theoretical and experimental perspectives. In Josep Quer, Roland Pfau & Annika Herrmann (eds.), Routledge handbook of theoretical and experimental sign language research, 70–94. Oxfordshire, UK: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline. 2006. The prosody of topicalization. On information structure, meaning and form: Generalizations across languages. In Kerstin Schwabe & Susanne Winkler (eds.), On information structure, meaning and form, 69–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Féry, Caroline & Vieri Samek-Lodovici. 2006. Focus projection and prosodic prominence in nested foci. Language 821. 131–150. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fischer, Susan A. 1975. Influences on word-order change in American Sign Language. In Charles Li (ed.), Word order and word order change, 1–25. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fox, Danny & Benjamin Spector. 2018. Economy and embedded exhaustification. Natural Language Semantics 261. 1–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedman, Lynn. 1976a. Phonology of a soundless language: Phonological structure of American Sign Language. Berkeley, CA: University of California PhD dissertation.
. 1976b. The manifestation of subject, object, and topic in American Sign Language. In Charles Li (ed.), Subject and topic, 127–148. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fry, Dennis B. 1955. Duration and intensity as physical correlates of linguistic stress. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 27(4). 765–768. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1958. Experiments in the perception of stress. Language & Speech 1(2). 126–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.). 1963. Universals of language. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grosjean, François. 1979. A study of timing in a manual and a spoken language: American Sign Language and English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research 8(4). 379–405. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grosjean, François & Harlan Lane. 1977. Pauses and syntax in American Sign Language. Cognition 5(2). 101–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grosjean, François & Maryann Collins. 1979. Breathing, pausing and reading. Phonetica 36(2). 98–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. “The phonology of tone and intonation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hausch, Christian. 2008. Topickonstruktionen und Satzstrukturen in der ÖGS [Topic constructions and sentence structures in ÖGS]. In Gebärdensprachlinguistik und Gebärdensprachkommunikation. Referate der VERBAL-Sektion “Gebärdensprachlinguistik und -kommunikation” innerhalb der 34. Österreichischen Linguistiktagung an der Universität Klagenfurt [Sign language linguistics and sign language communication], 85–94. Klagenfurt: Veröffentlichungen des Zentrums für Gebärdensprache und Hörbehindertenkommunikation der Universität Klagenfurt.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heim, Johannes. 2019. Commitment and engagement: The role of intonation in deriving speech acts. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia PhD dissertation.
Heim, Johannes & Martina Wiltschko. 2020. Interaction at the prosody–syntax interface. In Gerrit Kentner & Joost Kremers (eds.), Prosody in syntactic coding, 189–218. Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ichida, Yasuhiro. 2010. Introduction to Japanese Sign Language: iconicity in language. Studies in Language Sciences 91. 3–32.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hunger, Barbara, Katharina Schalber & Ronnie B. Wilbur. 2000. Bub wollen lernen, wollen? Further investigations into the modals in the Styrian dialect of Austrian Sign Language with a particular focus on repetition and pauses. Poster presented at the Theoretical Issues in Sign Language Research 7 conference, Amsterdam.
Hunger, Barbara & Katharina Schalber. 2001. bub fussballspielen kÖnnen — Untersuchungen zur Stellung der Modalverben in der steirischen Variante der österreichischen Gebärdensprache. Grazer Linguistische Studien 561. 37–45.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jacobs, Joachim. 1997. I-Topikalisierung [I-topicalization]. Linguistische Berichte 1681. 91–133.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Janzen, Terry. 1995. Differentiating topic from subjects in ASL. In Marie Christine Aubin (ed.), Perspectives d’avenir en traduction [Future prospects in translation], 57–74. Winnipeg: Presses Universitaires de Saint-Boniface.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. Pragmatic and syntactic features of topics in American Sign Language. Meta. Numéro special: L’interprétation en langues des signes [Special issue: Interpretation in sign languages] 42(3). 502–514. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnston, Trevor & Adam Schembri. 2007. Australian Sign Language: an introduction to sign language linguistics. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnston, Trevor, Jane Van Roekel & Adam Schembri. 2016. On the conventionalization of mouth actions in Australian Sign Language. Language and Speech 59(1). 3–42. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Katz, Jonah & Elisabeth Selkirk. 2011. Contrastive focus vs. discourse-new: Evidence from phonetic prominence in English. Language 87(4). 771–816. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kegl, Judy. 1976. Relational grammar and American Sign Language. Unpublished manuscript. Cambridge, MA: MIT [Published 2004 in Sign Language & Linguistics 7(2). 131–170].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1977. ASL syntax: Research in progress and proposed research. Unpublished manuscript. Cambridge, MA: MIT [Published 2004 in Sign Language & Linguistics 7(2). 173–206].Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keleş, Onur & Kadir Gökgöz. 2022. Expression of aboutness subject topic Constructions in Turkish Sign Language (TİD) narratives. Hrvatska revija za rehabilitacijska istraživanja [The Croatian Review of Rehabilitation Research], special issue: Sign Language, Deaf Culture, and Bilingual Education, Vol 58. 194–205. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kimmelman, Vadim. 2015. Topics and topic prominence in two sign languages. Journal of Pragmatics 871. 156–170. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kimmelman, Vadim & Roland Pfau. 2016. Information structure in sign languages. In Caroline Féry & Shinichiro Ishihara (eds.), The Oxford handbook of information structure, 814–833. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kishimoto, Hideki. 2018. Sinhala focus concord constructions from a discourse-syntactic perspective. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 3(1). 9.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika & Elisabeth Selkirk. 2020. Deconstructing information structure. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 5(1). 113.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krebs, Julia. 2017. The syntax and the processing of argument relations in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Salzburg: University of Salzburg PhD dissertation.
Krebs, Julia & Lydia Fenkart. 2024. Einführung in die Grammatik der Österreichischen Gebärdensprache. Das Handbuch [Introduction to the grammar of Austrian Sign Language. The handbook]. Guntramsdorf: Verlag Fenkart.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krebs, Julia, Evie Malaia, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Dietmar Roehm. 2018. Subject preference emerges as cross-modal strategy for linguistic processing. Brain Research 16911. 105–117. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Interaction between topic marking and subject preference strategy in sign language processing. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience 351. 466–484. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krebs, Julia & Ronnie B. Wilbur. in prep. a. Word order in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS).
. in prep. b. Word order in the context of extensional and intensional events in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS).
Krebs, Julia, Ronnie B. Wilbur, Phillip M. Alday & Dietmar Roehm. 2019. The impact of transitional movements and non-manual markings on the disambiguation of locally ambiguous argument structures in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Language and Speech 62(4). 652–680. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krebs, Julia, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Dietmar Roehm. 2017. Two agreement markers in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Sign Language & Linguistics 20(1). 27–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2020. Distributional properties of an agreement marker in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Linguistics 58(4). 1151–1194. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lackner, Andrea. 2013. Linguistic functions of head and body movements in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). A corpus-based analysis. Graz: University of Graz PhD dissertation.
Ladd, Robert D. 1988. Declination ‘Reset’ and the hierarchical organization of utterances. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 84(2). 530–544. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter. 1982. Syllables and suprasegmental features. In A course in phonetics, 243–257. Oxford: Oxford Univesity Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: topic, focus, and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liddell, Scott K. 1977. An investigation into the syntax of American Sign Language. San Diego, CA: University of California PhD dissertation.
1978. Nonmanual signals and relative clauses in American Sign Language. In Patricia Siple (ed.), Understanding language through sign language research, 59–90. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1980. American Sign Language syntax. The Hague: Mouton. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Liddell, Scott K. & Robert E. Johnson. 1989. American Sign Language: The phonological base. Sign Language Studies 64(1).195–277. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lillo-Martin, Diane & Richard P. Meier. 2011. On the linguistic status of ‘agreement’ in sign languages. Theoretical linguistics 37(3–4). 95–141. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malaia, Evie. 2014. It still isn’t over: Event boundaries in language and perception. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(3). 89–98. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2017. Current and future methodologies for quantitative analysis of information transfer in sign language and gesture data. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 401. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malaia, Evie & Ronnie B. Wilbur. 2012. Kinematic signatures of telic and atelic events in ASL predicates. Language and Speech 55(3). 407–421. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malaia, Evie, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Marina Milković. 2013. Kinematic parameters of signed verbs. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 56(5). 1677–1688. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malaia, Evie, Ronnie B. Wilbur & Christine Weber-Fox. 2013. Event end-point primes the undergoer argument: Neurobiological bases of event structure processing. In Boban Arsenijević, Berit Gehrke & Rafael Marín (eds.), Studies in the composition and decomposition of event predicates, 231–248. New York: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Malaia, Evie, Joshua D. Borneman & Ronnie B. Wilbur. 2016. Assessment of information content in visual signal: Analysis of optical flow fractal complexity. Visual Cognition 24(3). 246–251. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McDonald, John, Rosalee Wolfe, Ronnie B. Wilbur, Robyn Moncrief, Evie Malaia, Sayuri Fujimoto, Souad Baowidan & Jessika Stec. 2016. A new tool to facilitate prosodic analysis of motion capture data and a data-driven technique for the improvement of avatar motion. Proceedings of Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC). 153–59.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McIntire, Marina LaRay. 1980. Locatives in American Sign Language. Los Angeles: University of California PhD dissertation.
Molnár, Valéria & Susanne Winkler. 2010. Edges and gaps: Contrast at the interfaces. Lingua 1201. 1329–1415. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nespor, Marina & Wendy Sandler. 1999. Prosody in Israeli Sign Language. Language and Speech 42(2–3). 143–176. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ni, Dawei. 2014. Topikkonstruktionen in der Österreichischen Gebärdensprache [Topic constructions in Austrian Sign Language]. Hamburg: University of Hamburg Master’s thesis.
Nicodemus, Brenda. 2010. Prosodic markers and utterance boundaries in American Sign Language interpretation. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Padden, Carol. 1983. Interaction of morphology and syntax in American Sign Language. San Diego: University of California PhD dissertation.
. 1988. Interaction of morphology and syntax in American Sign Language. New York: Garland Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M. 1993. Sonority and syllable structure in American Sign Language. In Geoffrey R. Coulter (ed.), Current issues in ASL phonology, 227–261. London: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perniss, Pamela, David Vinson & Gabriella Vigliocco. 2020. Making sense of the hands and mouth: The role of “secondary” cues to meaning in British Sign Language and English. Cognitive Science 44(7). e12868. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pfau, Roland & Josep Quer. 2010. Nonmanuals: their grammatical and prosodic roles. In Diane Brentari (ed.), Sign languages (Cambridge language surveys), 381–402. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Quinto-Pozos, David & Robert Adam. 2015. Sign languages in contact. In Adam Schembri & Ceil Lucas (eds.), Sociolinguistics and deaf communities, 29–60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2018. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. [Computer software]. Retrieved from [URL]
Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. In Liliane Haegeman (ed.), Elements of grammar, 281–337. Dordrecht: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rosenstein, Ofra. 2001. Israeli Sign Language — a topic prominent language. Haifa: University of Haifa Master’s thesis.
Sandler, Wendy. 1999. Prosody in two natural language modalities. Language and Speech 42(2–3). 127–142. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Visual prosody. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook (HSK — Handbooks of linguistics and communication science), 55–76. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sandler, Wendy & Diane Lillo-Martin. 2006. Sign language and linguistic universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2015. Austrian Sign Language. In Julie Bakken Jepsen, Goedele De Clerck, Sam Lutalo-Kiingi & William B. McGregor (eds.), Sign languages of the world: A comparative handbook, 105–128. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schalber, Katharina & Barbara Hunger. 2001. bub fussballspielen kÖnnen — Untersuchungen zur Stellung von Modalverben in der Steirischen Variante der Österreichischen Gebärdensprache [boy soccer play can — Studies on the sentence position of modal verbs in the Styrian variant of Austrian Sign Language]. Grazer Linguistische Studien 561. 37–46.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Possession in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS) — with existentials on the side. In Pamela Perniss & Ulrike Zeshan (eds.), Possessive and existential constructions in sign languages, 151–180. Nijmegen: Ishara Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skant, Andrea, Franz Dotter, Elisabeth Bergmeister, Marlene Hilzensauer, Manuela Hobel, Klaudia Krammer, Ingeborg Okorn, Christian Orasche, Reinhold Orter & Natalie Unterberger. 2002. Grammatik der Österreichischen Gebärdensprache [Grammar of Austrian Sign Language], Vol. 41. Klagenfurt: Veröffentlichungen des Forschungszentrums für Gebärdensprache und Hörgeschädigtenkommunikation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slade, Benjamin. 2018. History of focus-concord constructions and focus-associated particles in Sinhala, with comparison to Dravidian and Japanese. Glossa: a Journal of General Linguistics 3(1). 2.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sutton-Spence, Rachel & Bencie Woll. 1999. The linguistics of British Sign Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1981. Compositionality in focus. Folia Linguistica 151. 141–161. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tang, Gladys, Diane Brentari, Carolina González & Felix Sze. 2010. Cross-linguistic variation in prosodic cues. In Diane Brentari (ed.), Sign languages (Cambridge language surveys), 519–542. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Torrence, Harold. 2013. A promotion analysis of Wolof clefts. Syntax 161. 176–215. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tyrone, Martha E., Hosung Nam, Elliot Saltzman, Gaurav Mathur & Louis Goldstein. 2010. Prosody and movement in American Sign Language: A task-dynamics approach. Speech Prosody 2010 Conference Proceedings. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Valli, Clayton & Ceil Lucas. 2000. Linguistics of American Sign Language. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van der Kooij, Els, Onno Crasborn & Wim Emmerik. 2006. Explaining prosodic body leans in Sign Language of the Netherlands: pragmatics required. Journal of Pragmatics 38(10). 1598–1614. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vinson, David P., Robin L. Thompson, Robert Skinner, Neil Fox & Gabriella Vigliocco. 2010. The hands and mouth do not always slip together in British Sign Language: Dissociating articulatory channels in the lexicon. Psychological Science 21(8). 1158–1167. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weast, Traci. 2008. Questions in American Sign Language: A quantitative analysis of raised and lowered eyebrows. Arlington, TX: University of Texas PhD dissertation.
Whitman, John. 1997. Kakarimusubi from a comparative perspective. Japanese/Korean Linguistics 6. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. 1987. American Sign Language: linguistic and applied dimensions. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1994. Eyeblinks and ASL phrase structure. Sign Language Studies 84(1). 221–240. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1999. Stress in ASL: Empirical evidence and linguistic issues. Language & Speech 42(2–3). 229–250. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000. Phonological and prosodic layering of non-manuals in American Sign Language. In Harlan Lane & Karen Emmorey (eds.), The signs of language revisited: Festschrift for Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima, 213–241. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2002. Phrase structure in ASL and ÖGS. In Rolf Schulmeister & Heimo Reinitzer (eds.), Progress in sign language research. In honor of Siegmund Prillwitz, 235–247. Hamburg: Signum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2005. Evidence from ASL and ÖGS for asymmetries in UG. In Anna Maria DiScuillo (ed.), UG and external systems: Language, brain and computation, 193–210 Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2009. Effects of varying rate of signing on ASL manual signs and non-manual markers. Language & Speech 52(2–3). 245–285. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012. Information structure. In Roland Pfau, Markus Steinbach & Bencie Woll (eds.), Sign language. An international handbook (HSK — Handbooks of linguistics and communication science), 462–489. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2021. Non-manual markers — theoretical and experimental perspectives. In Josep Quer, Roland Pfau & Annika Herrmann (eds.), Routledge handbook of theoretical and experimental sign language research, 530–565. London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2022. Prosody of sign languages. The Croatian Review of Rehabilitation Research 581. 143–174. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Evie Malaia. 2008. Contributions of sign language research to gesture understanding: What can multimodal computational systems learn from sign language research. International Journal of Semantic Computing 2(1). 5–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. A new technique for analyzing narrative prosodic effects in sign languages using motion capture technology. In Annika Hübl & Markus Steinbach (eds.), Linguistic foundations of narration in spoken and sign languages, 15–40. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Aleix M. Martínez. 2002. Physical correlates of prosodic structure in American Sign Language. Chicago Linguistics Society (CLS) 381. 693–704.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Susan B. Nolen. 1986. The duration of syllables in ASL. Language & Speech 29(3). 263–280. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Cynthia G. Patschke. 1998. Body leans and the marking of contrast in ASL. Journal of Pragmatics 30(3). 275–303. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Brenda S. Schick. 1987. The effects of linguistic stress on ASL signs. Language & Speech 30(4). 301–323. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ronnie B. & Howard N. Zelaznik. 1997. Kinematic correlates of stress and position in ASL. Paper presented at The Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, IL.
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Krebs, Julia
2025. How animacy impacts word order in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS): Evidence from sentences with inanimate subject arguments. Lingua 325 ► pp. 104003 ff. DOI logo
Krebs, Julia, Eric Harbour, Evie A. Malaia, Ronnie B. Wilbur, Hermann Schwameder & Dietmar Roehm
2025. Grammatical control of sign language production: EMG and motion capture analysis of adjective intensification in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Frontiers in Language Sciences 4 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue