The Handshapes in Portuguese Sign Language: phonological study
Since Stokoe’s (1960) study on American Sign Language (ASL) phonology, sign
languages began to be studied as natural linguistic systems with minimal sign pairs as
spoken languages and constituted by three major phonological categories: handshape,
location and movement.
Despite the large number of studies on sign languages in the last 50 years (Liddel &
Johnson, 1989; Sandler, 1989; Liddell, 2003; Sandler & Lillo-Martin, 2006), Portuguese
Sign Language (Língua Gestual Portuguesa, LGP) only began to be scientifically
studied since 1980, with a small systematic analysis of its phonological and
morphological aspects based on 250 signs (Prata & Martins, 1980) and a research based
on an exploratory approach to grammatical features of LGP (Amaral et al., 1994).
Although some important linguistic studies were carried out, so far LGP has not been
studied in a systematic and consistent manner in the major linguistic areas.
In the domain of developing a signing avatar for LGP, the LGP’s phonological system
has been systematically described based on Hand Tier model proposed by Sandler
(1989) and Sandler & Lillo-Martin (2006) to computational purposes. Therefore, the
phonological and morphological elements that compose the sign articulation in LGP
have been described and characterized. The current poster will present a study focused
on determinating and outlining the existent phonological handshapes in LGP.
Researches on sign languages describe handshape as probably the most visible
segmental category in the articulation of the sign. Despite the potentially vast forms of
hand configurations, each sign language tends to use only a limited number of
handshapes. With the need to describe the phonological behavior of LGP, we developed
a study focusing on the description of articulated handshapes in LGP aiming to list the
phonological handshapes used in this language.
This study was based on the phonological description of 500 signs by deaf signers, who
were university students attending the degree in LGP. They had to describe each sign
following the three major phonological categories and their features and facial
expressions, all inventoried to serve the purpose of creating a signing avatar of LGP
(Moita et al., 2011; 2012). They were given a large collection of handshapes in LGP (83
handshapes) to describe each sign articulation for dominant hand and non-dominant
hand.
The results show that the dominant hand uses a higher number of handshapes than the
non-dominant hand, which seems to have a restricted number of handshapes possible to
be articulated, showing unequal distribution for each manual articulator. Frequency
analysis resulted in the reduction of the handshape list and revealed a number of
handshapes with higher occurrence in LGP signs. The results of this analysis are the
main focus of this poster.
References
Amaral, M.A., Coutinho, A., Martins, M. R. D.(1994). Para Uma Gramática da
Língua Gestual Portuguesa. Lisboa: Caminho.
Liddell, S. (2003). Grammar, Gesture, and Meaning in American Sign Language.
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Prata, M.I. (1980). Mãos que falam. Lisboa, Portugal: Laboratório de Fonética da
Faculdade de Letras/Universidade de Lisboa e Direcção Geral do Ensino Básico.
Sandler, W. (1989). Phonological Representation of the Sign: Linearity and non
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Sandler, W. & Lillo Martin, D. (2006). Sign Language and Linguistics Universals.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moita, M., Carmo, P., Ferreira, J.P., Mineiro, A. (2011) Estudos preliminaries para a
modelização de um avatar para a LGP: os descritores fonológicos. Cadernos de Saúde,
2(4) pp: 31-41.
Moita, M., Carmo, P., Ferreira, J. P., Mineiro, A. (2012). Preliminary description and
analysis of the phonology of Portugues Sign Language for computational modeling
purposes. In Formal and Experimental Advances in Sign Language Theory (FEAST).
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Stokoe, W.C.(1960). ‘Sign Language structure: an outline of visual communication
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