Amodal aspects of linguistic design

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Phonology
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• Spoken languages have syllable structure constraints.
• It is unknown if these constraints apply broadly to language or specifically to speech production.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate syllable structure in American Sign Language (ASL).
• To determine if phonological constraints are modality-specific or amodal.

Main Methods:

• Four experiments tested sonority/movement restrictions in ASL syllables.
• Deaf ASL signers and hearing nonsigners participated.
• Nonsigners underwent learning tasks with novel signs and rules.

Main Results:

• ASL signers applied sonority restrictions to syllables, not morphemes.
• Nonsigners used movement to define syllable-like units without ASL experience.
• Nonsigners learned to use movement for syllable identification but struggled with unnatural handshape rules.

Conclusions:

• Signed and spoken syllables share phonological restrictions.
• These shared constraints impact phonological learning across modalities.
• The phonological system's design appears to be partly amodal.